SG Heritage Dictionary

Hermes [Noun] Webster's Dictionary 1913

2. Originally, a boundary stone dedicated to Hermes as the god of boundaries, and therefore bearing in some cases a head, or head and shoulders, placed upon a quadrangular pillar whose height is that of the body belonging to the head, sometimes having feet or other parts of the body sculptured upon it. These figures, though often representing Hermes, were used for other divinities, and even, in later times, for portraits of human beings. Called also herma. See Terminal statue, under Terminal.

Hermes Encyclopedia Britannica

HERMES is the name of a Greek god (corresponding to the Roman Mercury) whose origin and real character are perhaps more difficult to define than is the case with any other Greek deity; here it is possible only to give an outline of one definite theory, and refer the reader to the works quoted at the end. He was not a god worshipped by the pure Doric or Ionic races, but is found in most places where Aeolian, Achaean, and Pelasgic tribes can be traced. If we begin with the rudest races, summed up generally under the title of Pelasgic, we find Hermes often connected with the mysterious Cabiri. These deities, in the accounts we have, vary in number and sex, being sometimes two, sometimes three or four. We may conclude that originally they were a pair, male and female, whom we may compare with Uranus and Gaea, or with Cronus and Rhea. Often the female is doubled, as mother and daughter, resembling the relation of Demeter and Persephone; while the male also is transformed either into twin brothers, or into a father and his son by one of the female deities. Certainly the male deity seems sometimes to be regarded as Hermes, sometimes as Hephaestus (see Hephaestus), while in other places the two are associated. Hermes and Hephaestus are perhaps local varieties of one type, which after having acquired distinct individuality in their separate homes were brought beside each other by subsequent intercourse. Hence we may understand how the epithet <xγγ∈λoς and the office of messenger between gods and men, which in the Pig Veda belong to Agni, the fire, are in Greek mythology attached to Hermes. This Pelasgic Hermes is an ithyphallic deity, the god of fertility and reproductive power, and bestower of riches in flocks and herds. Corresponding to this religious conception we have ...

In this account there has been no room left for the idea of Hermes as connected with the wind. The sun, after he has set at night, is the same as the sun hidden during the dreary months of winter, who then rides abroad in the tempest. The wind is then easily conceived as his servant and messenger, and is often considered to carry away the souls of the dead (see Harpies). From his connexion with the wind, Hermes is represented with winged shoes. But with Roscher (Hermes der Wind-Gott) to see in Hermes simply the wind is to take a narrow view and to ignore the character of primitive Aryan thought.

In art, besides the Hermae already described, Hermes is in the archaic time represented as a man with pointed beard, wearing a chlamys and the broad hat called petasus; his symbols are the staff (κηρυκeιοv) and the winged shoes (talaria). The ideal type of Hermes was probably modelled after the statue by Praxiteles in the Heraion at Olympia. This statue, which was recently discovered by the German expedition, represented the god leaning with his left arm on a rock and supporting on it the infant Bacchus. The right arm, which is lost, probably held the caduceus. The form shows a perfect combination of agility and strength.

See the works on mythology or religion by Weicker, Gerhard, Rinek, Stuhr, Schwenck, 0. Müller, Eckermann, H. D. Müller, Lauer, Schwartz, Max Müller, Preller, Hartung, Braun, Maury, &c.; also Lehrs, Pοpulαrische Aufsätze ; Schümann, Ηesiοd. Theog.; Gottling in Hermes, xxix.; Mehlis, Grundidee des Hermes ; Myri-antheus, Açvins ; Haupt in Ζft. f. Alterth., 1842; Oestermann, Hermes-Odysseus·, H.D. Müllerin Philologus, xiv.; Kuhn in Haupt’s Zft. f D. Alterth., vi.; Von Hahn, Sagwissensch. Studien·, Roscher, Hermes. As usual, the fullest list of ancient authorities is to be found in Jacobi, Handwörterbuch der Mythologie. (W. Μ. RA.)

