In an ancient Greek religious hymn, the god Apollo threatened to kill the infant god Hermes. When Apollo picked him up to carry him away, Hermes farted. Farting, which usually creates a sonic and olfactory shock, can be a defensive response to oppression. In ancient Greece, stone pillars topped with the head of Hermes commonly had a erect penis pointing upwards towards Hermes’s belly. That suggests farting as a defense against the oppression of men’s sexuality. Men’s sexuality is closely associated with the low-class, hard-working god Priapus. The eminent Latin poet Horace described Priapus farting to rout a child-killing witch and her demonic female-friend from lush, new gardens in Rome. The witches, however, headed into the center of the city and continued to terrorize men. Farting isn’t enough to defend men distended from oppression.
Placed in antiquity alongside the enormously influential Homeric epics the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Homeric Hymn to Hermes tells of the infant god Hermes farting. This religious hymn begins with an honorary imperative:
Muse, celebrate Hermes, the son of Zeus and Maia,
he patron of Cyllene and Arcadia rich in flocks,
he the beneficent messenger of the immortals.{ Ἑρμῆν ὕμνει, Μοῦσα, Διὸς καὶ Μαιάδος υἱόν
Κυλλήνης μεδέοντα καὶ Ἀρκαδίης πολυμήλου,
ἄγγελον ἀθανάτων ἐριούνιον }[1]
Hermes’s father Zeus, the son of Kronos, had strong, independent sexuality. He was married to the goddess Hera. Maia, a nymph with beautiful hair, was one of Zeus’s extra-marital loves:
Maia was bashful. She avoided the throng of blessed gods
and abided inside a cave of shadows upon shadows. There Kronos’s son
used to unite with the beautiful-haired nymph in the depth of night
while sweet sleep gripped white-armed Hera.{ αἰδοίη· μακάρων δὲ θεῶν ἠλεύαθ’ ὅμιλον
ἄντρον ἔσω ναίουσα παλίσκιον, ἔνθα Κρονίων
νύμφηι ἐϋπλοκάμωι μισγέσκετο νυκτὸς ἀμολγῶι
ὄφρα κατὰ γλυκὺς ὕπνος ἔχοι λευκώλενον Ἥρην }
Hermes was thus born out of wedlock to Maia and Zeus in a cave on Mount Cyllene. Men typically endure heightened paternal uncertainty for births out of wedlock. Zeus, a god who bore the epithets “Of Marriage Rites {Τελειος},” “Giver of Signs {Σημαλεος},” “Averter of Evil {Ἀλεξίκακος},” and “Paternal {Πάτριος},” knew that Hermes was his son. Hermes, who also knew that Zeus was his father, was proud of his parents.[2]
In the evening on the first day of his life, the infant Hermes set out to steal cattle from his older half-brother Apollo. From Apollo’s herd at Pieria, Hermes led away fifty cows, leaving behind only a bull and four herding dogs. Hermes had the cows walk backwards to obscure their get-away. Moreover, Hermes fashioned from shrubs and trees huge sandals for himself to make his infant footprints look like those of a giant. He took the cows to a secret lodge by the river Alpheus. There he sacrificed two cows to the twelve gods of Olympia.[3] Then he went home to the cave on Mount Cyllene and crawled back into his cradle.
Searching for his missing cattle, Apollo divined that Hermes stole them. Apollo thus traveled to Mount Cyllene to the cave in which Hermes and his mother Maia lived. Without seeking permission, Apollo searched every recess of their temple-like home. He even opened treasuries filled with nectar, ambrosia, gold, silver, and Maia’s many fine clothes.[4] Apollo found no cows there. He then sternly addressed the infant Hermes:
You, child lying in your cradle, inform me where my cows are,
and quickly. We will otherwise soon quarrel unnaturally.
I will seize you and fling you into murky Tartarus,
into gloom of painful fates with no scheme’s escape. Neither mother
nor father will have you released into light. Instead, beneath the earth
you will be damned, being a leader only among destructive men.{ ὦ παῖ, ὃς ἐν λίκνωι κατάκειαι, μήνυέ μοι βοῦς
θάσσον, ἐπεὶ τάχα νῶϊ διοισόμεθ’ οὐ κατὰ κόσμον.
ῥίψω γάρ σε λαβὼν ἐς Τάρταρον ἠερόεντα,
ἐς ζόφον αἰνόμορον καὶ ἀμήχανον, οὐδέ σε μήτηρ
ἐς φάος οὐδὲ πατὴρ ἀναλύσεται, ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ γαίηι
ἐρρήσεις, ὀλοοῖσι μετ’ ἀνδράσιν ἡγεμονεύων. }
Although only an infant, Hermes responded with shrewd speech highlighting his infant status:
Apollo, son of Leto, what is this harsh speech you uttered,
you actually coming here looking for your field-dwelling cows?
I haven’t seen them, nor overheard about them, nor been relayed word.
I couldn’t tell you, nor earn an informer’s reward,
nor do I resemble a cattle-stealer, a strong man.
That’s not my kind of deed. I’ve been concerned with other things.
Sleep is my concern, and my mother’s milk,
and having swaddling around my shoulders and warm bathwater.
I hope no one learns the source of this dispute.
Surely the immortals would be astonished
if a newborn child crossed through his home’s doorway in search of
cows that live in fields.{ Λητοΐδη, τίνα τοῦτον ἀπηνέα μῦθον ἔειπες;
καὶ βοῦς ἀγραύλους διζήμενος ἐνθάδ’ ἱκάνεις;
οὐκ ἴδον, οὐ πυθόμην, οὐκ ἄλλου μῦθον ἄκουσα.
οὐκ ἂν μηνύσαιμ’· οὐκ ἂν μήνυτρον ἀροίμην,
οὔτε βοῶν ἐλατῆρι, κραταιῶι φωτί, ἔοικα.
οὐκ ἐμὸν ἔργον τοῦτο, πάρος δέ μοι ἄλλα μέμηλεν·
ὕπνος ἐμοί γε μέμηλε καὶ ἡμετέρης γάλα μητρός,
σπάργανά τ’ ἀμφ’ ὤμοισιν ἔχειν καὶ θερμὰ λοετρά.
μή τις τοῦτο πύθοιτο, πόθεν τόδε νεῖκος ἐτύχθη·
καί κεν δὴ μέγα θαῦμα μετ’ ἀθανάτοισι γένοιτο
παῖδα νέον γεγαῶτα διὰ προθύροιο περῆσαι
βουσὶ μετ’ ἀγραύλοισι. }
Hermes’s deceptive words and his fluttering of his eyelids didn’t dupe his older half-brother Apollo. Apollo again threatened Hermes:
Now come, if you don’t want to be put to your last and final sleep,
step down from your cradle, you friend of dark night.
