MERCURY. - An ancient Roman divinity, who appears in the earliest lists of the twelve gods. The very name Mercurius (from merx, mercari) gives clear reason for the god's original character — as protector of commerce — whose cult received impetus not only from Rome's relations with Cumae and Sicily, but above all when there entered Rome the Ἔρμης ἐμπόλαος, that is Hermes (v.) protector of merchants, whose other qualities he also assimilated.
M. was worshiped especially by merchants, who celebrated his feast on 15 May (feriae Iovi Mercurio Maiae), on which fell the anniversary of the dedication of his temple, erected in 495 B.C. near the Circus Maximus. In the same year as the dedication, according to tradition (Livy, V, 13, 6), the public grain supply was organized and a special guild was instituted (collegia, which later spread widely in Italy and beyond) of merchants, called now mercatores, now mercuriales, having their seat in the pomorium. These, on the Ides of May, used to sprinkle themselves with laurel branches dipped in the fons Mercurii, near the Porta Capena (not far from the temple), praying the god to "wash" them of the lies told in the adjoining forums in the exercise of their trade (Ovid, Fasti, V, 670 ff.). The image of M. is found for the first time on the aes grave of the mid-4th century, here too an evident imitation of the Greek Hermes: a youthful, beardless face, a petasus furnished with two small wings.
Altheim, on the other hand, holds that the name Mercurius was originally the name of a gens Mercuria, of which Hermes would have been in Etruria the gentilicial god, and that therefore both M. and the Greek god were later introduced into Rome by the Etruscans themselves.
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Cesare D'Onofrio