HERMES, Georg (1775-1831), a distinguished Catholic theologian, born on 22d April 1775, at Dreyerwald, in Westphalia, was educated at the gymnasium and university of Münster. His life presents no facts of importance. After completing his course of study at Münster, he acted for some time as lecturer at the gymnasium and then as professor at the university. In 1820 he was called, as professor of theology, to the university of Bonn, where he remained till his death on 26th May 1831. Hermes was peculiarly adapted for the life and work of the professoriate. He had great gifts as a lecturer and teacher, and gathered round him at Bonn a devoted band of adherents. His works were Untersuchungen uber die innere Wahrheit des Christenthum8, Münster, 1805, and Einleitung in die Christkatholische Theologie, of which the first part, a philosophical introduction, was published in 1819, the second part, on positive theology, in 1829. The Einleitung was never completed. His Christkatholische Dogmatik was published, from his lectures, after his death by two of his scholars, Achterfeld and Braun, 3 vols. 1831-4.

The Einleitung is a remarkable work, both in itself and in its effect upon Catholic theology in Germany. Few works of modern times have excited a more keen and bitter controversy. Hermes himself was very largely under the influence of the Kantian and Fichtean ideas, and though in the philosophical portion of his Einleitung he criticizes both these thinkers severely, rejects their doctrine of the moral law as the sole guarantee for the existence of God, and condemns their restricted view of the possibility and nature of revelation, enough remained of purely speculative material to render his system obnoxious to the Catholic Church. A very few years after his death, the contests between his followers and their opponents grew so embittered that reference of the dispute was made to the papal see. The judgment consequent upon a review of Hermes’s writings, undertaken in Rome in 1833, was adverse, and on 25th September 1835 a papal bull condemned both parts of the Einleitung and the first volume of the Dogmatik. Two months later the remaining volumes of the Dogmatik were likewise condemned. The controversy did not cease with this condemnation; but not till 1845 was there any systematic attempt on the part of Catholic theology to examine and refute the Hermesian doctrines. In that year was published anonymously by F. X. Werner the most complete survey of the principles of the works of Hermes as contrasted with the orthodox catholic faith (Der Hermesianismus, 1845). In 1847 the condemnation of 1835 was confirmed by Pius IX. A sufficient account of Hermes and the dispute raised by him will be found in K. Werner, Geschichte der Katholischen Theologie, 1866, pp. 405 sqq.

9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 11, p. 749
[1,532 words — estimated reading time: 9 minutes]

Hermes trismegistus Encyclopedia Britannica

HERMES TRISMEGISTUS. The Egyptian Thoth, Tauut, or Tat (see vol. vii. p. 718), who was identified by the Greeks more or less completely with their own Hermes, is described in the hieroglyphics by various epithets, among which occurs that of “the great great” or twice great, with an added hieroglyphic (a kite) also signifying “great.” To him as scribe of the gods, “Lord of the divine words,” “Scribe of truth,” was attributed the authorship of all the strictly sacred books generally called by Greek authors Hermetic. These, according to Clemens Alexandrinus, our sole ancient authority (Strom., vi. p. 268 sq.}, were forty-two in number, and were subdivided into six divisions, of which the first, containing the ten books “of the prophets,” dealt with laws, deities, and the education of priests; the second, consisting of the ten books of the “stolistes,” or official whose duty it was to dress and ornament the statues of the gods, treated of sacrifices and offerings, prayers, hymns, festive processions; the third, “of the hierogram-matist,” also in ten books, was a repertory of hieroglyphical, cosmographical, geographical, and topographical information; the four books “of the horoscopus” were devoted to astronomy and astrology; the two books “of the chanter” contained respectively a collection of songs in honour of the gods and a description of the royal life and its duties; while the sixth and last division, consisting of the six books “of the pastophor,” was medical. Of this canon, which according to the generally received opinion of Bunsen must have been closed at latest in the time of the Psanιmetichi but probably earlier, numerous small fragments are to be found in the works of Stobaeus and other ancient writers. The now well-known ...

