Hermotimus

“ But she continued to doubt, and insisted upon first sending for the Pythagorean philosopher, whom Hermotimus had always answered, when he was in those strange trances. The messenger returned with tidings that he had gone to Athens. The funeral-pile was erected, and the good-hearted widow wept to find that the certainty of his death was such a relief to her mind. This consciousness was the more unpleasant to her, because she said to herself, “If he is in one of those trances, he knows all I am thinking.” ”

“ She woke trembling and afraid, and with a strong impression that she had seen Hermotimus. This belief excited uneasy thoughts, which she dared not mention, for fear of slanderous tongues. But she secretly confessed to Eratus that she feared her husband was not dead when they burned his body. He replied, “It is foolish to trouble yourself about a dream, my lovely one. It is enough that all who saw him thought he was dead. You know it often puzzled wiser folks than you or I to tell whether he was alive or not. ”

“ If he met Praxinoë, on her way to his wife’s apartments, he would say, “How is the good Hermotimus, to-day? Has he gone to talk with the gods, and thrown his body on the couch till he returns?” These sneers were not pleasant; and the habit of comparing her situation with that of Eucoline increased her discontent. The handsome and healthy Eratus was growing richer every day by his own energy and enterprise. “Such robes as he buys for his wife!” said she to herself, “I can make better wine than she can; I can weave handsomer cloth; and I think the gods have endowed me with more beauty ”

“ Companionship with philosophers had excited his intellect, and induced the habit of watching his own soul with intense interest. He was absorbed in reverie most of the time, and Prytane, who came occasionally to see him, was the only person with whom he conversed freely. Their conversation was more wearisome to Praxinoë than his dreamy silence. She said they might be as wise as owls, for all she knew to the contrary, but that she could see no more sense in their talk, than she did in the hooting of those solemn birds of darkness. In another respect, Hermotimus seemed to her like an owl. ”

“ Let them grow!”
The sudden and alarming illness of Hermotimus arrested the progress of affairs; for the kindness of Praxinoë overcame all other feelings, and she said she would not leave him to the care of hirelings. He recovered slowly, and again wandered forth into the groves, with feeble steps. Eratus watched him impatiently; and when at last he seemed sufficiently recovered to enter into conversation, he sought an interview. He found him lying on the ground, in one of his favourite groves, cold and rigid as a corpse. He called servants to convey him to the house. ”

“ When Prytanes returned to Clazomenæ, he gave an account of this wonderful experience, in public discourses to his disciples; and the fame of Hermotimus spread more and more widely. Priests and philosophers came to listen to his conversations with Prytanes; and while some went away incredulous, others were deeply impressed with awe. From far and near, people brought the diseased to him, begging him to prescribe a cure ”

“ Hermotimus, then, was sprung from these Pedasians; and, of all men we know, revenged himself in the severest manner for an injury he had received; for, having been captured by an enemy and sold, he was purchased by one Panionius, a Chian, who gained a livelihood by the most infamous practices; for whenever he purchased boys remarkable for their beauty, having castrated them, he used to take them to Sardis and Ephesus and sell them for large sums; for with the barbarians, eunuchs are more valued than others, on account of their perfect fidelity. ”

“ There must have been many an example of moral earnestness like that of Hermotimus, who had laboured hard for twenty years to find the true way of life, and had only obtained a distant glimpse of the celestial city.1816 After Dion’s conversion, as we may fairly call it, he deems it a sacred duty to call men to the way of wisdom by persuasion or reproach, and to appeal even to the turbulent masses.1817 We shall see how well he fulfilled the duty. For nearly a century at Athens, the gentle Demonax embodied the ideal which his friend Epictetus had formed of the Cynic father of all men in God ”

“ For the barbarians value eunuchs more than others, since they regard them as more trustworthy. Many were the slaves that Panionius, who made his living by the practice, had thus treated; and among them was this Hermotimus of whom I have here made mention. However, he was not without his share of good fortune; for after a while he was sent from Sardis, together with other gifts, as a present to the king. Nor was it long before he came to be esteemed by Xerxes more highly than all his eunuchs. ”

“ They concluded their remarks by saying, “It can do no harm to burn his body, whether he is dead or not. The soul he had so much faith in was always longing to get out of prison. It would be conferring a favour upon him to give him a chance to try his wings.{287}”
The parents of Hermotimus were dead. Eratus summoned priests of Æsculapius, who decidedly pronounced his slumber the sleep of death; and the relatives of Praxinoë sympathized with his impatience for the funeral. ”

“ Aspasia a Phocian, daughter of Hermotimus, was brought up an orphan, her mother dying in the pains of child-birth. She was bred up in poverty, but modestly and virtuously. She had many times a dream which foretold her that she should be married to an excellent person. Whilst she was yet young, she chanced to have a swelling under her chin, loathsome to sight, whereat both the father and the maid were much afflicted. Her father brought her to a physician: he offered to undertake the cure for three staters ”

“ They made anxious inquiries concerning the manner of his death; to which certain envious women answered: “Praxinoë was always a very good neighbour. We have nothing to say against her; though some people thought she was rather free, and not a little vain. The old nurse says Eratus was always sending her presents, long before her husband died; and some people do think it was very obliging in poor Hermotimus to die, just when he was so much wanted out of the way.” ”

“ This gave great umbrage to the hermit before mentioned; "Oh heaven," said he to himself, "seest thou this deed? the innocent suffers for the guilty: why permittest thou such things? If thus injustice triumph, why do I remain here? I will again enter the world, and do as other men do."
With these feelings he quitted his hermitage, and returned into the world; but God willed not that he should be lost: an angel in the form of a man was commissioned to join him. Accordingly, crossing the hermit's path, he thus accosted him—"My friend, where are you going?" ”