The prize you will have among immortals from now on is this:
all your days you shall be known as the commander of robbers.{ ἀλλ’ ἄγε, μὴ πύματόν τε καὶ ὕστατον ὕπνον ἰαύσεις,
ἐκ λίκνου κατάβαινε, μελαίνης νυκτὸς ἑταῖρε.
τοῦτο γὰρ οὖν καὶ ἔπειτα μετ’ ἀθανάτοις γέρας ἕξεις·
ἀρχὸς φιλητέων κεκλήσεαι ἤματα πάντα. }
With those menacing words, Apollo picked up the infant Hermes to carry him away.
Hermes defended himself against his older half-brother’s domineering action. To break free, he broke wind:
After setting his mind to it, Hermes the strong slayer of Argus,
as he was born aloft in the arms of Apollo, sent forth an omen-bird —
the menial servant of the belly, an insolent message-man —
and after that gave an energetic confirmatory sneeze. Apollo heard it,
and from his hands let glorious Hermes fall to the ground.{ σὺν δ’ ἄρα φρασσάμενος, τότε δὴ κρατὺς Ἀργεϊφόντης
οἰωνὸν προέηκεν ἀειρόμενος μετὰ χερσίν,
τλήμονα γαστρὸς ἔριθον, ἀτάσθαλον ἀγγελιώτην,
ἐσσυμένως δὲ μετ’ αὐτὸν ἐπέπταρε. τοῖο δ’ Ἀπόλλων
ἔκλυεν, ἐκ χειρῶν δὲ χαμαὶ βάλε κύδιμον Ἑρμῆν }[5]
Hermes on the ground couldn’t escape from the larger and faster Apollo. They brought their dispute before their father Zeus. Hermes gave his lyre to Apollo as compensation for stealing cattle. The two half-brothers thus reconciled.[6] Farting by itself wasn’t enough for Hermes to pacify his older half-brother Apollo.
Two iambs of Callimachus, a highly learned poet writing in Greek in the third century BGC, recognize the relevance of Hermes, men’s sexuality, and farting. Callimachus’s seventh iamb tells an “origin story {αἴτιον}” for “Hermes Hand to Hand / Hermes Perpheraios {Ἑρμῆς Περφεραῖος}” as worshiped in Ainos in Thrace. That local cult of Hermes is attested on fifth-century BGC coins from Ainos. Those coins show a crude statue of Hermes with an erect penis.[7] According to Callimachus’s iamb, flood waters of the river Scamander washed into the sea a crude wooden statue of Hermes Perpheraios. Fishermen from Ainos inadvertently caught the statue in their nets. They disparaged it and sought to use it as firewood. Despite strenuous efforts, the fishermen couldn’t chop it up. Moreover, the statue’s incantations prevented it from being burned. Bewildered, the fishermen threw it back into the sea. When it returned again in their nets, they built a shrine for it, offered it some fish they had caught, and worshiped it as a god. They passed it hand to hand among themselves, each honoring it. An oracle from Apollo confirmed the statue’s divinity. Hermes Perpheraios, residing in this statue, was thus received into Ainos as a god.[8]
Like the statute of Hermes Perpheraios, men’s sexuality historically has been depicted as crude and disparaged. Castration culture, entrenched in Hesiod’s Theogony, is analogous to attempting to chop up Hermes Perpheraios. The god most explicitly associated with an erect penis is Priapus, a crude, rustic minor divinity tasked with the menial, dangerous work of guarding gardens. Despite hostility towards men’s sexuality, it continues to appear unexpectedly, like Hermes Perpheraios in the fishermen’s net. Men historically have been gender-disparately burdened with competing for women’s love, just as men seek to catch fish. In the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, Apollo and Hermes resolve their dispute to their mutual satisfaction. Apollo thus supports Hermes in Callimachus’s seventh iamb. Men’s sexuality, however, has not yet been supported equally with women’s sexuality.
Callimachus’s ninth iamb tells of another statue of Hermes. In this iamb, a man who loves the handsome young man Philetadas sees at a wrestling school a statue of Hermes with an erect penis. In the ancient Greek world, young men like Philetadas would practice wrestling nearly naked at such a school. The man distrustfully questions the statue of Hermes:
Hermes, O bearded one, why does your penis
point to your beard and not to your feet?{ Ἑρμᾶ, τί τοι τὸ νεῦρον, ὦ Γενειόλα,
ποττὰν ὑπήναν κοὐ ποτ᾿ ἴχνιον }[9]
Men can have an erect penis even when they don’t desire to have one. In Callimachus’s iamb, the statue of Hermes declares that a sacred mystery explains his erect penis.[10] Men’s sexuality should be appreciated as a sacred mystery. Moreover, men’s sexuality lovingly belongs in the context of men’s faces, not their feet. A Latin proverb alludes to the issue with a Latin pun on “feet {pedes}” and the second-person form of the verb “to fart {pedo}”:
Don’t fart in public, so you don’t thus raise your feet to your belly!
{ Sic a ventre pedes leva, ne publice pedes! }[11]
An erect penis also points toward a man’s belly. In cultures that associate men’s penises with their feet, not their faces, men might respond defensively with their bellies. Farting is justified in response to oppression of men’s sexuality.
Priapus farted to defend himself against the evil incantations of a “heinous old woman {anus}.” She was the witch Canidia, along with her demonic female friend Sagana. They and their monstrously malicious witch accomplices Folia and Veia tortured and killed a boy. They sought his dried-up bone marrow and liver to use in a love charm for Canidia to have sex with Varus. He was an elderly man with strong, independent sexuality. Their actions were unspeakably evil:
Deprived of any moral conscience, Veia
with a hard hoe dug into
the earth, she grunting with the labor,
so that the boy could be buried
and die gazing at the spectacle
of food changed two or three times in an endless day.
His face protruded from the earth, as stands out the chin
of a body suspended in water.
His dried-up bone marrow and liver, sucked out,
they would use for a love potion,
when his eyeballs had finally rotted away
after once being fixed on the forbidden meal.{ abacta nulla Veia conscientia
ligonibus duris humum
exhauriebat, ingemens laboribus,
quo posset infossus puer
longo die bis terque mutatae dapis
inemori spectaculo,
cum promineret ore, quantum exstant aqua
suspensa mento corpora;
exsucta uti medulla et aridum iecur
amoris esset poculum,
interminato cum semel fixae cibo
intabuissent pupulae. }[12]
Buried in the ground up to his head, dying of starvation while tortured with the sight of food, the boy cursed the wicked witches:
Magic potions don’t have divine right to do divine wrong. They cannot
overturn human retribution. A solemn curse of castration
cannot be expiated by a dreadful sacrificial victim.
Even when, with my breath forced out, I perish,
I’ll run to you at night as a Fury
and I, my ghost with its hooked claws, will attack your face,
for such is the divine power of spirits of the dead.
Upon your tormented heart I will sit down.