The epithet Trismegistus (ό τpισμεyιστος, or “superlatively” greatest), as applied to Hermes, is of comparatively late origin, and cannot be traced to any author earlier than the 2d Christian century. Most probably it arose out of the earlier forms p,εγας και p,εγας or μέγιστος, derived by the Greeks from early Egyptian sources; but various other explanations of the appellation have been offered, such as that of the author of the Chronicοn Alexandrinum (47 a,d.), who maintains that it was because Hermes, while maintaining the unity of God, had also asserted the existence of three supreme or greatest powers that he was called by the Egyptians Trismegistus. 1 This view, which is also adopted by Suidas, seems preferable at least to that met with in Nicolai’s History of Greek Literature, according to which an apocryphal author named Hermes was called τpισμε∙ γιστιoς, simply in order to indicate that he had succeeded and outdone a certain Megistias of Smyrna in astrological, physiognomical, and alchemistic theories. The name of Hermes seems during the third and following centuries to have been regarded as a convenient pseudonym to place at the head of the numerous syncretistic writings in which it was sought to combine Neo-Platonic philosophy, Philonic Judaism, and cabbalistic theosophy, and so provide the world with some acceptable substitute for the Christianity which had even at that time begun to give indications of the ascendency it was destined afterwards to attain. Of these pseudepigraphic Hermetic writings some have come down to us in the original Greek; others survive in Latin or Arabic translations; but the majority appear to have perished. That which is best known and has been most frequently edited is the ποιμάνδρης sive De Potestate et Sapientia Divina (ποιμάνδρης being the Divine Intelligence τrοιμην αv8pωv), which consists of fifteen chapters treating of such subjects as the nature of God, the origin of the world, the creation and fall of man, and the divine illumination which is the sole means of his deliverance. The Editio Princeps appeared in Paris in 1554; and there has been a recent edition by Parthey (1854); the work has also been translated into German by Tiedemann (1781). Along with it are usually printed the certainly later δpoι or Definitions of Asclepius, which have sometimes but erroneously been attributed to Apuleius. Other Hermetic writings which have been preserved, and which have been for the most part collected by Patricius in the Nova de Universis Philosophia (1593), are (in Greek) 'laτρομaθημaτικa πρδς *Aμμωvα Αιγύπτιον, ∏εpι κaτaκλισεως νοσονντων π - εpιγvωστικa, Εκ της μαθηματικής επιστήμης προς *Aμμωva (in Latin) Aphorismi sive Centiloquium, Cyranides ; (in Arabic, but doubtless from a Greek original) an address to the human soul, which has been translated by Fleischer (An die menschliche Seele, 1870). The connexion of the name of Hermes with alchemy will explain what is meant by hermetic sealing, and will account for the use of the phrase “hermetic medicine” by Paracelsus, as also for the so-called “hermetic freemasonry” of the Middle Ages.

See Ursinus, De Zoroastre, Ηerrnete, &c., Nuremberg, 1661; Lenglet Dufresnoy, L’Histoire de la Philosophie Hermétique, Paris, 1742; Baumgarten-Cmsius, De librorum hermeticorum origine atque indole, Jena, 1827; Hilger, De Hermetis Trismegisti Poërnandro, 1855; Ménard, Hermès Trismégiste: Traduction complète, précédée d'une étude sur l’origine des livres hermétiques, 1866; Pietschmann, Hermes Trismegistus, nach Aegyptischen, Griechischem, und Orientalischen Ueberlieferungen, 1875.

9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 11, p. 750
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Hermesianax Encyclopedia Britannica

HERMESIANAX, an elegiac poet of the Alexandrian school, was born at Colophon, and flourished in the time of Philip and Alexander, or a little later. He was a friend and admirer—probably also a pupil—of the gram marian and poet Philetas, whom he outlived. His chief work was a poem in three books, which he, following the example of his countrymen Mimnermus and Antimachus, inscribed with the name of his mistress Leontium (said by some to be the same as the mistress of Epicurus). Of this poem a fragment of about one hundred lines has been preserved by Athenaeus (xiii. 597); and it may serve as a specimen of the style of the school. Erotic in character, and plaintive in tone, it enumerates instances, mythological and historical, of the irresistible power of love, and redeems the monotony of its ground plan by its picturesque language, and by the alternate force and tenderness of its treatment. Hermesianax was exceedingly popular in his own times, and was highly esteemed even in the Augustan period. Propertius follows his example in dedicating the first book of his Elegies to his mistress Cynthia.

Many scholars have laboured upon the text, but it is still in a very unsatisfactory condition. See Hermann, Opuscula, iv.; Schneidewin, Deled. Poes. Eleg. ; Bergk, De Hermesianactis Elegia ; the editions of Bailey (London, 1839), &c.

9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 11, p. 751
[224 words — estimated reading time: 2 minutes]