urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0013.tlg004.perseus-eng2
Then he went on from task to task: first he cut up the rich, fatted meat, and pierced it with wooden spits, and roasted flesh and the honorable chine and the paunch full of dark blood all together. He laid them there upon the ground, and spread out the hides on a rugged rock:
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0013.tlg004.perseus-eng2
and so they are still there many ages afterwards, a long, long time after all this, and are continuallyO. Muller thinks the “hides” were a stalactite formation in the “Cave of Nestor” near Messenian Pylos, —though the cave of Hermes is near the Alpheus (1. 139). Others suggest that actual skins were shown as relics before some cave near Triphylian Pylos.. Next glad-hearted Hermes dragged the rich meats he had prepared and put them on a smooth, flat stone, and divided them into twelve portions distributed by lot, making each portion wholly honorable.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0013.tlg004.perseus-eng2
Then glorious Hermes longed for the sacrificial meat, for the sweet savour wearied him, god though he was; nevertheless his proud heart was not prevailed upon to devour the flesh, although he greatly desired.Gemoll explains that Hermes, having offered all the meat as sacrifice to the Twelve Gods, remembers that he himself as one of them must be content with the savour instead of the substance of the sacrifice. Can it be that by eating he would have forfeited the position he claimed as one of the Twelve Gods? But he put away in the high-roofed byre
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0013.tlg004.perseus-eng2
the fat and all the flesh, placing them high up to be a token of his youthful theft. And after that he gathered dry sticks and utterly destroyed with fire all the hoofs and all the heads. And when the god had duly finished all, he threw his sandals into deep-eddying Alpheus,
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0013.tlg004.perseus-eng2
and quenched the embers, covering the black ashes with sand, and so spent the night while Selene's soft light shone down. Then the god went straight back again at dawn to the bright crests of Cyllene, and no one met him on the long journey either of the blessed gods or mortal men,