I will carry away your sleep with terror.{ venena maga non fas nefasque, non valent
convertere humanam vicem.
diris agam vos: dira detestatio
nulla expiatur victima.
quin, ubi perire iussus exspiravero,
nocturnus occurram Furor
petamque voltus umbra curvis unguibus,
quae vis deorum est Manium,
et inquietis adsidens praecordiis
pavore somnos auferam. }
The boy figuratively described Varus’s lack of sexual interest in Canidia as castration. The boy insisted that the horrific love potion that Canidia sought to make from his organs wouldn’t overturn Varus’s castration. Men’s impotence is an epic disaster. More female wickedness isn’t the answer to men’s impotence.
Known for his erect penis, Priapus rightly feared the witch Canidia and her demonic female friend Sagana. Priapus reportedly inhabited a crude fig-wood statue standing in lush “new gardens {novi horti}.” The wealthy, politically connected Roman Maecenas created these gardens by 35 BGC on the former site of a pauper’s cemetery on Esquiline Hill just outside Rome’s Servian Wall. Priapus was thus fabricated like Hermes Perpheraios, but inhabited a much more hospitable initial position. Priapus, however, experienced in Maecenas’s new gardens a horror even worse than fishermen attempting to chop up and burn Hermes Perpheraios:
Why should I recount each detail — that speaking alternately in solemn
agreement, Sagana and spirits of the dead resounded sad and shrill,
thus a wolf’s beard with the tooth of a spotted snake
Canidia and Sagana furtively buried in the earth, how consuming a wax effigy
the fire blazed higher, so that I as a witness, but not one unavenged,
would shudder at the voices and deeds of those two Furies.{ singula quid memorem, quo pacto alterna loquentes
umbrae cum Sagana resonarint triste et acutum
utque lupi barbam variae cum dente colubrae
abdiderint furtim terris et imagine cerea
largior arserit ignis et ut non testis inultus
horruerim voces Furiarum et facta duarum }[13]
Responding to such potent horror, Priapus defensively farted:
Then, sounding as loud as a bursting bladder, my fig-wood
buttocks split with a fart, and away they ran into the city.
Canidia’s teeth as well as Sagana’s high wig
tumbling down, along with herbs and bindings enchanted
by lizards, you would have seen with great laughter and joy.{ nam, displosa sonat quantum vesica, pepedi
diffissa nate ficus; at illae currere in urbem.
canidiae dentis, altum Saganae caliendrum
excidere atque herbas atque incantata lacertis
vincula cum magno risuque iocoque videres. }[14]
That fart was a Pyrrhic victory for Priapus. It dispelled Canidia and Sagana from Maecenas’s new gardens on the outskirts of Rome into the center of the city itself. Witches at the center of the city serve gynocentrism.
The witches continued to manipulate and dominate men. The persona of the great Roman poet Horace in his Epodes is an Everyman just as capable of farting as the Everyman Priapus. Nonetheless, he surrendered to Canidia:
Now, right now, I surrender to your effective lore,
and bowing, I pray by Proserpina’s kingdom,
and by Diana, a divinity not to be aroused,
and by your books of spells capable
of unfixing the stars and calling them down from the sky.
Canidia, spare me from your sacred voicings,
and, turning back your swift spell-wheel, release, release me.{ Iam iam efficaci do manus scientiae,
supplex et oro regna per Proserpinae,
per et Dianae non movenda numina,
per atque libros carminum valentium
refixa caelo devocare sidera,
Canidia: parce vocibus tandem sacris
citumque retro solve, solve turbinem. }[15]
The vicious witch Canidia offered no mercy. She exulted in goading him to suicide. She gleefully declared:
You’ll want only to jump from the highest tower,
only to pierce your chest with a Noric sword,
and all in vain you’ll weave a noose for your neck,
sick with self-loathing and sadness.
Then, as a horsewoman, I will ride on my enemy’s shoulders,
and the land will yield to my arrogance.{ voles modo altis desilire turribus,
modo ense pectus Norico recludere
frustraque vincla gutturi nectes tuo
fastidiosa tristis aegrimonia.
vectabor umeris tunc ego inimicis eques
meaeque terra cedet insolentiae. }
Farting was enough to prompt the god Apollo to let go of the cattle-stealing infant Hermes. Farting isn’t enough to get rid of a witch riding on a man’s shoulders.
Despite the temporary, tactical farting successes of the gods Hermes and Priapus, farting has a bad reputation historically. A Sumerian proverb from perhaps four thousand years ago associated a great man with a man who doesn’t fart:
He is a man who can lift the heavens — and he doesn’t fart.
{ lu2 an il2-la ce10 nu-ub-dur2-re }[16]
Contrary to gyno-idolatrous myth, woman fart equally with men. In a Neo-Assyrian text from the first half of the first millennium BGC, a man taunts his girlfriend Ishtar of Babylonia:
Why did you fart and were ashamed about it?
Why did you make the wagon of her beloved have a foul smell?{ ammēni taṣrutīma tabāšī gišsaparra ša bēliša
ammēni taškunī nipiš ri-[x] }[17]
About 50 GC in the Roman colonial province of Judaea, a soldier with an aggressive fart caused a war resulting in the deaths of more than 30,000 persons:
The usual crowd had assembled at Jerusalem for the feast of unleavened bread. The Roman cohort had taken up its position on the roof of the portico of the temple. A body of men in arms invariably mounts guard at the feasts to prevent disorders arising from such a concourse of people. One of the soldiers, raising his robe, stooped to expose his buttocks indecently to the Jews and made a noise associated with his posture. Enraged at this insult, the whole multitude with loud cries called upon the Roman procurator Cumanus to punish the soldier. Some of the more hot-headed young men and seditious persons in the crowd started a fight. Picking up stones, they hurled them at the troops. Cumanus, fearing a general attack upon himself, sent for reinforcements.
{ συνεληλυθότος γὰρ τοῦ πλήθους ἐπὶ τὴν ἑορτὴν τῶν ἀζύμων εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα καὶ τῆς Ῥωμαϊκῆς σπείρας ὑπὲρ τὴν τοῦ ἱεροῦ στοὰν ἐφεστώσης, ἔνοπλοι δ᾿ ἀεὶ τὰς ἑορτὰς παραφυλάττουσιν, ὡς μή τι νεωτερίζοι τὸ πλῆθος ἠθροισμένον, εἷς τις τῶν στρατιωτῶν ἀνασυράμενος τὴν ἐσθῆτα καὶ κατακύψας ἀσχημόνως προσαπέστρεψεν τοῖς Ἰουδαίοις τὴν ἕδραν καὶ τῷ σχήματι φωνὴν ὁμοίαν ἐπεφθέγξατο. πρὸς τοῦτο ἅπαν μὲν τὸ πλῆθος ἠγανάκτησεν, καὶ κατεβόων τοῦ Κουμανοῦ κολάζειν τὸν στρατιώτην, οἱ δὲ ἧττον νήφοντες τῶν νέων καὶ τὸ φύσει στασιῶδες ἐκ τοῦ ἔθνους ἐχώρουν ἐπὶ μάχην, λίθους τε ἁρπάσαντες ἐπὶ τοὺς στρατιώτας ἔβαλλον. καὶ Κουμανὸς δείσας, μὴ τοῦ λαοῦ παντὸς ἐπ᾿ αὐτὸν ὁρμὴ γένοιτο, πλείους ὁπλίτας μεταπέμπεται. }[18]
In this instance, farting was used in conjunction with colonial oppression, not against oppression. A medieval European proverb expressed more generally a contextual problem with agonistic farting:
One who farts when he wishes, farts when he does not wish to fart.
