Classical Mythology

ROMAN MYTHOLOGY AND SAGA 639

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Guardian of mountains and woods, virgin, you who, when called upon three

times, hear women laboring in childbirth, three-formed goddess, let the pine

that overshadows my villa be yours, to which I will gladly sacrifice at the end

of each year the blood of a boar as it prepares the sideways slash [of its tusk].

At Aricia the resurrected Hippolytus was identified with the minor Italian

divinity, Virbius, and associated with Diana. Both Vergil and Ovid tell his story,

in which he is put under the protection of the nymph Egeria, and Vergil sug-

gests that it was because of his violent death in a chariot crash that horses were

excluded from Diana's shrine.

MERCURY
In early Rome the god Mercury (Mercurius) was worshiped as a god of trading
and profit (the Latin word merces means "merchandise"), and his temple stood
by the Circus Maximus in the busiest commercial center of Rome. As a charac-
ter in Plautus' play Amphitruo, he describes himself still as the god of commerce
and gain. As he came to be identified with the Greek Hermes, however, he ac-
quired Hermes' other functions—musician, messenger of Jupiter, and escort of
the dead. Horace, who elsewhere called himself mercurialis, that is, a lyric poet
under the special protection of Mercury, inventor of the lyre, addressed a hymn
to Mercury that elegantly combines his functions (Odes 1. 10):

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Mercury, eloquent grandson of Atlas, who with language and the rules of the

well-mannered gymnasium cleverly fashioned the crude manners of new-made

humankind, of you shall I sing, messenger of great lupiter and the gods, in-

ventor of the curved lyre, clever at concealing with light-hearted theft whatever

you like. Apollo laughed at you when he found his quiver missing as he threat-

ened you, a child, unless you returned his stolen cattle. Indeed, with you as

guide rich Priam left Troy and unnoticed passed by the proud sons of Atreus,

the watch-fires of the Thessalians, and the enemy camp. You bring back the souls

of the good to the blessed fields; and with your golden wand you restrain the

weightless crowd [of ghosts of the dead], welcome to the gods on high and in

the Underworld.

Thus the Roman Mercury adopts the functions that were described in the
Homeric Hymn to Hermes (see Chapter 12), in Priam's journey to the tent of
Achilles in Book 24 of the Iliad, and in escorting the dead suitors to the Under-
world in the opening lines of Book 24 of the Odyssey (where the "golden wand"
of Hermes is described).

DIVINITIES OF DEATH AND THE UNDERWORLD

We have already seen (in Chapter 15) something of the Roman idea of the Un-
derworld and its system of rewards and punishments. This conception, which
is found principally in Vergil, is literary and sophisticated, derived from differ-