“ Another legend (No. 92) , "The Story of the Hermit," has as its subject the mystery of God's Providence, and is familiar to English readers in the form of Parnell's Hermit. The substance of the Sicilian version is as follows: A hermit sees a man wrongfully accused of theft and shockingly maltreated. He thereupon concludes that God is unjust to suffer such things, and determines to return to the world. On his way back a handsome youth meets him and they journey together. ”

“ Other illustrations of hermits may be found in the early fourteenth century MS. Romances Additional 10,293 f. 335, and 10,294 f. 95. In the latter case there are two hermits in one hermitage; also in Royal 16 G. vi. Illustrations of St. Anthony, which give authorities for hermit costume, and indications of what hermitages were, abound in the later MSS.; for example, in King René’s “Book of Hours” (Egerton 1,070) , at f. 108, the hermit-saint is habited in a grey frock and black cloak with a T-cross on the breast; he holds bell and book and staff in his hands. ”

“ There is the beauty which never ages and appeals to all nations in all times in the following scene, when the hermit, throwing off his worldly disguise, shows his hair grown white through vigils and fasts, and his tonsure, the badge of his thorn-crowned Master, and in words more compassionate than upbraiding moves his lost child to contrition. ”

“ In this Pachomius praying thus an artist might show a picture of what the hermit stood for. These hermits were not foolish; they were mighty and wonderful like the living word of God itself. They were living hieroglyphics. ”

“ The popular idea of a hermit is that of a man who was either a half-crazed enthusiast, or a misanthrope—a kind of Christian Timon—who abandoned the abodes of men, and scooped out for himself a cave in the rocks, or built himself a rude hut in the forest; and lived there a half-savage life, clad in sackcloth or skins, [91] eating roots and wild fruits, and drinking of the neighbouring spring ”

“ Who should guide the ghosts down the darkling ways but the deity of the dusk; sometimes he made love to fair ghostly maids whom he attended. So easy is it to interpret all the functions of a god as reflections of elemental phenomena. The origin of Hermes remains obscure; but he is, in his poetical shape, one of the most beautiful and human of the deities. He has little commerce with the beasts; we do not find him with many animal companions, like Apollo, nor adored, like Dionysus, with a ritual in which are remnants of animal-worship. ”

“ CONSECRATION OF HERMITS AND RECLUSES.
The great idea of the hermit life was to live entirely alone, though some hermits lived in small communities in one district in close neighbourhood. Pope Innocent IV., in the middle of the thirteenth century, enrolled these into a separate order with the rule of St. Augustine, and hence called Austin Friars. There were also two grades of hermits. Hermits occasionally visited their fellow-men, but those called recluses abstained from any such visits. ”

“ The Two Hermits Upon a lonely mountain, there lived two hermits who worshipped God and loved one another.
Now these two hermits had one earthen bowl, and this was their only possession.
One day an evil spirit entered into the heart of the older hermit and he came to the younger and said, “It is long that we have lived together. The time has come for us to part. Let us divide our possessions.”
Then the younger hermit was saddened and he said, “It grieves me, Brother, that thou shouldst leave me. ”

“ And because the hermit was so pious, an angel of God, visible to his eyes, went up with him, counted his steps, and when the work was completed, brought him his food, even as the prophet of old was by God's command fed by the raven. When the hermit in his piety had already reached a great age, it happened that he once saw from afar a poor sinner being taken to the gallows. ”

“ Indeed, if it were not for my dear little Toto, I should lead quite the life of a hermit.”
“What is a hermit?” asked the bear, who had an inquiring mind, and liked to know the meaning of words.
“It is a crab,” said the parrot. “I have often seen them in the West Indies. They get into the shells of other crabs, and drive the owners out. A wretched set!”
“Oh, dear!” cried the grandmother. “That is not at all the kind of hermit I mean. A hermit in this country is a man who lives quite alone, without any companions, in some uninhabited region, such as a wood or a lonely hillside.” ”

“ Hermes Trismegistus, an Egyptian Philosopher, and said to have lived Anno Mundi 2076, in the reign of Ninus, after Moses. He was a wonderful philosopher and proved that there was but one God, the creator of all things; and was the author of several most excellent and useful inventions. But those Hermetick Men here mentioned, though the pretended sectators of this great man, are nothing else but a wild and extravagant sort of enthusiasts, who make a hodge-podge of Religion and Philosophy, and produce nothing but what is the object of every considering person's contempt. ”

“ Protect us under the shadow of Thy wings. The wound in her foot healed slowly; and the Hermit, while it was mending, repaired daily to her cave, reasoning with her in love and charity, and exhorting her to return to the cloister. ”

“ The good woman who had given him the seeds showed him also how to build a little garden on the southern ledge of his cliff, and all one summer the Hermit carried up soil from the streamside, and the next he carried up water to keep his garden green. After that the fear of solitude quite passed from him, for he was so busy all day long that at night he had much ado to fight off the demon of sleep, which Saint Arsenius the Abbot has denounced as the chief foe of the solitary. ”

“ To some eyes this would have been a terrible spectacle, reminding the wayfarer of his remoteness from his kind, and of the perils which lurk in waste places and the weakness of man against them; but the Hermit was so mated to solitude, and felt such love for all things created, that to him the bare rocks sang of their Maker and the vast distance bore witness to His greatness. ”

“ The little hermit-crab lives alone in an empty shell, which he carries about with him wherever he goes. His reason for living in a shell is because the hind part of his body is soft, and not protected with a hard shell, like the fore part of his body. The end of the soft body of the hermit-crab is provided with hooks, or claspers, with which he holds on to the inner chamber of his shell so tightly that it is almost impossible to get him out except by breaking the shell. ”