{ Qui pedit dum vult, pedit dum pedere non vult. }[19]
Farting is often difficult to control, and its effects unpredictable. Farting had so little value as deterrence that in ancient Rome a wife might beat her husband with impunity:
One man supplies magic incantations, another sells Thessalian
potions — these enable a wife to confuse her husband’s mind
and to beat on his buttocks with her sandal.{ Hic magicos adfert cantus, hic Thessala vendit
philtra, quibus valeat mentem vexare mariti
et solea pulsare natis. }[20]
Circumstances, intentions, and lived experiences don’t provide a reliable fundament for farting as a defense against oppression.
Radical olfactory change is necessary to liberate men from oppression. Hermes, like Odysseus, is a liberating role model of guile and verbal sophistication.[21] Hermes’s older half-brother Apollo lacked sensitivity to the rank oppression of men. That rank oppression that should have made him more responsive to Hermes’s farting. Priapus with his farting fumigated Maecenas’s new gardens and rid them of horrid witches. Yet the witches settled in the center of Rome, just as they have inhabited the center of modern cultures. No stench, not even that of men having no reproductive rights, men being massively gender-disproportionately imprisoned, and men being gender-categorized as disposable persons for use in wars, seems sufficient to dispel the witches and their acolytes from their commanding positions. Massively better olfactory sensitivity can start with you. If you smell something, say something!
We ask for facility in learning, the gift of Hermes.
{ αἰτοῦμεν εὐμάθειαν Ἑρμᾶνος δόσιν }[22]
* * * * *
Read more:
- gender horror in W. H. Auden’s “The Shield of Achilles”
- Anchises loving Aphrodite: progress for men in love with goddesses
- Horace gender-complacent in conviviality with men
Notes:
[1] Homeric Hymn to Hermes (Homeric Hymns 4, To Hermes {Εἲς Ἑρμῆν}), vv. 1-3, ancient Greek text from West (2003), my English translation, benefiting from those of Thomas (2020), Rayor (2004), West (2003), Shelmerdine (1995), and Evelyn-White (1914).
Scholars generally regard the Homeric Hymn to Hermes as the latest of the lengthy Homeric hymns. A rhapsode apparently composed this hexameter poem after 522 BGC. It has “a date of c.450 {BGC}, with a considerable margin of uncertainty on either side.” Thomas (2020) pp. 22-3.
Subsequent quotes above from the Homeric Hymn to Hermes are similarly sourced. Those quotes are from vv. 5-8 (Maia was bashful….), 254-9 (You, child lying in your cradle …), 261-72 (Apollo, son of Leto …), 289-92 (Now come, if you don’t want…), 294-8 (After setting his mind to it…).
[2] The infant Hermes knew his begetting. Immediately after Hermes built a lyre, he acted like bantering young men at festivities:
He sang of Zeus, son of Cronos, and lovely sandalled Maia,
how they used to converse in companionable love,
and he declared the famous names of his own genealogy.{ ἀμφὶ Δία Κρονίδην καὶ Μαιάδα καλλιπέδιλον,
οἳ πάρος ὠρίζεσκον ἑταιρείηι φιλότητι,
ἥν αὐτοῦ γενεὴν ὀνομάκλυτον ἐξονομάζων }
Homeric Hymn to Hermes, vv 57-9. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s translation of these verses brings out the scandal:
He sung how Jove and May of the bright sandal
Dallied in love not quite legitimate;
And his own birth, still scoffing at the scandal
And naming his own name, did celebrate;
Shelley, “Hymn to Mercury,” vv. 72–8, quoted and discussed in Phillips (2020). The relationship between Maia and Zesus was like ones between courtesans and Greek men:
The frequentative verb implies, as 7 μισγέσκετο did, that this was not one of Zeus’s one-night stands, and the stem ὠρ- < ὀαρ- points to time spent in intimate conversation. ἑταιρεῖος and φιλότης both apply to consummation as well as affection, but ἑταιρεῖος pulls the expression distinctly towards the latter (see LSJ s.v. I.6).
Thomas (2020) p. 178, footnote omitted. Thomas elaborated on lyric at “festivals {κῶμοι}” in relation to Homeric poetry:
Pindar too understood that praise in the epinician komos is linguistically connected to erotic banter among komasts, and epic had long mentioned the sex-appeal of young choral dancers. So though it at first appeared that such connections were peculiar to Hermes, the hymnist allows an audience to realise that of course the worlds of praise-poetry and of courtesans at parties are not totally removed.
Thomas (2018) p. 4 of preprint.
[3] Olympia isn’t explicitly specified, nor are twelve gods. Hermes, however, kills two cows in the manner of a cultic sacrifice to twelve gods:
All this must be connected with the sacrifices at Olympia, which is by the Alpheios {Alpheus}, to the Twelve Gods. Pindar speaks of Heracles, the founder of the Olympic Games, “honoring the stream of Alpheios with the twelve ruler gods” (Olympian 10.48). Hermes was associated with Apollo there, for the two shared one of the six altars (Herodorus, fr. 34 Fowler). It seems likely, therefore, that the Hymn was composed for performance at Olympia.
West (2003) p. 14. For additional analysis of the sacrifice, Thomas (2017). In ancient Greek myth, twelve Olympian gods resided on Olympus, which came to be identified with Mount Olympus in northern Greece, far from Olympia. The local cult to twelve gods at Olympia probably included some local gods. Hermes was one of the gods worshipped at Olympia. Johnston (2002) pp. 126.
[4] The characterization of Maia and Hermes’s cave / palace seems to depend on the personal context from which it is described. Vergados (2011a).
[5] Here farting is describing in the high diction of epic. Katz (1999). While the text doesn’t literally designate a fart rather than a burp, “It can hardly be doubted that ‘servant of the stomach’ is a striking metaphor for the breaking of wind.” Id. pp. 316-7. Cf. Shelmerdine (1995) p. 111.
[6] The Homeric Hymn to Hermes seems particular relevant to young men in the archaic Greek world. Johnston (2002) p. 111. This hymn was perhaps performed at Olympia “during a festival of Hermes {Hermaea} that encouraged or celebrated the maturation of males.” Id. p. 116. The maturing of young men involves them learning about social regulation of their sexuality. Apollo’s threats to Hermes represent the threat to young men of being dominated. Harrell (2005). For a more general educative perspective on the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, Jarczyk (2017).
