* i. 418; ii. 287.
** i 436.
The probable conclusion seems to be that the Adonis ritual expresses
certain natural human ways of regarding the vernal year. It is not
unlikely that the ancestors of the Greeks possessed these forms of
folk-lore previous to their contact with the Semitic races, and their
borrowing of the very marked Semitic features in the festivals.
For the rest, the concern of Aphrodite with the passion of love in men and with general productiveness in nature is a commonplace of Greek literature.
It would be waste of space to recount the numerous and familiar fables in which she inspires a happy or an ill-fated affection in gods or mortals. Like most other mythical figures, Aphrodite has been recognised by Mr. Max Müller as the dawn; but the suggestion has not been generally accepted.* If Aphrodite retains any traces of an elemental origin, they show chiefly in that part of her legend which is peculiarly Semitic in colour. For the rest, though she, like Hermes, gives good luck in general, she is a recognised personification of passion and the queen of love.
* Roscher, Lexikon, p. 406.
HERMES.
Another child of Zeus whose elemental origin and character have been much debated is Hermes. The meaning of the name** is confessedly obscure.
Opinion, then, is divided about the elemental origin of Hermes and the meaning of his name. His character must be sought, as usual, in ancient poetic myth and in ritual and religion. Herodotus recognised his rites as extremely old, for that is the meaning of his remark*** that the Athenians borrowed them from the Pelasgians, who are generally recognised as prehistoric Greeks.
** Preller, i. 307. The name of Hermes is connected by
Welcker (Griesch. Got., i. 342) with (——-), and he gives
other examples of the Æolic use of o for e. Compare
Curtius's Greek Etymology, English translation, 1886, vol.
i. p. 420. Mr. Max Müller, on the other hand (Lectures, ii.
468), takes Hermes to be the son of the Dawn. Curtius
reserves his opinion. Mr. Max Müller recognises Saramejas
and Hermes as deities of twilight. Preller (i. 309) takes
him for a god of dark and gloaming.
*** Herod., ii. 61.
In the rites spoken of, the images of the god were in one notable point like well-known Bushmen and Admiralty Island divine representations, and like those of Priapus.* In Cyllene, where Hermes was a great resident god, Artemidorus** saw a representation of Hermes which was merely a large phallus, and Pausanias beheld the same sacred object, which was adored with peculiar reverence.*** Such was Hermes in the Elean region, whence he derived his name, Cyllenian.**** He was a god of "the liberal shepherds," conceived of in the rudest aspect, perhaps as the patron of fruitfulness in their flocks. Manifestly he was most unlike the graceful swift messenger of the gods, and guide of the ghosts of men outworn, the giver of good fortune, the lord of the crowded market-place, the teacher of eloquence and of poetry, who appears in the literary mythology of Greece. Nor is there much in his Pelasgian or his Cyllenian form to suggest the elemental deity either of gloaming, or of twilight, or of the storm.(v)