Nascita di un dio ‘minore’: l’Inno omerico a Ermes tra letteratura, mito e culto

Tra i cosiddetti Inni omerici quello a Ermes (IV della silloge) è probabilmente il più letterario nello stile e nel modo di narrare il mito. Ciò si deve al periodo piuttosto tardo di elaborazione finale del testo come è stato trasmesso (fine VI sec. a. C. o inizio del V). Eppure quest'Inno rimanda a modelli anteriori nella tradizione poetica orale e mantiene forti rapporti con la realtà dei culti di Hermes e le loro origini.

Among the socalled Homeric Hymns that to Hermes (Hymn IV of the sylloge) is probably the most literary in the style and the narration of the myth: telling the tale this exametric composition reveals a plain taste for irony which goes beyond the limits of the other known ancient hymnic poetry. This is also due to the late period of final elaboration of the text as it is transmitted to us, period which is probably datable not before the late sixth century BC or even the beginning of the fifth. Nevertheless this Hymn goes back for the mythical subject to prior models in the oral poetic tradition and maintains strong relations with the reality of Hermes’ cults and that of their origins; indeed it is possible to recognize three mythical lines converging in the narrative structure of the composition, all the three connected with some important aspects of history and geography of Hermes’ cults in Greece since Mycenaean age. In this perspective Arcadia and the socalled “Pylos’ region” are central, with a Mycenaean memory of the term extended to a large part of west Peloponnese from Messenia to Alpheus river, but also involved are Pieria (Tessaly) and Boeotia; Olympia particularly seems to be the point of historical and geographical intersection between the three mythical lines which form the narrative structure of the Hymn, and seems to be the pivot of a panhellenic dimen- sion of Hermes’ religion.