Friends of Socrates say they saw a divine image when they looked at him. I like to think he resembled the sculpture of Hermes, called a herm, which you see in the masthead on the right. Wonderfully, there are connections between Socrates
and this herm.

The herm is a 1st-2nd Century AD Roman copy of a marble original created in Athens sometime between 450 and 425 BC, when Socrates was between nineteen and forty years old. It is part of the Greek and Roman Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1913 (13.232.1).

The subject of the herm, the messenger god Hermes, was closely associated with journeys and boundaries. Hermes was a guide on journeys to the unknown. In Athens, "His protective image in the form of a bearded head set on a rectangular stone shaft was placed at doorways and at strategic points along the roadside."
(Description provided by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.)

Socrates must have seen this herm. It is not impossible that his eyes, described by Plato as "so large and wide-open," were the inspiration for the eyes of the god. The herm's eyes bear an uncanny resemblance to the eyes carved for a bust of Socrates, which is now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples. (The bust was copied from a Greek original around 350 BC by Lysippus.)

Ancient reports suggest that Socrates was a stone sculptor. If so, it is not impossible to think that he carved the god's clear, compassionate gaze.

Kudos to the photographer who called his photograph of this herm "Socrates," ©2005 tpb3jd@thosedarktrees.
Thanks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

The masthead image was created in collaboration
with Linda Wettengel.

©2006 CATHERINE GLASS