This ambitious book stems from a conference held at the University of Virginia in March 2014 for which the editors – no strangers themselves to examining Greek and Roman gods – assembled an impressive array of mostly well-known senior scholars. A brief introduction explaining how the conference came about and giving an overview of the contributions is followed by twenty chapters, which are divided into nine broad sections such as ‘Trickster’, ‘Commerce and Exchange’ and ‘Greek Religion and Cult’. While the focus skews more towards the Greek and literary side, the contributions show a remarkable range, from Greek vase painting to Athenian votive inscriptions to Roman epic to papyri from Egypt. A generous complement of 38 images provides ample illustration for the relevant papers.
As the introduction states, the Homeric Hymn to Hermes serves as a touchstone for many of the pieces, and inasmuch as the book and its widely disparate contributions have a central premise, it is that, although Hermes – as exemplified by the Hymn – in many ways feels like the most familiar, approachable and even human of the Olympian gods, there are so many basic things we do not know or understand about him, including the evolution of his worship or why he is characterised in some of the ways he is.
As is appropriate for Hermes, many themes run throughout the book and transcend the individual sections, most of which contain only two papers (despite the existence of such overarching themes, there is very little interaction between the papers, and at least half of them do not include a reference to another paper in the volume). Perhaps chief among these larger themes is the god's visibility in both Greece and Rome. For instance, D.E. MacRae investigates the frequent depiction of Mercury on Pompeian tabernae and argues that he presides over and, in some sense, models the transactions taking place at these shops. J. Wallensten demonstrates Hermes’ popularity in votive inscriptions (in part through an appendix that is as long as some of the other papers) and examines some of the patterns in these inscriptions and what they tell us about the god, such as his prevalence in gymnasium dedications testifying to his role in the male, public sphere. S. Beta argues that due to Hermes’ ubiquity in daily life the audience would not have been surprised by the god's appearance as a character or speaking statue in Greek comedy.
Other contributions emphasise Hermes’ and/or Mercury's centrality to literature. A. Capra and C. Nobili argue that Hermes plays a key iambic role both in and outside of the iambic genre (at least before the Hellenistic revival) and show that the Homeric Hymn can be read as the ‘mythical prehistory of the iambic genre’ (p. 79). Similarly, E.K. Moodie suggests that Hermes and Mercury are ‘representative of the comic genres, an embodiment of what is essentially comic’ (p. 117), and that Hermes is not comic just because he is a trickster figure, but can be considered a sort of patron of Greek comedy because of his ‘metatheatrical skill and knowledge of comic conventions’ (p. 116). Since so many of the contributors tie their arguments to the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, it is surprising that the only significant reference to this poem in Moodie's paper is relegated to a footnote, in support of her point that Hermes is connected with ‘laughter, song, and performance from his birth’ (n. 28). S. Casali, on the other hand, does not specifically tie the god to one genre, but in his discussion of ‘Vergil's Intertextual Mercury’ he suggests that, ‘if we ever had to imagine a god of intertextuality, he would be the perfect candidate’ (p. 173) – though unfortunately he does not develop the idea at the length it merits. He shows that when Mercury appears in the Aeneid, Virgil is engaging in dialogue with Homer and Apollonius of Rhodes, most importantly in his appearances in Aeneid 4, where this intertextual connection gives his warnings about Dido greater weight and shows that he is telling the truth.
Although both Moodie and Casali touch upon the way that Mercury can mediate between cultures, neither really ties their argument to the god's larger role in interpretation (especially translation) and mediation, as exemplified in the word hermeneus (as discussed, e.g., by M. Bettini, Vertere [2012], pp. 135–42). There is less discussion of Hermes and language than one might expect, but this is not to say that his role as mediator is completely overlooked. H. Collard, for example, convincingly argues that herms in Attic vase painting mark out ritual space and stand as an intermediary between humans and gods, and are tools for communicating with the divine. Similarly, C.M. Laferrière suggests that the depiction of Hermes with Nymphs and Pan on fourth-century Attic votive reliefs helps integrate these rural figures into city religion, thereby providing an example of Hermes as a god that facilitates connections and exchanges as he links the countryside and the polis.
