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Birth of Hermes According to the
Homeric Hymn to Hermes, Zeus, in the dead of night so that his wife
Hera would not find out, secretly made love to Maia, who avoided the company of the gods, in a cave of Cyllene. She became pregnant with
Hermes. After giving birth to the baby, Maia wrapped him in blankets and went to sleep. The rapidly maturing infant Hermes crawled away to
Thessaly, where, by nightfall of his first day, he stole some of his half-brother
Apollo's cattle and invented the
lyre from a tortoise shell. Maia refused to believe Apollo when he claimed that Hermes was the thief, and Zeus then sided with Apollo. Finally, Apollo exchanged the cattle for the lyre, which became one of his identifying attributes. At another time, when Maia was bathing with her sisters the Pleiads, Hermes snuck in stealthily and stole all their clothes. When the nymphs finished their bath they looked around naked not knowing what to do while Hermes laughed, and then returned them their garments. Although the
Homeric Hymn has Maia as Hermes' caretaker and guardian, in
Sophocles's now lost
satyr play Ichneutae, Maia entrusted the infant Hermes to
Cyllene (the local mountain goddess) to nurse and raise, and thus it is her that the satyrs and Apollo confront when looking for the god's missing cattle.
As nurturer Maia also raised the infant
Arcas, the child of
Callisto with Zeus. Wronged by the love affair, Zeus' wife
Hera in a jealous rage had transformed Callisto into a bear. Arcas is the
eponym of
Arcadia, where Maia was born. == See also ==