[7] Callimachus’s Iambi 7-11 are a series with each iamb / iambus {ἴαμβος} being an origin story / aition {αἴτιον}. Nisetich (2001) p. 110. Callimachus wrote a large work entitled Origin Stories / Causes / Aetia {Αἴτια}. On the close relationship between Callimachus’s Iambi and Aetia, Clayman (1988).
Callimachus’s Iambi have survived only in fragments. In addition, narrative summaries of the poems (Diegesis) have survived in the first or second century GC Papyrus Milan I 18 (the Milan Diegesis). On limitations of the Diegesis, Acosta-Hughes (2002) p. 14. Those limitations don’t substantially affect the above analysis.
The translation “Hermes Hand to Hand / Hermes Perpheraios {Ἑρμῆς Περφεραῖος}” is from Nisetich (2001) p. 110. That translation makes sense of Iambus 7 as an aition. They perhaps handed the statue hand to hand within “some sort of race.” Acosta-Hughes (2002) p. 298, n. 53. The name doesn’t seem to be related in this iamb to Zeus Perpheretas / Zeus Pherpheretas, or to the Perpherees {Περφερέες}, “five men sent by the Hyperboreans {Ὑπερβόρειος} to bring sacrificial offerings to Delian Apollo.” Id. p. 298, n. 54; Herodotus, Histories 4.33. Another translation of Hermes Perpheraios is “Hermes the Wanderer.”
Hermes was a prominent figure in the ancient Greek iambic traditional. He repeatedly appears in the iambs of Hipponax. Vergados (2011) pp. 88-97, Acosta-Hughes (2002) pp. 300-1. Callimachus’s Iambus 7, like his Iambus 6 concerning the famous statue by Phidias of Zeus at Olympia, displays a “humorously irreverent attitude to divinities qua artefacts.” Kerkhecker (1999) p. 195. In contrast to Phidias’s statue of Zeus, the statue of Hermes Perpheraios is a crude, minor work of Epeius, who fashioned the Trojan horse that the Greeks used to conquer Troy. On the contrast between the statues of Iambi 6 and 7, Acosta-Hughes (2002) pp. 295-6, 298.
Callimachus’s Iambi 7 and 9 feature ithyphallic statues of Hermes. That the Hermes statue in Iambus 7 is ithyphallic is implicit, given the surviving text. Here are images of a silver tetradrachm from Ainos c. 460-55 BGC and one from Ainos c. 455-53 BGC. On the identification of the ithyphallic Hermes Perpheraios under the goat’s head, May (1955) pp. 57-65. A lead weight from Ainos about three centuries later has a similar schematic representation of the ithyphallic Hermes Perpheraios standing on a throne. Since Iambus 7 gives an aition of Hermes Perpheraios worshiped in Ainos, the Hermes Perpheraios of Iambus 7 is surely ithyphallic.
Herodotus recorded that the Greeks, and the Athenians first among them, adopted images of the ithyphallic Hermes from the Pelasgians:
It was not so with the ithyphallic images of Hermes. The making of these came from the Pelasgians, from whom the Athenians were the first of all Greeks to take it, and then handed it on to others. For the Athenians were then already counted as Greeks when the Pelasgians came to dwell in the land with them and thereby began to be considered as Greeks. Whoever has been initiated into the rites of the Cabeiri, which the Samothracians learned from the Pelasgians and now practice, he understands what my meaning is. Samothrace was formerly inhabited by those Pelasgians who came to dwell among the Athenians. It is from them that the Samothracians take their rites. The Athenians, then, were the first Greeks to make ithyphallic images of Hermes, and this they did because the Pelasgians taught them. The Pelasgians told a certain sacred tale about this, which is set forth in the Samothracian mysteries.
{ τοῦ δὲ Ἑρμέω τὰ ἀγάλματα ὀρθὰ ἔχειν τὰ αἰδοῖα ποιεῦντες οὐκ ἀπ᾿ Αἰγυπτίων μεμαθήκασι, ἀλλ᾿ ἀπὸ Πελασγῶν πρῶτοι μὲν Ἑλλήνων ἁπάντων Ἀθηναῖοι παραλαβόντες, παρὰ δὲ τούτων ὧλλοι. Ἀθηναίοισι γὰρ ἤδη τηνικαῦτα ἐς Ἕλληνας τελέουσι Πελασγοὶ σύνοικοι ἐγένοντο ἐν τῇ χώρῃ, ὅθεν περ καὶ Ἕλληνες ἤρξαντο νομισθῆναι. ὅστις δὲ τὰ Καβείρων ὄργια μεμύηται, τὰ Σαμοθρήικες ἐπιτελέουσι παραλαβόντες παρὰ Πελασγῶν, οὗτος ὡνὴρ οἶδε τὸ λέγω· τὴν γὰρ Σαμοθρηίκην οἴκεον πρότερον Πελασγοὶ οὗτοι οἵ περ Ἀθηναίοισι σύνοικοι ἐγένοντο, καὶ παρὰ τούτων Σαμοθρήικες τὰ ὄργια παραλαμβάνουσι. ὀρθὰ ὦν ἔχειν τὰ αἰδοῖα τἀγάλματα τοῦ Ἑρμέω Ἀθηναῖοι πρῶτοι Ἑλλήνων μαθόντες παρὰ Πελασγῶν ἐποιήσαντο· οἱ δὲ Πελασγοὶ ἱρόν τινα λόγον περὶ αὐτοῦ ἔλεξαν, τὰ ἐν τοῖσι ἐν Σαμοθρηίκῃ μυστηρίοισι δεδήλωται. }
Herodotus, Histories {Ἱστορίαι} 2.51, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from Godley (1920). The Pelasgians are identified with the Tyrrhenians (or Tyrsenians). Herodotus, Histories 1.57. Moreover, according to Callimachus, “‘Pelasgian’ and ‘Etruscan’ are one and the same.” Nisetich (2001) p. 113, citing Callimachus, Aetia {Αἴτια} 4.7. The sacred mystery to which Callimachus’s refers in Iambus 9 is probably that of the Cabeiri / Cabiri. Acosta-Hughes (2002) pp. 296, 301-2.
The ithyphallic image of Hermes apparently were entrangled in castration culture from the Plasgians and the rite of the Cabeiri. A knowledgeable Christian author writing about 195 GC declared:
The Corybantes are also called by the name Cabeiri, which proclaims the rite of the Cabeiri. This very pair of Corybantes fratricides got possession of the chest in which the masculine genitals of Dionysus were deposited. They brought it to Tuscany, those traders in glorious wares! There they sojourned, being exiles and communicated their precious teaching of piety, the masculine genitals and the chest, to Tuscans for purposes of worship. For this reason not unnaturally some wish to call Dionysus by the name Attis, because he was castrated.
