A singular form of a squared stone pillar topped with a bust of Hermes or another deity, used as a boundary marker in ancient Greece.
Directly from Greek 'herma,' singular of 'hermae,' derived from Hermes, the god of boundaries; the Romans adopted this Greek practice and the term along with it.
Archeologists still find hermai (the plural) buried around ancient Greek properties—they're like ancient 'No Trespassing' signs carved in stone, revealing exactly where property lines were thousands of years ago.
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