Because the majority of the chapters focus on archaic and Classical Greece and late Republican or early Imperial Rome, there is relatively little discussion of key later developments in the figure of Hermes and Mercury. The lone piece that really grapples with such issues is H. Versnel's ‘Great Hermes: Three Ways toward Stardom’, which looks at reasons for changes in the figure of Hermes over time and charts the way in which the god accrued ever greater power, even apart from becoming (identified with) Hermes Trismegistos. In some sense, the book actually pushes back against the narrative that Hermes took on truly great power only with the advent of Hermeticism. L.M. Bortolani, for instance, argues that we need not appeal to Hermeticism to explain the attributes of Hermes in a hymn preserved in three versions in the Greek magical papyri (second–fourth century ce), showing how this characterisation could stem from his initial identification with Thoth, as the gods had similar traits even before any attempts at syncretism. Likewise, in her paper on Hermes’ role in ‘Cosmic Justice and Proportional Distributions’ N. Reggiani proposes that the god had a fundamental connection with destiny and chance as early as the Homeric Hymn, and so his cosmic powers long predate Hermeticism.
In some ways, Reggiani's piece exemplifies the strengths and weaknesses of the book in general. Many of these contributions set ambitious goals – far loftier ones, indeed, than one would expect of talks at a conference. But given the relatively short space for each paper (not including bibliography, multiple papers are only about ten pages long, excluding notes), it is almost impossible for them to succeed. Reggiani's argument that we need ‘to rethink Hermes’ position in a more complex (and problematic) religious frame’ (p. 332) when it comes to ‘cosmic destiny’ and myths revolving around ‘measure, order, and justice’ comes in one such paper and thereby receives far too little space for an argument that potentially has great significance. Similarly, M.Y. Myers's chapter, ‘Cupid, Hermes, and Hymns in Ovid's Metamorphoses’, has seven separate sections in thirteen pages of text, meaning that his promising argument that Ovid's depiction of the quarrel between Cupid and Apollo in Metamorphoses 1 draws on the quarrel between Apollo and Hermes in the Homeric Hymn and on Alcaeus’ Hymn to Hermes is too elliptical and not supported enough to be entirely convincing. In particular, the final section, which tries to incorporate Augustus into the argument, has the potential to be an excellent coda, but, at just over a page long, cannot engage fully enough with the secondary literature and therefore tantalises, rather than satisfies.
To some extent, the volume is characterised by such ambitious contributions that are generally not entirely successful due to lack of space. To try to cover the necessary ground, numerous contributors give the impression of thrusting the reader in medias res, diving into the middle of complicated issues that will mean little to the uninitiated. Others rely so heavily on references to earlier scholarship that it is at times difficult to see what their own contribution is. There are countless fascinating details here and myriad promising suggestions, but too few of them are developed at the length they deserve, and too few of them are tied together between chapters to create a larger picture. One could almost wish for a companion volume that took all these glimpses of Hermes/Mercury and tried to somehow synthesise them into a more cohesive idea – a role in some ways fulfilled by A. Allan's Hermes (2018), which touches upon many of the same issues as part of a more comprehensive picture of the god, but unfortunately must have come out too late for the contributors of the current volume to use.
Anyone who is interested in Mercury and especially Hermes will profit from this book, but it is difficult to imagine those with just a general interest in the god going through the volume from beginning to end. Overall, however, this collection serves to remind not only how charming and unique the Homeric Hymn to Hermes is but also how influential it was, and also testifies to Hermes’ unique nature as simultaneously the most human of the gods while also being the only figure with the ability to go between the lands of the living and of the dead. It is a rich array that makes clear just how vital (in every sense of the term) the god was, and testifies to the connection that so many people, not just Greeks or Romans, have had with this most delightful figure.
