• 1 Hafner, 1940.

2Some fanciful images conflate the god and his animal. This taste for fantastic, mixed creatures in Greece certainly goes back to the fourth century BC, or earlier, and it is likely that images of gods combined with their animal attributes were created at that time.1 Such images are not unusual on engraved gems of the Roman period, and three previously unpublished examples may be examined here.

• 2 Private collection. Red jasper, set in a bronze ring; the gem c. 10.5 × 7.5 mm.
• 3 Boardman, 1970, p. 234‑5 and 286, fig. 268.
• 4 Crawford, 1974, p. 484, no. 474/2; Böhm 1997, p. 123, with further discussion.
• 5 For other examples, see Raspe, 1791, nos. 13555‑13559; Furtwängler, 1896, nos. 3340, 5928, 7090, an (...)

3An especially popular motif of this type portrays Athena with the body of an owl and a helmeted, human head, usually holding a spear and shield (fig. 1).2 The earliest surviving version of this image appears in the fourth century BC on a clay loom weight from Corinth, probably impressed by means of metal ring.3 The device was familiar enough to be chosen for the reverse type of a Roman silver denarius of the moneyer L. Valerius Asisulus in 45 BC4 and remained popular on gems at least through the second century AD.5

• 6 Private collection. The cameo is mounted in an openwork gold frame (28 × 23 mm.) with a border of s (...)

4A rarer, indeed seemingly unique, composition is found on a cameo of second century date on which is carved the composite figure of a cock with the head of a bearded and helmeted warrior, who holds a shield and spear (fig. 2).6 The image likely represents Ares/ Mars, the god of war, as a fighting cock, just as the helmeted, human-headed owl symbolizes Athena.

• 7 Raspe, 1791, nos. 13562‑3 and 13567; Furtwängler, 1896, no. 7084.
• 8 Furtwängler, 1896, no. 3339
• 9 Deonna, 1910, for a terracotta in Berne; and for the bronze, see O. Kurz in Hackin, 1954, p. 147-8, (...)

5Similarly, some gems depict Hermes/Mercury as a cock with a human head, sometimes wearing a petasos and with a kerykeion over the shoulder to clarify the identification.7 A cock with the upper body of a man playing a lyre also represents Hermes, as the accompanying symbol of the kerykeion indicates.8 Human-headed cocks are also found in small-scale sculpture, such as terracottas and a small bronze discovered at Begram, Afghanistan.9

• 10 Private collection; 15.0 × 9.5 mm.
• 11 Bullettino dell’instituto di corrispondenza archeologica 1845 (no. II, February, 1845), p. 26.

6A more remarkable composition is found on an engraved gem in a private collection (fig. 3a-b).10 Rather than placing the head of Hermes/Mercury on the body of a bird, the engraver created a frontally facing head that is part human and part cockerel, a fully human head and neck with human eyes but with a cock’s crest, beak, earlobes, and prominent wattles that hang from the cheeks, quite a monstrous creation. The banded agate, which has slightly discolored and is now dark gray, white, and light gray, is cut in a very fine style characteristic of early Imperial work and probably dates to the early first century AD. Judging from the published description, a duplicate of the gem in glass was in the collection of Dr. Braun in Rome in 1845, but neither the original nor a cast can now be located.11

• 12 Inv. GR 1814.7‑4.415. The bronze was first published by de la Chausse, 1707, part 5, p. 121‑2; the (...)
• 13 Inv. Fr 1972; height: 7.5 cm. Friederichs, 1871, p. 422, no. 1972.

7A complete, sculptural version of the Hermes-cock is found in the extraordinary bronze statuette now in the British Museum, which in the eighteenth century was in the Chigi collection in Rome before being acquired by Charles Townley (fig. 4).12 The large (20.2 cm) standing figure has an enormous phallus. He holds a purse in his right hand, from which bells once hung, and another bell in the left hand. A bronze head now in the Antikensammlung in Berlin was likely detached from a similar bronze figure (fig. 5).13 Both bronze heads and the image on the gem surely represent the same subject, although there are minor differences, notably in the use of a human mouth, rather than a beak, on the two bronzes.

• 14 See the selection in Grant et al., 1975, p. 138‑143; Johns, 1982, p. 67‑71; and Varone, 2000, p. 18 (...)

8The bronzes were once suspended from chains and hung in homes or gardens, serving both as wind chimes (tintinnabula) and as amuletic good luck charms. The fashion for hanging bells was certainly current in the first century AD, the date of the Hermes-cock bronzes, judging from their style. Suetonius (Augustus, 91) notes that the emperor Augustus hung bells at the temple of Jupiter Tonans in Rome for good luck, and hanging bronze bells are well attested at Pompeii and Herculaneum. Most often the bells take the form of phallic charms in a variety of highly inventive compositions, including winged phallus-lions, dwarves with grotesque phalluses, and even a gladiator fighting his own lion-phallus.14

• 15 Burkert, 1985, p. 156.
• 16 Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. No. 27854; Grant et al., 1975, p. 134‑5; Johns, 1982, p. (...)
• 17 Grant et al., 1975, p. 141; Franken 2004.
• 18 Ortiz, 1994, no. 227; the bell also served as an oil lamp.
• 19 Varone, 2000, p. 14, fig. 1.

9Hermes is especially suited to his role as phallic charm, for his very origins are as a herm, an ithyphallic stone pillar, a primordial symbol of territorial demarcation around which a considerable body of Greek ritual developed.15 The various cult traditions, as well as the image itself, remained very much alive in first century Rome. The Chigi tintinnabulum was likely discovered in Rome, and other varieties of phallic Hermes were found at Pompeii and Herculaneum. One hanging bronze bell from Pompeii depicts Hermes as grotesquely ithyphallic and with four further phalluses springing from his head.16 On another example, the god rides an ithyphallic ram, another of the god’s animal symbols.17 A bronze from Herculaneum, now in the Ortiz collection, shows Hermes, denoted by his winged petasos, as a dwarf with multiple phalluses, including one with ram’s horns, from which many bells are suspended.18 A fresco at the entrance to a bakery in Pompeii (IX.12.6) continues the theme, providing Hermes with an enormous phallus, again as a symbol of good fortune and prosperity.19

• 20 Baird, 1981‑82, provides an extensive discussion of the topic, often far-fetched but with a conside (...)

10In Greece and Rome the cock had long been a symbol of fertility and eroticism (typically associated with the god Eros in Greek art) and had often been equated with the phallus itself. Indeed, such imagery never lost its popularity in Western popular culture.20 The tradition of equating Hermes with the cock was also very old and held multiple meanings, based both on ritual and on the bird’s phallic associations. The composite figure of the ithyphallic Hermes-cock, as represented by the Chigi and Berlin bronzes, appears to have been created in the late Hellenistic period, drawing on popular traditions, to serve as a symbol of good luck and protection from malevolent forces. The artist of this finely engraved gem drew on such sculptural prototypes. Working in the late Hellenistic traditions of the Augustan period, which favored the virtuosity of cutting frontally facing heads, he adapted the image for use as a seal.