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Following on from theHomeric Hymn to Demeter in the previous lecture, this lesson focuses on the Hymn to Hermes. Like other works of the same type, this hymn explores the timē of the god, the honors that should accrue to him. The son of the nymph Maia and Zeus, the god has barely been born in the cave where his mother lives, and is 'seized by an imperious craving for meat'. The rest of the poem allows us to understand this desire as an aspiration to join the circle of full-fledged gods who receive sacrificial homage from humans. To gain Zeus' recognition, as his brother Apollo has already received, Hermes builds his profile as a divinity of exchange and mediation by inventing the lyre, which will enable him to seduce Apollo, and by stealing fifty cows from his brother's herd. In a society where the value of things is measured in head of cattle, this choice is culturally relevant.
But Hermes doesn't just steal cows. He invents fire-sticks to produce a blaze - posing in another way the problem of food fire stolen by Prometheus -, he kills two beasts, cuts them up and skewers indiscriminately, to roast them, all types of portions : the flesh, the loin as a part of honor and the entrails gorged with blood. This variation on the sacrificial theme of slaughtering and cutting up a domestic animal results in a strictly equal division of the whole into twelve portions, drawn by lot and each augmented by a portion of honor. Hermes resists the urge to consume the meat, not because it would jeopardize a divine status yet to be acquired - he is already a god - but because his timē has not yet been recognized by Zeus. The twelve portions he elaborates outline the horizon of his expectation : to integrate the assembly of full-fledged gods, those honored by humans. At the end of the plot, this status will be conferred on him by Zeus, with privileges granted by Apollo. The depositing of the roasted meat slices at the heart of the hymn is a foreshadowing of the ritual of theoxenia, the "reception of the gods" attested in historical cities. Just as the Promethean crisis - whose background and formulas infuse the hymn to Hermes - creates the conditions for thusia, so the poem for Maia's son sets up the conditions for theoxenia.
