Apollo is not deceived, but is forced to laughter. Finally they agree to put the case before Zeus on Olympus. There, after Apollo’s attack, Hermes makes a lying and witty defence, at which his immoral and omnipotent father laughs aloud. Both sons are sent off to find the kine, and on the way the Cyllenian shows the Far-darter his tortoise-lyre and entrances him with its music:—
“unconquerable
Up from beneath his hand in circling flight
The gathering music rose—and sweet as Love
The penetrating notes did live and move
“Within the heart of great Apollo. He
Listened with all his soul and laughed for pleasure.”
Hermes suggests an exchange, promising the tortoise shell to Apollo, if he may have in return the glittering lash and drive the herd. Thus the lyre, invented in Arcadia, passed to the rightful lord of music and to an universal sovereignty.
The two brothers became fast friends and sealed their affection on snowy Olympus by mutual promises. The older brother reserves for himself the awful gift of prophecy, but in return for the lyre gives to the younger lordship over the twisted-horned cattle and horses and toiling mules, over the burning eyes of lions, and white-tusked boars and dogs and sheep, and, most important of all, makes him herald to lead the dead to Hades.
Almost imperceptibly, toward the close of the hymn, the two gods take on something of the stateliness which clothes them in more serious poetry. But the rollicking infant and his half-angry, half-amused victim must be remembered to complete the idea of a religion which left a definite place for humour. While the gravely beautiful Hermes which adorned the temple of Hera at Olympia revealed, in perfect marble, a serious and noble conception of divinity, it may well be that among the many wooden or stone statues of the god which stood in orchard closes, by cool wayside springs, and in crossways near the gray seashore, more than one recalled his lovable and mischievous boyhood. Certainly it is tempting to imagine the infant trickster in the Hermes of the Anthology who guarded pleasant playgrounds and to whom boys offered marjoram and hyacinth and fresh garlands of violets.