Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

CHAPTER IX.
FROM DAIMON TO OLYMPIAN.
(Herakles. Asklepios. Gaia to Apollo at Delphi.)
"AttoAAon, "AnoAAoN,
^ry^T, attoAAoon e/v\6c.
On the very threshold of Olympos, one foot within the portals
yet never quite inside, stands the hero of all heroes, the ' young
dear hero,' Herakles 1 . The reason of his tarrying there is simple
and instructive. It is not that in his labours and his banquetings
he is too human, too ' heroic ' in the saga sense ; it is that he is a
daimon, and a daimon-hero has much ado to fit his positive
functions and yet shadowy shape into the clear-cut inert crystal of
the Olympian.
Herakles as Fertility and Year-Daimon.
Homeric saga did for Herakles all it could.
'And as to Hermes and Herakles,' says Pausanias 2 , 'the poems of Homer
have given currency to the report that the first is a servant of Zeus and leads
down the spirits of the departed to Hades, and that Herakles performed many
hard tasks.'
Why should Hermes and Herakles be linked together ? What
has the young messenger with golden rod and winged sandals to
do with the lusty athlete ? A second question brings an answer
to the first. What were Hermes and Herakles before ' Homer
made of one the ' servant of Zeus ' and of the other the ' hero '
of the labours ? Pausanias himself tells us ; they were both
' Herms.'
1 Usener, Sintflutsagen, p. 58, supposes an old Greek diminutive /ca\os = Latin
cuius, and adduces the hypokoristie form 'Hpi'/cdXos. See Hesych. s.v. rbv 'HpaKXia
^Lw