You will recollect the name from the common woolly rush "eriophorum"
which has a cloud of silky seed; and note also that he wears
distinctively the flap cap, petasos, named from a word meaning "to
expand;" which shaded from the sun, and is worn on journeys. You have
the epithet of mountains "cloud-capped" as an established form with every
poet, and the Mont Pilate of Lucerne is named from a Latin word
signifying specially a woollen cap; but Mercury has, besides, a general
Homeric epithet, curiously and intensely concentrated in meaning, "the
profitable or serviceable by wool,"* that is to say, by shepherd wealth;
hence, "pecuniarily," rich or serviceable, and so he passes at last into
a general mercantile deity; while yet the cloud sense of the wool is
retained by Homer always, so that he gives him this epithet when it would
otherwise have been quite meaningless (in Iliad, xxiv. 440), when he
drives Priam's chariot, and breathes force into his horses, precisely as
we shall find Athena drive Diomed; and yet the serviceable and profitable
sense--and something also of gentle and soothing character in the mere
wool-softness, as used for dress, and religious rites--is retained also
in the epithet, and thus the gentle and serviceable Hermes is opposed to
the deceitful one.
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