In Greek religion, a sacred stone object connected with the worship of Hermes. Herms were used as cult objects, for milestones, and for boundary markers. In time, these stones were replaced by pillars topped with a likeness of the head of Hermes or by statues of the god. In Roman sculpture the heads of Jupiter or the forest god Silvanus were often substituted.

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For the piano piece by Iannis Xenakis, see Herma (Xenakis).

In ancient Greece, before his role as protector of merchants and travelers, Hermes was a phallic god, associated with fertility, luck, roads and borders. His name comes from the word herma (plural hermai) referring to a square or rectangular pillar of stone, terracotta, or bronze; a bust of Hermes' head, usually with a beard, sat on the top of the pillar, and male genitals adorned the base. The hermai were used as boundary markers on roads and borders. In Athens, they were placed outside houses for good luck. [The male genitals would be rubbed or anointed with olive oil to obtain luck]. This superstition persists, for example in the Porcellino bronze boar sculpture (and numerous others like it round the world), where the nose is shiny from being continually touched for good luck or fertility.

In 415 BC, on the night before the Athenian fleet was about to set sail for Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War (see Sicilian Expedition), all of the Athenian hermai were vandalized. This was a horribly impious act and many people believed it threatened the success of the expedition. Though it was never proven, the Athenians at the time believed it was the work of saboteurs, either from Syracuse or anti-war doves from Athens itself. In fact, Alcibiades was accused of being the originator of the crime. He denied the accusations and offered to stand trial, but the Athenians did not want to disrupt the expedition any further. His opponents were eager to have Alcibiades' trial in his absence when he could not defend himself. Once he had left on the expedition, his political enemies had him charged and sentenced to death in absentia, both for the mutilation of the herms, and the supposedly related crime of profaning the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Art and popular culture

In February 2007, a group of University of Chicago students fashioned a set of life-size hermai out of ice and placed them around their campus in the middle of the night as a prank.

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