Mayanic has asked me about the god Hermes. Although he was worshipped throughout Greece his cult centre was at Arcadia. Hermes was the son of Zeus and a messenger for his father. He wore shoes with wings on them which enabled him to travel freely between the divine and mortal worlds and he became known as the fastest of the gods.

Hermes was also the god of boundaries and the travellers that cross them. Many Greeks would sacrifice to him before they travelled so they would have a safe journey. He also escorted people into the Underworld. In Homer's Iliad we are told that Hermes helped the Trojan King Priam to sneak into the Greek camp and convince Achilles to return to Priam his son Hektor's body.

Hermes was originally depicted as an older, bearded god but during the 6th century BC he was portrayed as a young, athletic god and these new statues were placed in gymnasia throughout Greece and Hermes became known as the god of athletics.

Moonwoman has asked me about the significance of Athena and her shield. According to myth, Athena sprang fully-grown and fully-armed from the head of her father, Zeus, ruler of the gods on Mount Olympus.

Hesiod’s The Theogony is the only account we have which describes the birth of Athena from her father's head:
‘From his own head he gave birth to owl-eyed Athena,
the wonderful, battle-rousing, army-leading, untiring Lady,
whose pleasure is fighting and the metallic din of war.’

Athena was her father's favourite child and possessed the keys to his thunderbolts. She was the only one entitled to wear his aegis, his shield. In the centre of the aegis is the head of Medusa. Athena did not have the Medusa’s power – the ability to turn people into stone so Athena persuaded Perseus to kill Medusa and Hermes mounted Medusa’s head onto the aegis.

The Aegis was a shield that protected whoever wore it, however one required wisdom to benefit from it, or as Horace wrote:

Vis consili expers
Mole ruit sua.

‘Strength without wisdom falls by its own weight’

Usksider has asked me ‘When did we discover effective armour against bolts and arrows?’ The simple bow in ancient Egypt could kill at 50-100 yards but it would not penetrate leather armour at these ranges. During the New Kingdom (c.1500BC) the reed arrow was developed and bronze tips used at short range with the composite bow could easily pierce leather armour.

Because of this, the Egyptians also recognized the need to develop a thicker type of body armour and one was made from leather and metal. Against armoured soldiers the ancient archers probably became proficient at aiming for the back of the neck, top of the central soldiers and lower lumbar region of the spine, the areas most exposed on the back of a running man.

Legionaires from the 1st century AD onwards wore various types of armour. Below I have listed 3 types of armour and briefly mentioned the various effects caused by arrows.

1) ring mail (lorica hamata) - easy to penetrate, the arrow would be locked into place by the damaged mail rings making the arrow difficult to extract or the arrow would break upon impact. (The latter can be seen in the case of Eurypylos and Aeneas.)
2) scale armour (lorica squamata) - fairly easy to penetrate
3) strip plate armour (lorica segmentata) - none of the arrowheads penetrated to a depth sufficient to cause a fatal wound even at a range of seven meters. (Yet a hail of missiles could make a serious dent in the morale of soldiers.)

From around c.1250 plate armour was introduced to reinforce chain mail reflecting the recognised need to respond to the development of the long bow, which dominated warfare for centuries to come.

I particularly like the hymn below to the god Hermes, not just because of Hermes mischief but it also tells us how Apollo was venerated as the god of music.

Born at dawn, he played the lyre in the afternoon
And he stole the cattle of Apollo the Archer
In the evening – all on the fourth day of the month,
The day he was born from the lady Maia.

Wise Zeus made them both friends.
And Hermes loved the son of Leto continually,
Even as he does now, from the proof that he gave
The lovely lyre to the Archer and taught him,
And Apollo played it skillfully upon his arm.

Then the Son of Leto said to Hermes:
‘Son of Maia, guide,
You who are full of tricks,
I’m afraid you might
Steal the lyre back from me
And my curved bow at the same time.'

Then the son of Maia nodded his head and promised
That he would never steal anything the Archer possessed
Then Apollo, son of Leto, nodded his head in a bond
Of friendship, and promised that never
Would there be anyone else among the immortals
Whom he would love more than Hermes,
Neither a god nor a man born from Zeus

I find the Homeric hymns fascinating because they also tell us something about the Greek view of the relationship between the divine and human worlds. In some cases the actual union of a deity with a mortal produces an exceptional human being; this was the origin of some of the greatest heroes in The Iliad such as Achilles or Sarpedon.

Below is an Homeric Hymn to Apollo from Delos. I hope you all enjoy:

I shall remember,
May I not forget,
Apollo the Archer.

The gods tremble at him
When he enters at the house of Zeus,
They spring up when he comes near them,
They all spring up from their seats
When he stretches back his bright bow.
Only Leto waits besides Zeus who loved thunder.

She unstrings the bow, she closes the quiver,
Taking it with her hands
Off his strong shoulders,
She hangs the bow on a golden peg
Against a pillar in his father’s house.
Then she leads him to a seat.

