As, however, he saw that his assertions were not believed, he conducted Apollo to Pylos, and restored to him his oxen but when Apollo heard the sounds of the lyre, he was so charmed that he allowed Hermes to keep the animals. Zeus commanded him to comply with the demand of Apollo, but Hermes denied that he had stolen the cattle. She showed to the god the child in its cradle but Apollo took the boy before Zeus, and demanded back his oxen. 8Īpollo, by his prophetic power, had in the meantime discovered the thief, and went to Cyllene to charge him with it before his mother Maia.

The number of strings of his new invention is said by some to have been three and by others seven, and they were made of the guts either of oxen or of sheep. He took the animal's shell, drew strings across it, and thus invented the lyre and plectrum. 7 Hereupon he returned to Cyllene, where he found a tortoise at the entrance of his native cave. 6 The skins of the slaughtered animals were nailed to a rock, and part of their flesh was prepared and consumed, and the rest burnt at the same time he offered sacrifices to the twelve gods, whence he is probably called the inventor of divine worship and sacrifices.

5 In order not to be discovered by the traces of his footsteps, Hermes put on sandals, and drove the oxen to Pylos, where he killed two, and concealed the rest in a cave. 4 Other accounts, again, refer the theft of the oxen to a more advanced period of the life of the god.

3 In the Iliad and Odyssey this tradition is not mentioned, though Hermes is characterized as a cunning thief. In the first hours after his birth, he escaped from his cradle, went to Pieria, and carried off some of the oxen of Apollo. Hermes, a son of Zeus and Maia, the daughter of Atlas, was born in a cave of Mount Cyllene in Arcadia, 1 whence he is called Atlantiades or Cyllenius but Philostratus 2 places his birth in Olympus.

Homeric hymn to hermes