{ Καβείρους δὲ τοὺς Κορύβαντας καλοῦντες καὶ τελετὴν Καβειρικὴν καταγγέλλουσιν· αὐτὼ γὰρ δὴ τούτω τὼ ἀδελφοκτόνω τὴν κίστην ἀνελομένω, ἐν ᾗ τὸ τοῦ Διονύσου αἰδοῖον ἀπέκειτο, εἰς Τυρρηνίαν κατήγαγον, εὐκλεοῦς ἔμποροι φορτίου· κἀνταῦθα διετριβέτην, φυγάδε ὄντε, τὴν πολυτίμητον εὐσεβείας διδασκαλίαν, αἰδοῖα καὶ κίστην, θρῃσκεύειν παραθεμένω Τυρρηνοῖς. δι᾿ ἣν αἰτίαν οὐκ ἀπεικότως τὸν Διόνυσόν τινες Ἄττιν προσαγορεύεσθαι θέλουσιν, αἰδοίων ἐστερημένον. }
Clement of Alexandria, The Exhortation to the Greeks {Προτρεπτικὸς πρὸς Ἕλληνας} 2.16, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified unsubstantially) from Butterworth (1919). While Clement is appropriately scornful of castration culture, his account contains considerable, apparently factual detail.
The influential Roman public figure Cicero described Mercury, the Roman god corresponding to the Greek god Hermes, as having an erect penis:
He has a more disgusting, aroused penis traditionally attributed to being stirred up by the sight of Proserpina.
{ obscenius excitata natura traditur quod aspectu Proserpinae commotus sit }
Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods {De Natura Deorum} 3.56, Latin text from Rackham (1933), my English translation, benefiting from that of id. Proserpina corresponds to the Greek goddess Persephone.
[8] For Hermes Perpheraios speaking incantations, Iambus 7, v. 44. For Callimachus’s Iambi, Clayman (2022a). On the story of Hermes Perpheraios, Petrovic (2010). This iamb is tellingly written in alternating iambic trimeters and ithyphallics. Its dialect of ancient Greek is “literary Doric with some Aeolic features.” Acosta-Hughes (2002) p. 5.
[9] Callimachus, Iambus 9, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from Clayman (2022a). Michael Gilleland provides a slightly different translation.
Just as in Iambus 7, the statue of Hermes Perpheraios speaks in Iambus 9. However, in Iambus 9, the viewer first speaks to the statue, and the statue respond. Cf. Anthologia Palatina 12.143. In that epigram, an ithyphallic man who loves the young man Apollophanes complains of his love to an ithyphallic Hermes statue. The Hermes statue responds with sympathetic words. In contrast, speaking-statue epigrams typically have the statue addressing passers-by. Acosta-Hughes (2022) pp. 302-3.
With a prominent ithyphallic Hermes, Iambus 7’s meter doesn’t include any ithyphallics and is simply iambic trimeter. Underscoring the poem’s sophistication, Callimachus wrote it in the ancient Greek dialect form known as literary Doric. Like Iambi 3 and 5, Iambus 9 “faults {men’s} sexual behavior in a homerotic setting.” Acosta-Hughes (2002) p. 303.
[10] In explaining Hermes’s erection, Iambus 9 apparently refers to a sacred tale of the Pelasgians from the Samothracian mysteries. Herodotus, Histories {Ἱστορίαι} 2.51, provided and discussed in an earlier footnote. In ancient Greek literature, Hermes’s erection is more typically explained, in a men-disparaging way, by immediate lust. Acosta-Hughes (2002) pp. 301-3.
[11] Proverb 29453 in Walther (1963-69), Latin text from id., my English translation. While this proverb is found in a medieval manuscript, it might date to the classical period. Another Latin proverb similarly puns on farting and feet:
We believe it to be foot noise when you fart, you inflated one.
{ Credimus esse pedis strepitum, dum, turgide, pedis. }
Proverb 3682 in Walther (1963-69), Latin text from id., my English translation. The great twelfth-century grammarian Serlo of Wilton used this proverb in teaching students.
[12] Horace, Epode 5.29-40, Latin text from Rudd (2004), my English translation, benefiting from that of id. The subsequent quote above is similarly from Epode 5.87-96.
Regarding the translation of anus above, “Anus is rarely used in Latin literature as an indicator of solely age and gender, without additional, pejorative associations.” Migdał (2014) p. 57. In Epode 5, the boy refers to the witches assaulting him as “filthy hags {obscenae ani}.” A poetic persona of Horace refers ironically to Canidia as an anus. Epode 17.47.
In Epode 5.88, for dira detestatio, the translation is “terrible malediction” in Rudd (2004), while “ill-omened” execration is suggested in Watson (2003) p. 245. The doubling between “curses {dirae}” and “ill-omened {dirus}” points to the importance of detestatio, particularly its link to “cut off the testes {detestor}.” Reflecting philology’s historical problem with men’s genitals, Watson (2003) ignores the allusion to testes and castration. Horace uses “the common Prapic pun on testis = testicle/witness” in Satires 1.8.36, 44. Gowers (2012).
Canidia appears as a major character in Horace’s Satire 1.8 and his Epodes 5 and 17. She in also mentioned in Satires 2.1.48 and 2.2.95, as well as Epode 3.8. Writing in the third century GC, Pomponius Porphyrion identified her with the “perfume woman {unguentaria}” Gratidia of Naples. Scholars haven’t generally accepted that identification.
Canidia has been treated as a literary fiction distinctive to each poem. Paule (2017). Such interpretation reflects a deplorable pattern of trivializing men’s lives, lived experiences, and expressed concerns. Moreover, “the kinds of activity which Horace attributes to Canidia really did go on, or were widely believed to do so. … It is apparent that underlying Epode 5 is a notable substratum of fact.” Watson (2003) pp. 176, 179. Many men in ancient Rome and today keenly sense Canidia in their lives.
Horace’s Epodes apparently were composed, along with his Satires, from 42 BGC to 31 BGC. Watson (2003) p. 1. The Epodes widely circulated as a book about 30 BGC. Archaic Greek iambic poetry and Callimachus significantly influenced Horace’s Epodes, as well as Latin literature more generally. Id. pp. 4-19, Clayman (1980) Chapter 4. Epodes 8 and 12 “are clearly influenced by the Iambi.” Clayman (1980) p. 78.
[13] Horace, Satires 1.8.40-45, Latin text from Fairclough, my English translation, benefiting from that of id. Horace’s Satires 1.8 has been editorially summarized as “Priapus complains that the Esquilian hill is infested with the incantations of witches {Conqueritur Priapus Esquilinum montem veneficarum incantationibus infestari}.” This poem is written in dactylic hexameter, an epic meter appropriate to Priapus’s epic action. The subsequent quote above is similarly from Horace’s Satires 1.8.46-50.