Queen Leto is full of joy
Because the son born to her
Is an archer and strong.
Be happy, blessed Leto,
You have given birth to glorious children,
The lord Apollo and Artemis who delights in arrows,

Phoebus Apollo addressed the immortal goddesses;
‘May the lyre and the curved bow be dear to me,
And I shall reveal to mortals
The infallible will of Zeus.’
With these words, Phoebus,
The long-haired, far-shooting god,
Began walking over the wide paths of the earth.

Homeric hymns are a group of 33 songs composed to honour the gods and goddesses of the ancient Greek pantheon. They are called ‘Homeric’ as it was often assumed in antiquity that they were composed by Homer. Modern scholars date most of them to the Achaic period of Greek literature (7th and 8th centuries BC) and regard them as a work of a range of different poets.

It is usually believed that the tradition from which our surviving early Greek poetry grew was an ‘oral’ one, i.e. that singers composed without the aid of writing. Archaeological evidence points to a gap between the 12th and 9th centuries BC during which written records have not (at least as yet) been found in Greece or the Greek settlements around the area of the Aegean Sea.

Before this time the late Bronze Age cultures of Crete and Greece (known as Minoan and Mycenaean) wrote Greek in a syllabic script (called Linear B ) whereas the Greek alphabetic script appears only from the 8th century BC onwards when the Greeks took over and adapted the script used by the Phoenicians.

Below is one of the Homeric Hymns to Artemis:

Sing, Muse, of Artemis,
Sister of the Archer god,
The maiden who delights in arrows
Who grew up with Apollo.

By Meles, where the reeds are deep,
She harnesses her horses
And swiftly through Smyrna
She speeds her chariot
All in gold
To Klaros, the vine land,
Where Apollo sits waiting
With his silver bow

For Artemis
Who delights in arrows
And lets them fly from far away.

Snake venoms are among the most complex of all biological toxins and are composed of numerous enzymatic substances. In fact, 20+ different enzymes have been identified in snake venoms (although no one species possesses all of these!) Most species possess between 7-10 different enzymes.

These various enzymes have different functions in their action when secreted and therefore any type of venom is reliant on a multiple reaction to be effective. In general there are:
1) haemotoxin types which break down tissue
2) neurotoxin types which affect the central nervous system

In Europe the vipera berus is the most widespread poisonous snake. The long nosed viper or sand viper V.ammodytes can grow to be 75cm but some males have been recorded to reach around 90cm.

On some of the Greek islands the Malpolon monspessulanus can be found. They are very aggressive and usually between 100-150cm in length but some can get to 200cm long! Their venom is particularly powerful which produces immediate pain.

Unfortunately although scholars can not be certain what types of poisonous snakes were used by the Scythians but we can get some idea of the effect a poisoned arrow would have made on its victim. We believe that the Scythians used decomposed poisonous snakes and human blood incubated in a manure heap. The blood was a breeding ground for bacteria and the manure contained the germs of tetanus and gangrene. In most cases death would be within an hour, or after a day gangrene would set in and a few days later tetanus would kill.

I believe that ancient armies must have been demoralised by the mere sight of archers as they would not be sure if they were going to use poisoned arrows.

The Scythians were not only feared because they were great archers, but also because their arrows were tipped with a poison made from decomposed poisonous snakes and blood incubated in a manure heap!

Even Aristotle claimed that the Scythians used a deadly arrow poison concocted from a mixture of decomposed snake tissues and decomposing human blood! Even if the arrow did not kill outright, and if the victim survived the snake venom, severe infection from bacteria was inevitable.

The Greeks had two terms for this poison: skyticon (according to the provenance of the substance) and toxikon. This latter word is derived from the word toxon meaning a bow, and clearly describes the application of the poison. The term toxicology therefore reflects the name of this dreadful arrow poison.

Mrs F has raised an interesting theory that maybe we are seeing the remnants of Mithraism in the Spanish tradition of bullfighting.

It has been argued that when the Romans conquered Spain they brought with them the Cult of Mithras and the central iconic act of killing the sacred bull later developed into modern Spanish bullfighting.

Other scholars argue that when the Emperor Claudius put a temporary ban on gladiator games he decided to introduce bullfights to Spain because they were similar to their human-animal games held in amphitheaters.

It is worth pointing out that many of the oldest bullrings in Spain are actually located on or adjacent to the sites of temples to Mithras.

The bull was also worshipped in many cultures but in Crete (Minoan culture) it was never killed. In ancient Egypt, the sacred Apis bull however was sacrificed. The Ptolemaic pharaohs during the 3rd century BC forced the Egyptians to make their religion both accessible and understandable to other cultures. Perhaps the Cult of Mithras had assimilated the Egyptian cult of the Apis Bull.

Technomist has asked whether the proverb ascribed to the Chinese philosopher Confucius, to the effect that 'the gods can't help those who don't seize opportunities' was used to a similar effect in the Greek world.

I have come across the proverb ‘The gods help them that help themselves’ by Aesop, who was a Greek slave and fable author dating from c.620-560BC. Confucius is a little later and dates from c.551-479BC!