The gate of the year

Fragment of a votive stele, dating to 510 B.C., in the Acropolis Museum, Athens.
The image represents the god Hermes leading a group of Nymphs. These minor deities presided over every element of nature. There were, indeed, the Nymphs of the sea, the Naiads who manifested themselves in rivers, springs and streams, the Oreads who dwelt into caves and on mountains, the Dryads who inhabited the trees, the Napeae who lived in cliffs and valleys. Associated with poetic inspiration and to folly, the Nymphs were generally object of popular local cults, mostly of them conducted in caves or in the open spaces. The presence of these divine entities reflects the representation of a personified and living natural world, beneficent towards humans, but also potentially dangerous and unsettling, a conception which probably goes back to the most ancient phases of Greek history. The appearance of Hermes together with the Nymphs is justified, not only by the fact that the god himself was the son of a Nymph, Maia, living in a cave on Mount Cyllene, but mainly because of Hermes’s association with sheep-farming, an activity which took place in the regions that were on the borders between the cultivated fields and the woodlands and mountains. In these territories, the shepherds offered sacrifices at the same time to Hermes and to the Nymphs (Simonides, fragm. 18 Diehl; Cassola 1994, p. 153).

[Source: http://library.artstor.org/library/]




Female Symbols

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Fragment of a votive stele, dating to 510 B.C., in the Acropolis Museum, Athens. The image represents the god Hermes leading a group of Nymphs. These minor deities presided over every element of nature. There were, indeed, the Nymphs of the sea, the Naiads who manifested themselves in rivers, springs and streams, the Oreads who dwelt into caves and on mountains, the Dryads who inhabited the trees, the Napeae who lived in cliffs and valleys. Associated with poetic inspiration and to folly, the Nymphs were generally object of popular local cults, mostly of them conducted in caves or in the open spaces. The presence of these divine entities reflects the representation of a personified and living natural world, beneficent towards humans, but also potentially dangerous and unsettling, a conception which probably goes back to the most ancient phases of Greek history. The appearance of Hermes together with the Nymphs is justified, not only by the fact that the god himself was the son of a Nymph, Maia, living in a cave on Mount Cyllene, but mainly because of Hermes’s association with sheep-farming, an activity which took place in the regions that were on the borders between the cultivated fields and the woodlands and mountains. In these territories, the shepherds offered sacrifices at the same time to Hermes and to the Nymphs (Simonides, fragm. 18 Diehl; Cassola 1994, p. 153). [Source: http://library.artstor.org/library/]