Cult figures of Hermes, the god of flocks and herds, have been found in a number of sanctuaries throughout the Greek Peloponnese. Here the god takes on the mantle of the common herder and carries a ram under his left arm for sacrifice.
The statuette is known as Hermes kriophoros, ‘the ram bearer’: it was said that the god averted the plague at Tanagra in Boeotia by carrying a ram around the city walls. According to the writer Pausanias, the Tanagrans asked the sculptor Kalamis to make them a statue of Hermes the Ram Bearer. The event was celebrated annually in the city during the festival for the god and re-enacted by a beautiful adolescent boy in Tanagra.
