Hermes "dio dell'albero" tra documentazione micenea e tradizione greca

The tablet Tn 316 registers a long list of offerings to sanctuaries and deities worshipped in the Mycenaean kingdom of Pylos: among these deities e-ma-a2 a-re-ja appears. While the scholars generally identify ema-a2 with the god Hermes, the interpretation of a-re-ja is uncertain. A very common theory interprets the word as *Areías, noun derived from the stem are-, whose etymology would go back to the root ar- of Ares and the semantic field of war: e-ma-a2 a-re-ja would mean Hermes «the warrior». Though this hypothesis is linguistically credible, it clashes with the Greek documentation, where the ties of Hermes with the war are very weak and seem to be due to the god’s relationship with the athletic and military education of the ephebes. Such a difficulty leads to review the interpretation of a-re-ja in the light of a historical-religious approach more careful in examining the Hermes’ functions and field of action. In particular, the presence in the Greek language of the noun aría/aréa (Quercus ilex, «holm-oak»), derived from a stem are-, homograph to the theonym Ares’ one, suggests to interpret e-ma-a2 a-re-ja as Hermes «of the holm-oak» on the example of Hermes Kedritas («of the cedar-tree») attested at Kato Syme (Crete). The hypothesis seems to be confirmed by the relationship of Hermes with a long series of trees: cedar-tree, wild-strawberry, wild-olive, prînos, a kind of oak very similar to the aría and often confused with it in the ancient texts. The last part of the article aims to indentify the “natural” and “cultural” features which join these trees and explain their association with Hermes.