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Updated: June 14, 2025
The terminal figure in this division, with the winged cap, illustrates the generality of these Hermae; it was found near Frascati, in the year 1770.
He seems to have been inspired with the ambition of a moralist, and distributed Hermae, or stone busts of Mercury, about the city and the public roads, which, while answering a similar purpose to our mile-stones, arrested the eye of the passenger with pithy and laconic apothegms in verse; such as, "Do not deceive your friend," and "Persevere in affection to justice;" proofs rather of the simplicity than the wisdom of the prince.
A familiar feature in the streets and public places of Athens was the bust of Hermes, surmounting a quadrangular stone pillar. Many hundreds of these pillars, which were called Hermae, were scattered about over the whole city, standing before the doors of houses and temples, at cross-ways and places of public resort.
From this practice the older school of critics would seem to have taken a hint for keeping fixed the limits of good taste, and what was somewhat vaguely called classical English. To mark these limits in poetry, they set up as Hermae the images they had made to them of Dryden, of Pope, and later of Goldsmith.
And as he answered from Decelea, I summoned him before the judges of the tribe Hippothoontis; then I went to the barber's shop near the Hermae, where the Deceleans congregate, and made inquiries, and whatever Deceleans I met I asked if they knew a man by the name of Pancleon from the deme Decelea.
At first nothing was disclosed as to the mutilation of the Hermae, but other recent acts of profanation were brought to light, and among these was mentioned a derisive parody of the great Eleusinian Mysteries, alleged to have been performed in the house of Alcibiades, and elsewhere.
For the Athenians, after the departure of the expedition, had continued as active as ever in investigating the facts of the mysteries and of the Hermae, and, instead of testing the informers, in their suspicious temper welcomed all indifferently, arresting and imprisoning the best citizens upon the evidence of rascals, and preferring to sift the matter to the bottom sooner than to let an accused person of good character pass unquestioned, owing to the rascality of the informer.
They are like the Hermae at our doors, which outwardly appear to rest on inexpressive blocks of stone; but when opened, they are found to contain beautiful statues of the gods within them. It is not so with the new fables which the Greeks are continually mixing with their mythology.
Right of south panel, "Lust." East side of southern group: Greed, looking back on earth. Faith offering Immortality, symbolized by scarab, to Woman. Hand of Destiny drawing mortality to itself. Hermae, pillars with head of Hermes, god of boundaries, separating panels around earth. Reptilian and fishy forms above panels of central mass of fountain.
And although their origin may have had no connection with the symbol in question, it is noteworthy that some at least of the early Christians discovered in the more or less cruciform outline of the Hermae a reason or excuse for paying them homage, while very similar figures are to be seen illustrated upon Christian antiquities, such as the mosaic of which the great cross of the Lateran forms the principal feature.
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