On the historical context of Satires 1.8, Higgins (2017). Canidia in this satire might figure P. Canidius Crassus, an eminent supporter of Mark Antony. On the use of magic dolls and binding spells in ancient witchcraft, Hanses (2022) pp. 254-60.
The significance of Callimachus’s Iambi to Horace’s Satire 1.8 has been under-appreciated:
What has been observed is that Sat. 1.8 bears a resemblance to Callimachus’ Iambi 7 and 9, both of which feature ithyphallic herms.
Sharland (2003) p. 102. Explanations of that relationship have focused on the obvious (the presence of a statue) and the abstract: the poets’ role and transgressing generic conventions. Id. p. 102, ft. 18. Sharland provides a more elaborate explanation and more emphatic association:
Priapus’ fart which brings Sat. 1.8 to a speedy conclusion, is not merely an ordinary fart, but is, in fact, as I would suggest, a Callimachean fart. That the fart should terminate the satire before it gets too long would naturally be good in Callimachean terms: because, as the readers of the monstrously long Sat. 2.3 discover unequivocally, a big satire is a big evil. Moreover, by farting the Priapus is, as we have seen, using the ‘blunt’ end of his weapon to achieve this effective editing, bringing the satire to a quick and neat conclusion, just as at Sat. 1.10.72ff. the Horatian satirist advises using the other side of the stilus in the stringent editing that is so important for good composition: ‘saepe stilum vertas …’ Inspired in part by Callimachus’ Iambs 7 and 9, but incorporating some indecorous, scatological aspects of the Old Comic tradition in Roman satire, Sat. 1.8 is the complete opposite of Sat. 2.3: 1.8 is a light and delightful exposition of ‘how to write Callimachean satire.’ The flatulent Priapus of Sat. 1.8 is therefore not merely a figure that is representative of Horace’s character, or who is just ‘Horace in disguise’. The Priapus is rather a potent symbol both of Horace’s devotion to his Callimachean aesthetics and of his irrepressible and effervescent irreverence as poet.
Id. pp. 107-8.
Horace’s Satires 1.8 seem to me to include a Callimachean fart in a textually specific sense. Satires 1.8 implicitly refers to a pun on pedes / pedo to give a ridiculous aition in Latin translation for why Priapus’s penis is pointing to his belly and face, rather than his feet. Moreover, with Callimachean erudition, Horace’s textual play reaches back to the Homeric Hymn to Hermes in having the fart send the witches into the city. With his fart, Priapus ultimately defends himself no more successfully than Hermes does by farting in the hands of Apollo. On Horace’s use of the Homeric Hymns, Harrison (2016). Harrison identifies in Horace’s Odes 1.10 a likely use of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes. Id. pp. 81-2.
[14] Horace, Satires 1.8.46-50. Priapus may have injured himself in defending himself with a fart. “Fig wood {ficus}” tends to crack easily, and ficus is linguistically associated with anal fissures. Hallet (1981).
The interpretation of lacertis has been a problem:
uincula: threads (licia) tied to a rhombus to entwine the wax doll (cf. Virg. Ecl. 8.73-4, 78; Tuper 1976: 44-6). Here, love-knots worn as bracelets; lacertis goes with excidere.
Gowers (2012) p. 279. If “lacertis goes with excidere,” then the herbs and love-knots, but not the teeth and wig, come tumbling down from the arms. That’s awkward and insipid. A better interpretation associates lacertis with incantata, with lacertis understood as the genitive plural of “lizards {lacertae / lacerti}.” White (2006) p. 382.
Scholars have poorly understood the social significance of Horace’s Satires 1.8. A leading scholarly commentary with gross anti-meninism has superficially interpreted its conclusion:
Priapus appeals to the curious uiator for male solidarity against female inuidia and presents the spectacle as a shared joke at the expense of women (Richlin 1992:58, Henderson 1999: 101).
Gowers (2012), concluding commentary on Satire 1.8. On Richlin 1992, see note [6] in my post on Priapea. On Henderson 1999, see note [5] in my post on Horace’s gender-complacency. As Gowers makes clear, men are complicit in female “malice {invidia}.”
Horace’s Satires 1.8 sets up a sensory revelation. “Priapus’ garden is truly a nexus of sensory stimuli.” Norgard (2015) p. iii. Priapus farting plausibly produced a large, but temporary change in the garden’s smell. Such an atmospheric change isn’t enough to transform men’s lived experience of oppression. As Gowers (2012) indicates, social change in sensory capabilities is also necessary.
[15] Horace, Epode 17.1-7, Latin text from Rudd (2004), my English translation, benefiting from that of id. The subsequent quote above is similarly from Epode 17.70-5. On the witches using a wheel — iunx / turbo / rhombus {ῥόμβος} — in sorcery, Callon (2010) pp. 38-46. On the bodily experience of the supernatural attacks in Epodes 5 and 17, Wright (2021).
[16] Sumerian Proverbs t.6.1.12b.5 (l. 8), Sumerian transliteration and English translation (modified insubstantially) from the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, second edition (ETCSL).
[17] Late Assyrian transliteration and English translation (modified insubstantially) from Lambert (1975) p. 120, numbered K 6082.B.14-6 + 81-7-27, 241 (from tablet found at Nineveh). An alternate translation:
Why did you break wind and feel mortified?
Why did you stink up her boyfriend’s wagon like a wi[ld ox]?
Foster (2005) p. 947, translating from Lambert (1975). The associated collection of texts now tends to be called Divine Love Lyrics (DLL):
The texts describe in detail the complex rituals and verbal ceremonies that involved Marduk, his wife Zarpanitu and his lover Ištar of Babylon. … The DLL texts had clear cultic setting. The colophon of the ritual tablet of the set – after listing the cultic instructions and the incipits of the dicenda – informs that the series is a qinayyâtu, “rites against a (female) rival.” Thus, it appears that the DLL texts record a ritual in which a divine ménage-à-trois, involving Marduk, his wife Zarpanitu and his lover Ištar of Babylon, was performed publically in different locations in the city of Babylon, mirroring, so we believe, human, not only divine, emotions.
Nathan Wasserman and Rocio Da Riva, describing their forthcoming critical edition.
[18] Josephus, History of the Jewish War Against the Romans {Ἱστορία Ἰουδαϊκοῦ πολέμου πρὸς Ῥωμαίους} (The Jewish War / Bellum Judaicum) 2.224-6 (Chapter 12, section 1), ancient Greek text and English translation (modified insubstantially) from Thackeray (1927).This incident perhaps generated an aphorism:
Today is the thirtieth Sabbath. Would you fart at the circumcised Jews?
{ hodie tricesima sabbata: vin tu curtis Iudaeis oppedere? }
Horace, Satires 1.9.69.
