Hermes, and Other Chthonian Religious Images of the Greeks
Many of the Greeks’ religious images seem bizarre and inexplicable. Above, we see a worshipper placing a statue of Hermes with an erect phallus near an altar. Why was he doing this? What did it mean to him? We’ll see in Chapter 12 that these “Herms” were central to Greek religion. Many scholars have referred to scenes such as these as “ithyphallic.” I have found that when I run into a word like this, the person who used it has run into a brick wall—he or she simply can’t figure out what a certain depiction means.
Another word in the same class is “chthonian.” It means “under the earth,” and scholars use it when they don’t understand a scene involving an earth-born child or deity. I may not understand the scene either, but I’m not going to further obfuscate its message by calling it “chthonian.”
Another more often used word is “archtypical.” Literally it means “pertaining to the origin-type,” and in many cases it is used to make the writer’s ignorance of certain origins seem just the opposite. Calling the above image an ithyphallic, chthonian, archtypical figure might make me seem smart, but it adds nothing to our understanding. Don’t worry, I’m not going to use these three words again in this book.
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