Free PDF Hermes the thief;: The evolution of a myth, by Norman Oliver Brown
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Hermes the thief;: The evolution of a myth, by Norman Oliver Brown
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Hermes is a vital and complex figure in Greek mythology―trickster and culture hero, divine child and patron of stealthy action, master of magic words, seducer and whisperer. Shepherd, artisan, herald, musician, athlete, merchant―who is this tricky shape-shifter, confronting us at every turn?
In this classic, prescient work (first published in 1947 and foreshadowing all subsequent work greeting the return of the gods), Brown asks: Is Hermes the Thief the prototype from which, by extension and analogy, the Trickster was derived? Alternatively, is the notion of trickery the fundamental idea and theft merely a specific manifestation of it?
This thoughtful study will be of interest to anyone wishing a fresh view of an important, often misunderstood, character of Greek mythology.
- Sales Rank: #7691715 in Books
- Published on: 1969
- Binding: Paperback
- 175 pages
About the Author
Norman Oliver Brown (1913–2002) was an American intellectual of wide ranging interests, graduating from Oxford with an MA and from the University of Wisconsin in Madison with a Ph.D. in the Classics. During World War II, Brown worked for the OSS as a specialist on French culture and later became Professor of Classics at Wesleyan University. In the late 1960s, he moved on to the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he was named Professor of Humanities. His initial work in classics betrayed a Marxist bent (his commentary to Hesiod’s Theogony and his first monograph, Hermes the Thief). Following his disenchantment with real politics in the wake of the 1948 presidential election, Brown turned to a deep study of the works of Freud, which culminated in his classic 1959 study Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytic Meaning of History. During his long residence at Santa Cruz, his interests broadened to include James Joyce, classical poetry and mythology, and a deep study of Islam. Many of his later writings were collected in the anthology Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis.
Most helpful customer reviews
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
Hermes the trickster god
By C. Collins
This book is somewhat dry and scholarly but well documented and reasoned. The book traces the evolution of the Hermes archatype through various periods of archaic to classical antiquity.
Hermes is presented as the giver of gifts that can be used for good or evil in the story of Pandora. Brown points out that early myths reveal the box to be full of multiple gifts, which could be true gifts or curses depending on the way they are used.
He is also presented as the cunning infant who steals his brother Apollo's cattle and then is so witty when discovered that he angers neither Apollo nor thier father Zeus.
He is sometimes pictured as the common man, the merchant and then at other times as the beautiful brother of Apollo, patrons of male beauty and athletics. Apollo and Hermes often shared altars in Greek cult religion.
His image is the garden statue complete with erect phallus and smiling face. These statues frequently were blocks with a Hermes head emerging from the top and a phallus emerging from the side. These ancient Hermes images were in every garden, every crossroad, every front door entrance. He was the god of boundaries and crossing boundaries and thus his image must honor every crossroads. Trickster, merchant, thief, he is the god of the marketplace where tribes meet and trade. He is the messenger of his father Zeus and also the god who transports the dead into the underworld.
I would recommend this book to students of classical antiquity. It was not entertaining enough for the casual recreational reader.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent.
By Holofernes
As good as it gets. Clearly written, concise.
5 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
This starts with wars fought for cows
By Bruce P. Barten
I know more about the very beginning of this book than about the rest of it, but I consider it a fundamental approach to understanding the nature of war as it is understood in ancient cultural situations. Hermes is one of the earliest figures that we might associate with such struggles, being described as an infant in comparison with his older brother Apollo, in early versions of a myth about Greek gods that forms a theme of this book. There might have been a number of scholars who knew what the basic scheme of references cited in this book when it first appeared in 1947 were all about. I assume that today, people may be vaguely aware of a few themes that the book inspires, but not much else. When Homer wrote, cattle were assumed to be the reason for going to war:
"Cattle-raiding, as depicted in Homer, was a public enterprise, led by the kings and participated in by the whole people. It is described as a war--a resort to force, and open force. The institution appears to have been a common heritage of all the Indo-European peoples and to have had everywhere the same general characteristics. To cite one illustrative detail: the Sanskrit word for `war' means literally `desire for more cows.' Coexistent with this institution of warlike plundering, or robbery, and terminologically distinguished from it in the Indo-European languages, was another type of appropriation, called theft. Theft is appropriation by stealth; robbery is open and forcible appropriation." (pp. 5-6).
I do not have a "Homeric Hymn to Hermes" to see how well it departs from this distinction. "Side by side with occasional terminology suitable to the raider appear terms suitable only to the thief. The cattle-raid described in the `Hymn' is not the usual resort to open force, but a peculiarly stealthy operation. There is no more incisive delineation of the contrast between the cunning trickster and the fighting hero than in the `Hymn,' where Hermes, a helpless infant relying only on his phenomenal cunning, challenges Apollo, the embodiment of physical power and the majesty of established authority." (pp. 7-8).
Much modern drama is based on traits ascribed to the god Hermes. "That gift was not merely `stealthiness'; it was `stealthiness and skill at the oath.' `Skill at the oath means guile or cunning in the use of the oath and derives from the primitive idea that an oath was binding only in its literal sense; a cunning person might legitimately manipulate it in order to deceive, as occurs often enough in Greek mythology. In the `Homeric Hymn,' when Hermes uses just such an oath to deny that he has stolen Apollo's cattle, he is said to show `good skill.' " (pp. 8-9).
I have a translation by Richmond Lattimore of works by Hesiod, which confirms that Hermes was responsible for giving Pandora "lies and deceitful words and a stealthy disposition." (p. 9). As Lattimore renders the Greek myth, "but to Hermes, the guide, the slayer of Argos,/ he gave instructions/ to put in her the mind of a hussy,/ and a treacherous nature." Also: "But into her heart Hermes, the guide, the slayer of Argos,/ put lies, and wheedling words of falsehood, and a treacherous nature,/ made her as Zeus of the deep thunder wished,/ and he, the gods' herald, put a voice inside her, and gave her the name of woman,/ Pandora, ..." (HESIOD, pp. 25-27).
HERMES THE THIEF has an index which lists a lot of Greek names. Appendix A didn't help me much. Instead of providing an authoritative text for anything about Hermes, it engages in the kind of speculation that modern philologists use to decide who actually wrote the accounts that we now have. Appendix B, "The Text of the `Homeric Hymn to Hermes,' " only provides the Greek Oxford text for lines 533 and 515 on p. 150, lines 414-417 on pp. 151-152, with an alternate reading on p. 153, lines 418-420 on p. 153, and lines 471-474 on p. 154. Norman O. Brown's explanation of what these last lines mean is, "Hermes says he is willing to be to Apollo in the matter of the lyre what Zeus is to Apollo in the matter of prophecy--a typically impudent statement for Hermes to make." (p. 155).
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