[19] Proverb 24465 in Walther (1963-69), Latin text from id., my English translation. Other Latin proverbs similarly recognized the problem of controlling farting:
Farting in the sheepfold, one afterwards does that in the royal court.
One who is accustomed to farting near the thicket or near the sheepfold,
does not abandon this habit when he arrives at the royal court.{ Pedens in caula post hoc facit illud in aula.
Pedere qui suevit prope dumum vel prope caulam,
Hoc non delevit, quando pervenit ad aulam. }
Proverbs 21130c and 21130d, similarly from id. Another proverb on farting can be interpreted as either admonishing or giving license:
Fart upon a hill. Fart where you wouldn’t want to fart.
{ Pede super colles, pedes ubi pedere nolles }
Proverb 21130b, similarly from id. This proverb can also be interpreted as a humorous commentary on Matthew 5:14:
You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.
{ vos estis lux mundi non potest civitas abscondi supra montem posita
ὑμεῖς ἐστε τὸ φῶς τοῦ κόσμου οὐ δύναται πόλις κρυβῆναι ἐπάνω ὄρους κειμένη }
Latin Vulgate and ancient Greek text from Blue Letter Bible.
[20] Juvenal, Satires 6.610-2, Latin text and English translation (modified slightly) from Braund (2004). As these verses illustrate, men are complicit in the oppression of men.
[21] Hermes, like Odysseus, is a trickster figure with a widely varying character:
Both god and the hero share the peculiar and somewhat obscure epithet, πολύτροπος {many turns}. It suggests versatility, indirection, adaptability, but also movement on a twisted path.
Clay (2019) p. 67, endnote omitted. For πολύτροπος, Homeric Hymn to Hermes vv. 13, 439, and Odyssey, passim, e.g. Odyssey 1.1. Hermes and Odysseus also share the epithets “full of tricks and wiles {ποικιλομήτης}” and “many skilled {πολύμητις}.” Id. p. 78, note 1. Odysseus’s grandfather Autolykos was a cattle thief like Hermes. Id. pp. 70-1. On Hermes’s complexity as a figure, Vinci & Maiuri (2022).
[22] Callimachus, fr. 221 Pf. (iambic), ancient Greek text and English translation from Acosta-Hughes (2002) p. 302. It “seems rather likely” that this fragment belongs to Iambus 9. Id. A substantively similar translation: “We ask from Hermes the gift of easy learning.” Clayman (2022a) p. 519. Id. notes, “Cf. Call. Epig. 48, where a similar request is made to the Muses by Simus the son of Miccus.” In Callimachus’s snide Epigram 48, a mask of Dionysus on the wall of a school declares:
Simus, the son of Miccus, dedicated me to the Muses and asked for easy learning.
{ Εὐμαθίην ᾐτεῖτο διδοὺς ἐμὲ Σῖμος ὁ Μίκκου ταῖς Μούσαις }
Ancient Greek text and English translation (footnotes omitted) from Clayman (2022b).
The tradition of archaic Greek iambic poetry is associated with ethical learning. Apparently originating in Ionia in the seventh and sixth centuries BGC, archaic Greek iambic poetry is now associated with Archilochus of Paros, Hipponax of Ephesus, and Semonides of Amorgos:
this is a type of poetic utterance at once ethical, in that it may serve as a medium for the criticism or shaming of another (psogos or “blame” poetry), and coarse or low, in that it embodies a realm wherein elements of diction, theme, or imagery that are normally excluded from more elevated poetic forms (e.g. elegy) are very much at home. And the speaker is often represented as being shameless and disreputable, or at least lowborn and socially marginal.
Acosta-Hughes (2002) p. 2. The Homeric Hymn to Hermes draws upon the archaic Greek iambic tradition. Boner (2009). Callimachus, Horace, and later exponents have significantly reshaped the iambic tradition while maintaining its ethical value.
[images] (1) Ancient Greek marble herm. From about 520 BGC Siphnos in the Aegean island chain the Cyclades. Preserved as accession # Inv.3728 in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Image thanks to Ricardo André Frantz and Wikimedia Commons. (2) Ithyphallic herm painted on Athenian red-figure krater. Ithyphallic herm painted on Athenian red-figure column krater. Painted c. 480–470 BGC and attributed to the Geras Painter. Preserved as item 83.AE.255 in the J. Paul Getty Museum. Source image from item 7 in Tsiafakis (2019). (3) Men making offerings to an ithyphallic herm. Painting on Attic red-figure column krate. Made about 480–470 BGC by the Pan Painter. Preserved as item 83.AE.252 in the J. Paul Getty Museum. Source image from item 6 in Tsiafakis (2019). (4) Woman making offerings to an ithyphallic herm. Painting on Attic red-figure column krater. Painted c. 480–470 BGC and attributed to the Geras Painter. Preserved as item 83.AE.255 in the J. Paul Getty Museum. Source image from item 7 in Tsiafakis (2019).
A herm / herma {ἑρμῆς} is a rectangular pillar often topped with a man’s head and having a man’s genitals carved in the center of the pillar. In 415 BGC, during the night before the Athenian armada was to embark for Syracuse to fight in Sicilian expedition of the Peloponnesian War, all the herms (hermai) in Athens had their genitals mutilated. Mutilating genitals of herms is an expression of castration culture.
References:
Acosta-Hughes, Benjamin. 2002. Polyeideia: The Iambi of Callimachus and the Archaic Iambic Tradition. Hellenistic Culture and Society, 35. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Introduction. Reviews by Paul Ojennus and by Annette Harder.
Boner, Justin. 2009. The Homeric Hymn to Hermes and Archaic Iambography. B.A. Thesis, New College of Florida.
Braund, Susanna Morton, ed. and trans. 2004. Juvenal and Persius. Loeb Classical Library 91. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Butterworth, G. W., ed. and trans. 1919. Clement of Alexandria. The Exhortation to the Greeks. The Rich Man’s Salvation. To the Newly Baptized. Loeb Classical Library 92. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Callon, Callie. 2010. “Sorcery, Wheels, and Mirror Punishment in the Apocalypse of Peter.” Journal of Early Christian Studies. 18 (1): 29–49.
Clay, Jenny Strauss. 2019. “Hide and Go Seek: Hermes in Homer.” Chapter 5 (pp. 67-78) in Miller & Clay (2019).
Clayman, Dee L. 1980. Callimachus’ Iambi. Leiden: Brill.
Clayman, Dee L. 1988. “Callimachus Iambi and Aitia.” Zeitschrift Für Papyrologie Und Epigraphik. 74: 277–286.
Clayman, Dee L., ed. and trans. 2022a. Callimachus. Aetia. Iambi. Lyric Poems. Loeb Classical Library 421. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Clayman, Dee L., ed. and trans. 2022b. Callimachus. Hecale. Hymns. Epigrams. Loeb Classical Library 129. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Evelyn-White, Hugh G. 1914. The Homeric Hymns and Homerica. London: William Heinemann Ltd.
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