Mercury- Roman GodDeity"Messenger of the Gods"

The Cattle Thief

On the day of his birth, the infant Mercury crept from his cradle and stole Apollo's sacred cattle, driving them backward so their hoofprints pointed the wrong way. When Apollo tracked him down and confronted the newborn, Mercury had already fashioned a lyre from a tortoise shell. He played it. Apollo, god of music, had never heard such a sound. He traded his anger and his cattle for the instrument.

In the Amphitryon, Plautus makes Mercury Jupiter's accomplice in a scheme of impersonation and adultery. Mercury addresses the audience directly, delighted by the chaos.

Argus

In the Metamorphoses, Jupiter sent Mercury to kill Argus, the hundred-eyed giant who guarded Jupiter's captive lover Io. Mercury did not attack. He disguised himself as a goatherd, sat down beside the giant, and began to talk. He told stories. He played his reed pipe. One by one, Argus's hundred eyes closed. When the last one shut, Mercury struck with his curved sword.

Juno set Argus's eyes in the tail of the peacock. The giant died so that Mercury could free a girl Jupiter had turned into a cow.

Mercury in Carthage

Jupiter looked down and saw Aeneas building towers for Dido instead of sailing for Italy. He sent Mercury. In the Aeneid, Virgil describes the god's descent: Mercury dived from Olympus like a seabird skimming the waves, his winged sandals carrying him to Carthage.

He found Aeneas on Dido's walls, dressed in Tyrian purple. Mercury delivered Jupiter's command: leave Carthage, sail for Italy, found the city fate requires. Aeneas stood speechless, his hair on end. That night he ordered the fleet prepared in secret.

The Mercuralia

Romans built Mercury's temple on the Aventine Hill in 495 BCE, among the shops and warehouses of the commercial quarter. According to Livy, the Senate gave the dedication not to a consul but to the centurion Marcus Laetorius, chosen by the people. A guild of merchants, the mercuriales, formed around the temple and took responsibility for the god's worship.

His festival fell on May 15. Merchants went to a sacred spring near the Porta Capena, dipped laurel branches in the water, and sprinkled their merchandise and their own heads. They prayed for good trading in the year ahead and for forgiveness of any lies they had told in business. In the Fasti, Ovid gives their prayer: grant me profits, and make it pleasant that I cheated the buyer.