Hermes and Ares LECTURE

Themes to Look For

  • Gods of passion, emotion, and loss: love and war

  • Trickster gods and their qualities

  • Liminal spaces, boundaries, and travel as areas of concern/unease

  • Protection during transitions (age, sexuality, death)

  • Breaking gender norms and archetypal expectations


Ares

  • The butcher god

  • God of war brutality, not warfare

  • Son of Zeus and Hera

  • Consort of Aphrodite

  • Epithets: “Bane of men,” “stormer of cities”

  • Attributes: wears armor, carries shield and spear, sometimes naked (heroic nudity)

  • Sacred animals: vultures, dogs

  • Roman name: Mars

  • Areas of worship: Rome


Attendants of Ares

  • Deimos (“terror”): Ares and Aphrodite’s son

  • Phobos (“fear”): Ares and Aphrodite’s son

  • Eris (“strife”): goddess of discord (especially warfare)


Ares, Aphrodite, and Hephaestus

  • Aphrodite: Goddess of love, wife of Hephaestus

  • Hephaestus: God of the forge, husband of Aphrodite

  • Ares: God of war


Hermes

  • The prince of Thieves

  • Messenger divinity

    • Also god who leads souls to the underworld (Psychopompos)

    • Also god of travelers, heralds, roads, boundaries

    • Also god of thieves, theft

    • Also god of herdsmen

  • Son of Zeus and Maia

  • Trickster god, stealer of cattle, known for cleverness

  • Epithets: slayer of Argus, bringer of luck

  • Attributes: Petasus (traveler’s hat), caduceus (staff), winged boots, sometimes older and bearded, other times youthful (adolescence = boundary)

  • Sacred animal:hares, bulls

  • Roman name: Mercury


Herms

  • Herma: pile of stones, form of demarcation of space

  • Evolves into boundary markers (rectangular block with face of Hermes, religious significance, and phallus)

    • Symbols of fertility, good luck, Apotropaic function

    • Mutilation of the Herms in Athens

  • 415 BCE, Alcibiades


Apollo’s Cattle

  • Homeric Hymn to Hermes (#4)

  • Brith from Maia

  • Invention of the lyre

  • Theft of the cattle

  • Apollo and Hermes’ quarrel

  • The trial on Mt. Olympus

  • Gifts traded between Hermes and Apollo

  • Offerings from Zeus to Hermes


Hermaphroditus

  • Ovid’s Metamorphoses

  • Hermaphroditus: son of Hermes and Aphrodite

  • Salmacis: water nymph

  • Reversal of traditional rape archetype