17 Proem and Maia (1-19)

Adam Rappold

Our subject–        Hermes.

Muse, come to us —

sing, through my voice,

an epic tale of that

heir of Zeus and

 son of Maia![1]

 

His domains–     Cyllene, his birthplace, and

Arcadia, with-wide-flocks-to-herd

 

His roles–             To the gods:

he is known as  ‘Swift-messenger

But to all:

he is the Luck-bringer,

the Friend-with-benefits.[2]

 

His birth–             born from

Maia –


The Birth of Hermes


[Picture her back then, before:]

A little-known nymph of the woods,

her-beautiful-hair mussed

as she and Zeus passionately came together.

Cheeks blushing modestly —

she had long stood outside the

formal assemblies and

court politics

of the immortal gods.[5]

She chose instead to dwell [far from Olympus]

in a natural grotto


her tight hole, veiled in seductive shadow;

a perfect fit for the son of crooked-minded Kronos

to sneak in.

A secret place where he and the wood-Nymph could,

come together again and again,

her-beautiful-hair twined in his hands,

concealed under blanket of night’s darkest hours,

For as long as

sleep –always a blessing– hid them from his wife

with-the-white-arms-of-the-dutiful-wife-inside-the-home

Hera

they could remain there, together,

in the peaceful dark,

overlooked and ignored

by all the changeless, immortal gods,

and

by those of inevitable change: men.

This was how Zeus fulfilled his desires

[And this was also the beginning and cause of a greater plan.]

–Time passed. [10]

Ten pregnant moons cycled across the heavens

before it all came to light:

those deeds

done by him

[done in darkness] —

well-known,

impossible-to-overlook-now

which transformed everything.

It all started happening,

the cause of everything began

when Maia

gave birth to a son…


 

His titles, earned by his deeds:

Quick-improvising-Intellect,

Crooked-minded Trickster,

Spellbinding-Speaker,

Thief and Cattle-Rustler Herder

Conductor-and-Leader-of-Phantom-Dreams,

Lookout (during “nighttime activities”),

Threshold-Watcher  [15]

 

His deeds:

[None. At first.]

But he was determined

–even though he was a baby–

to bring to light deeds

so well known,

so glorious

that he could not be overlooked,

even by the gods who are changeless.

 

And he accomplished this. Here is how:

 

By dawn — his miraculous, remarkable birth

By mid-day – composing the first songs for the kithara-lyre

By evening — daring to steal cattle even from the

one-who-kills-from-far-away[3]:

Apollo.

More amazing still, all of these amazing things were done

on a single day!

the same day [which we now call Hermes’ day,]:

the sacred fourth day of the month of


his birth:   born from

Maia

The Birth of Hermes


[Picture her now.  After. Transformed:]

a queen among the gods,

revered and powerful.


 

 

[1] Vergados 217 suggests that originally hymnos must have been a constituent or a characteristic of aeidow and that only at a later stage was hymnos restricted to songs in praise of gods; cf. Diehl (1940, 95, 105) and Vamvouri-Ruffy (2004, 19–23)

[2] The epithet is: ‘one-who-brings-profit/benefit’, sometimes translated as ‘very lucky’. This appears as a verb or adjective separately a number of times throughout the hymn — I have tried to keep the translation for each of them ‘luck’, ‘benefit’ or more rarely ‘profit’.

[3] In the hymn to Apollo this epithet is translated as “the one whose arrows travel far”. In other hymns ‘far-shooting’. The Hymn to Hermes often plays with the meaning and form of these epithets (as we will see later), so here the important stress is on how dangerous it would be to steal cattle from Apollo — who, in most literature, has no problem shooting you down (and from far away at that).

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