Pin It

The bust of Hermes in Russell Edington’s living room, identifies him with that god.

According to Wikipedia, ” The Homeric hymn to Hermes invokes him as the one “of many shifts (polytropos), blandly cunning, a robber, a cattle driver, a bringer of dreams, a watcher by night, a thief at the gates, one who was soon to show forth wonderful deeds among the deathless gods.” He is the guide to the Underworld,  the patron of boundaries and travelers, shepherds, herds, thieves, liars, orators, and commerce. He invented several musical instruments including the lyre, the forerunner to the modern harp. Before he was reduced to being Zeus’s errand boy, Hermes was a trickster god and the original sandman, waking and inducing sleep with the touch of his caduseus.

This aspect of Hermes is reflected in True Blood with the emphasis on sleep at Russell’s palace. When Bill arrives at the palace Russell and Talbot put him to bed. During Bill’s second night at the palace, Russell does something extremely odd. After telling Bill to ‘sleep on’ the things they’ve been discussing, he touches his pointed index finger to Bill’s forehead. This is the sandman inducing sleep, bringing Bill the dream that will induce him to change his mind and his loyalties.

One myth that is probably going to come into play is the one about Hermes stealing Apollo’s herd of cattle. There has been a lot of speculation that Russell may have killed Eric’s father Ulfric and stolen a pack of werewolves that he controlled and used for military purposes.

The idea of Russell Edington being the patron of travelers is like Sam’s mother’s repeated declaration that her family are not alcoholics. The very oldest pre-Olympian Hermes was represented by  carved phallic  stones which were used as boundary markers. One night all these stones in Athens were vandalized. That act set in to motion the events, which led to the execution of Socrates when his pupil, Alcibiades, was implicated in the crime. This bit of history is especially worth noting since Charlaine Harris links Alcide with Alcibiades in a number of ways. First she uses the real Alcibiades’s family and  political history as the basis for Alcide’s. She then uses Plato’s fictionalized jealous romantically confused version as the basis for Alcide’s chaotic lovelife and alludes to Shakespeare’s Alcibiades who searches for the lost  Bill Timon. The first night at Club Dead when Alcide introduced Sookie to Debbie, twice she is called a prostitute, first by Debbie and later in the thoughts of one of the patrons, alluding to the two acerbic prostitutes who accompanied Alcibiades in Timon of Athens.

Herveux isn’t an authentic surname, so what meaning can be derived from this made up name? ‘Her’ could be traced to Hera the same way etymologists link the first part of the  name “Hercules’ with the goddess, and ‘veux’ is French for calf. Alcide’s name indicates that he is the one who is watching over Hera’s Bill’s heifer, Sookie, while he’s away, just like Argus did for Hera. Remember that the possible involvement of Alcibiades in the vandalism against Hermes’s phallic monuments led to the execution of Socrates? Is Alcide implicated in  Talbot’s death or the destruction of the palace? Is this what leads to Eric being brought before the magister? . The name Sookie, is used as a cow call in the South to this day. Alcide better watch his back because Russell Hermes killed Argus.

So if Russell is the messenger god Hermes, does the bust in Bill’s office of Artemis in Bill’s study link him with the goddess of the moon and the hunt?

What about the bronze in Eric’s office?

*In the Sookie Stackhouse novels, Alcide was one of Eric’s alter egos, but in the episode 3 postmortem,  writer Alexander Woo says that Alide’s character parallels Bill’s in True Blood.

updated 6/30/10