Mutilation of the Hermae
event · 3 works · 3 mentions · 4 anchored passages
mutilate the Hermes · mutilation of the Hermae · mutilation of the images · the mutilation of the Hermae · the outrage upon the Hermae
in the texts
On the Mysteries
The destruction or mutilation of sacred images that triggered inquiry, panic, and denunciations.
From Megara he informed the Council that if immunity were granted him, he was prepared not only to lodge an information with regard to the Mysteries—as one of the participants, he would reveal the names of his companions—but he would also tell what he knew of the mutilation of the Hermae.
Next comes the mutilation of the images and the denunciation of those responsible.
When Euphiletus saw my condition, he informed the others that I had consented to join them and had promised him to mutilate the Hermes next to the shrine of Phorbas as my share in the escapade.
Alcibiades
The citywide defacement of the Hermae statues that triggered mass suspicion, informing, and imprisonment.
They brought the outrage upon the Hermae and upon the Eleusinian mysteries under one and the same design;
He was held to be a foe to popular government, and an oligarch, but what most made him suspected of the mutilation of the Hermae, was the tall Hermes which stood near his house, a dedication of the Aegeid tribe.
One of them, indeed, was asked how he recognized the faces of the Hermae-defacers, and replied, By the light of the moon.
Nicias
The overnight mass defacement of the herm statues across Athens, treated as an unmistakable ill omen before the Sicilian expedition.
For no signs could deter the people from the expedition, were they never so obvious and clear such as, for instance, the mutilation of the Hermae.
also that, by the mutilation of the Hermae, Heaven indicated to them in advance that by the hands of Hermocrates the son of Hermon they were to suffer most of their reverses during the war;