54 PROFESSOR BLACKIE ON INTERPRETATION OF POPULAR MYTHS, 



goddess of practical wisdom, that is, of the great arts of peace and labour (as 

 the vases largely show), and the patron and protector of all men of valour 

 like Achilles, and of sagacity like Ulysses. 



XXXIX. The Hellenic Hermes is one of those mythological personages 

 who from an originally simple root, has grown up into such a rich display of 

 graceful ramification, that, when we approach him from his most familiar side 

 we are the least likely to interpret his true significance. But if we attend to 

 the earliest indication of his functions as found in Homer, and as displayed in 

 the familiar phallic symbol (Herod, ii. 51), we can have no difficulty in evolving, 

 by a series of graduated expansions, his final avatar as a god of eloquence, from 

 his original germ as a pastoral god of generation and increase (Hom. II. xiv. 

 491). As the god of shepherds and mountaineers, he was necessarily the 

 guide of all wanderers through the many winding glens, and across the many- 

 folded hills of the Arcadian Highlands. This early function accordingly appears 

 in Homer : he is the friendly guide of all persons who have lost their way or 

 who wander in the dark (Od. x. 277 ; II. xxiv. 334). His connection with 

 music and with wrestling, the natural recreations of a pastoral people, of course 

 belong to this his earliest Hellenic character. Afterwards, when in the 

 necessary progress of society, the patriarchal shepherd of the hills resigned 

 his social position into the hands of the rich merchant of the great towns, 

 Hermes became the god of gain generally ; and, with gain, of all those arts of 

 adroitness and sharpness which belong to the career of a successful trader. 

 The kindly guide of night-wandering shepherds has now become the expert 

 negotiator, and the trusty messenger ; he is the winged servant of the gods 

 above ; and among men his oaten pipe is exchanged for the charm of winged 

 words, which sway the counsels of the wise, and soothe the clamours of the 

 turbulent. With this natural and obvious interpretation of a purely Hellenic 

 deity, as given within the bounds of Greece itself, we shall raise only a brilliant 

 confusion, if we follow Max Muller across the Hindoo Coosh, and ingeniously 

 attempt to find the germ of the Pelasgic shepherd god in the breeze of the 

 early dawn, which ushers in the inarch of the busy day. Such remote 

 conjectures may be both beautiful and ingenious, but they are a mere play of 

 fancy, and travel obviously far out of the way of a sober, a scientific, and 

 a stable interpretation. 



XL. Dionysus was a god of comparatively recent introduction into Greece 

 (Herod, ii. 49), confessedly of Asiatic origin, and in whom the union of fervid 

 wine with the phallic symbol and violent orgies, can leave no doubt as 

 to his true character. He is the male god of generation, according to the 

 Asiatic conception, as the Syrian goddess of Lucian (De Dea Syria, 16) was 



