Hermes in Lucian’s Comic Fiction

Ian C. Storey (Trent University)

Lucian of Samosata (career: c.120-c. 185 AD) was described by a later source (Eunapius) as ‘a serious man … about getting a laugh’. Of the eighty or so works that have come down to us under his name, many are intentionally comic parodies of mythical themes and characters, often with a witty and imaginative twist. The reader, coming to Lucian for the first time, will be struck by the prevalence of Hermes in these works. He is the most frequent character to appear in the fifty or so sketches that comprise the Dialogues of the Dead and the Dialogues of the Gods. He appears as the interlocutor and guide for Charon on his holiday in the upper world (Charon), Zeus’ envoy in Timon and Judgement of the Goddesses, companion to Menippos during the latter’s exploration of the Underworld (Menippos), door-keeper of the house of Zeus, punisher of hypocritical philosophers (Runaways), auctioneer of philosophical lives (Sale of Philosophies), divine herald (Assembly of the Gods), and pyschopompos.
What is there about Hermes that makes him so much at home in a ‘low’ and humorous setting? This paper will investigate Lucian’s use of Hermes in his comic fiction, his debt to earlier sources (especially epic and drama, where Hermes appears frequently), and how Lucian employs all of Hermes’ assorted roles and guises for comic and dramatic effect.
Herodotos tells us that the Greek gods have their counterparts in the Egyptian pantheon, and one reads constantly that Hermes was equated with Toth – this tradition would eventually culminate in the mediaeval figure of Hermes Trismegistus – but the evidence from Lucian and other 2nd-c. AD texts suggests that at this period Hermes was identified with another figure from the Egyptian pantheon.