by various authors, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities… (1890)
“ HERMAE (ἑρμαῖ) , and the diminutive HERMULI (ἑρμίδια) , statues composed of a head, usually that of the god Hermes, placed on a quadrangular pillar, the height of which corresponds to the stature of the human body (ἡ τετράγωνος ἐργασία, Thuc. 6.27; τὸ σχῆμα τὸ τετράγωνον, Paus. 4.33.4) . Some difficulties are involved in the question of their origin, and of their meaning as symbols of Hermes. ”
by various authors, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities… (1890)
“ There is still another class of these works in which the bust represented no deity at all, but was simply the portrait of a man, and in which the pillar loses all its symbolical meaning, and becomes a mere pedestal. Even these statues, however, retained the names of Hermae and Termini. ”
by various authors, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities… (1890)
“ The reason why the statues of the other deities were developed into perfect forms, while those of Hermes so generally (by no means universally) retained their ancient fashion, is obviously on account of the religious significance attached to the symbol of the pillar, as a boundary mark. Where this motive was not called into action, Hermes himself was represented in the complete human form with all the perfection of Greek art, as, for example, in his statues in the palaestrae, and in those which embodied others of his attributes. ”
