What do Target and ancient Greek dirty tricks and political scandals have to do with one another?
I wouldn't have figured it out either, but listen my children and you will hear...
It all began with an dinner conversation I had with one of David's old friends, a professor at Amherst, last Fall. I was telling her about my work in progress- Tales of a Stone Pilgrim- the book. I told her the opening section is going to be called "Sculptural Assassination" from early days to the toppling of Ronaldhino's statue in Brazil after they lost the 2006 World Cup (have I mentioned that here yet???) She was fascinated. "Are you including the Herms?" she asked innocently. And off I went.
Seems that there were these squared-bodied pillars with heads on them and phalli sticking out (I mean HUGE ones) all over Greece. They were erected (if you'll excuse the expression) to honor Hermes, messenger of the gods (remember him with the wings on his feet? The statues look NOTHING like that!) But more than that, they were supposed to bring fertility and good fortune to the people and mark roads and boundaries (and hence guard travlers) all over Greece. They also deliniated boundaries between farmers' properties.
415BCE. The morning papers screamed in 50 point type above the fold- "Herms destroyed! Athens doomed!" (OKOKOK- if they had AM papers in those days, that's what they would look like.)
Earliest rumors said the culprits were drunks- either students or the ordinary kind out on a spress. But it wasn't long before the conspiracy theorists moved in.
All the Herms in Athens were castrated just as the Athenian fleet was setting sail to Syracuse in the Peloponnesian War. Disaster! You just don't do something like that to the god who's protecting your soldiers. It would be like beheading St Christopher (when he was still a saint) just before a big trip. So the finger pointing began- an orgy far worse that the lowest of Republican smear campaigns ensued and the number one suspect was, of course, the Eleusinian Cult. They were the peaceniks of the day, so it was obvious they should be blamed.
But, wait! There were other theories as well! The Herms were "squares" (and they were referred to as such by iconoclasts...) and they represented the comman man- the peasants. They were real populist art (like George Segal's statues are now). So there was also a theory that an underground organization of aristocrats downed them as a first strike in the fight against democracy.
Although there are plenty of contemporary sources about the demise of the herms, no one has been definitively targeted as the ringleader, even though Alcibiades (the Athenian statesman and general)was eventually tried in absentia and sentenced to death for it. He had originally asked to stand trial and defend himself before going to battle, but he was sent off to fight the war first by his enemies. The rest is history.
How does this all tie in with Target, that iconic American retail chain? Well, it seems that since 2004, the store has been ringing itself with red globes and one intrepid blogger asked "Like Greek Herms, Do Red Spheres Demarcate Target Boundaries?" Mike, the blogger, posited that Target was posting boundaries between them and the rest of the world. Or maybe they were just decorating their properties.
