For the piano piece by Iannis Xenakis, see Herma (Xenakis)

Herma (Xenakis)

Herma is a piece for solo piano composed by Iannis Xenakis in 1961. It is based on a formulation of the algebraic equations of Boolean algebra, and is also an example of what Xenakis called symbolic music.Herma was the composer's first major work for piano...

.

A Herma, (Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

: ἕρμα, pl ἑρμαῖ) commonly in English herm is a sculpture with a head, and perhaps a torso, above a plain, usually squared lower section, on which male genitals may also be carved at the appropriate height. The form originated in Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

, and was adopted by the Romans, and revived at the Renaissance in the form of term figures

Term (architecture)

In Classical architecture a term or terminal figure is a human head and bust that continues as a square tapering pillarlike form. If the bust is of Hermes as protector of boundaries in ancient Greek culture, with male genitals interrupting the plain base at the appropriate height, it may be...

 and Atlantes

Atlas (architecture)

In the classical European architectural tradition an atlas is a support sculpted in the form of a man, which may take the place of a column, a pier or a pilaster...

.

In ancient Greece

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

 the statues had an apotropaic function and were placed at crossings, country borders and boundaries as protection. Before his role as protector of merchants and travelers, Hermes

Hermes

Hermes is the great messenger of the gods in Greek mythology and a guide to the Underworld. Hermes was born on Mount Kyllini in Arcadia. An Olympian god, he is also the patron of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of the cunning of thieves, of orators and...

 was a phallic god, associated with fertility, luck, roads and borders. His name comes from the word herma (plural hermai) referring to a square or rectangular pillar of stone, terracotta, or bronze; a bust of Hermes' head, usually with a beard

Beard

A beard is the collection of hair that grows on the chin, cheeks and neck of human beings. Usually, only pubescent or adult males are able to grow beards. However, women with hirsutism may develop a beard...

, sat on the top of the pillar, and male genitals adorned the base. The hermai were used as boundary markers on roads and borders. In Athens

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

, they were placed outside houses as apotropes for good luck. [The male genitals would be rubbed or anointed with olive oil to obtain luck]. This superstition persists, for example in the Porcellino

Porcellino

Il Porcellino is the local Florentine nickname for the bronze fountain of a boar.Originally intended for the Boboli Garden, then moved in the Mercato Nuovo in Florence, Italy. the fountain was placed originally facing east, in via Calimala, in front of the Farmacia del Cinghiale, which is the...

 bronze boar of Florence (and numerous others like it around the world), where the nose is shiny from being continually touched for good luck or fertility.

Especially in Roman and Renaissance versions, the body was often shown from the waist up. The form was also used for portrait busts of famous public figures, especially writers like Socrates

Socrates

Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...

 and Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

. Sappho

Sappho

Sappho was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life...

 appears on Ancient Greek herms, and anonymous female figures were often used from the Renaissance on, when herms were often attached to walls as decoration.

The trial of Alcibiades

In 415 BC

415 BC

Year 415 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Tribunate of Cossus, Vibulanus, Volusus and Cincinnatus...

, on the night before the Athenian fleet was about to set sail for Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War

Peloponnesian War

The Peloponnesian War, 431 to 404 BC, was an ancient Greek war fought by Athens and its empire against the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases...

 (see Sicilian Expedition

Sicilian Expedition

The Sicilian Expedition was an Athenian expedition to Sicily from 415 BC to 413 BC, during the Peloponnesian War. The expedition was hampered from the outset by uncertainty in its purpose and command structure—political maneuvering in Athens swelled a lightweight force of twenty ships into a...

), all of the Athenian hermai were vandalized. This was a horribly impious act and many people believed it threatened the success of the expedition. Though it was never proven, the Athenians at the time believed it was the work of saboteurs, either from Syracuse or Sparta

Sparta

Sparta or Lacedaemon, was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the banks of the River Eurotas in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. It emerged as a political entity around the 10th century BC, when the invading Dorians subjugated the local, non-Dorian population. From c...

n sympathizers from Athens

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

 itself. In fact, Alcibiades

Alcibiades

Alcibiades, son of Clinias, from the deme of Scambonidae , was a prominent Athenian statesman, orator, and general. He was the last famous member of his mother's aristocratic family, the Alcmaeonidae, which fell from prominence after the Peloponnesian War...

 was accused of being the originator of the crime. He denied the accusations and offered to stand trial, but the Athenians did not want to disrupt the expedition any further. His opponents were eager to have Alcibiades' trial in his absence when he could not defend himself. Once he had left on the expedition, his political enemies had him charged and sentenced to death in absentia

In absentia

In absentia is Latin for "in the absence". In legal use, it usually means a trial at which the defendant is not physically present. The phrase is not ordinarily a mere observation, but suggests recognition of violation to a defendant's right to be present in court proceedings in a criminal trial.In...

, both for the mutilation of the hermai, and the supposedly related crime of profaning the Eleusinian Mysteries

Eleusinian Mysteries

The Eleusinian Mysteries were initiation ceremonies held every year for the cult of Demeter and Persephone based at Eleusis in ancient Greece. Of all the mysteries celebrated in ancient times, these were held to be the ones of greatest importance...

.

Art and popular culture

The J. Paul Getty

J. Paul Getty

Jean Paul Getty was an American industrialist. He founded the Getty Oil Company, and in 1957 Fortune magazine named him the richest living American, whilst the 1966 Guinness Book of Records named him as the world's richest private citizen, worth an estimated $1,200 million. At his death, he was...

 museum in Los Angeles has a large collection of Roman Herma boundary marker stones in its stored collection.

In February 2007 and 2008, a group of University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

 students fashioned a set of hermai out of ice and placed them around their campus in the middle of the night as a prank.

External links

• Ice Herms, with primary source passages on ancient herms and on the sacrilege trial of Alcibiades, images of ancient herms from sculpture and vase painting
  Pottery of Ancient Greece
  As the result of its relative durability, pottery is a large part of the archaeological record of Ancient Greece, and because there is so much of it it has exerted a disproportionately large influence on our understanding of Greek society...
  
  , and photos (including a step-by-step guide to the making) of the University of Chicago ice herms