In a charming little hymn, Horace celebrates Mercury, the messenger of the Gods, and some of his many other attributes: he was the patron of speech, the lyre, thievery, mischief and deception, as well as the guide of the souls of the dead down to the underworld. His attribute as the god of commerce, probably the first that a Roman would have thought of, is not mentioned, a clue that Horace is very much in Greek mode here. An ancient commentator (Porphyrio) tells us that this ode was based on a poem in praise of Hermes by Alcaeus, one of Horace’s Greek models, the first stanza of which has survived and, like this ode, is in Sapphic metre.
In Homer’s Iliad, a disguised Mercury was King Priam’s guide when he left Troy on a dangerous mission to the camp of the Greek besiegers to persuade Achilles to allow him to ransom the body of his great son, Hector.
See the illustrated blog post here.
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