Mercury

Mercury’s temple was dedicated on the Aventine Hill in 495 BCE, near the Circus Maximus and the commercial districts along the Tiber. The location was deliberate. Mercury was the god of merchants, and his temple stood where the merchants worked. The Latin mercator (merchant), merx (goods), and merces (wages) all derive from his name.

The Guide

Mercury carried the caduceus, a staff wound with two serpents, and wore winged sandals and a winged hat. He moved between worlds: Olympus, earth, and the underworld. His role as psychopompos, guide of the dead, made him the last god a Roman would encounter. He led souls to the river Styx. The image of a winged messenger carrying the dead is older than Rome and survived into Christian art, where angels inherited the function.

The Germanic Mercury

Tacitus, writing in 98 CE, said the Germanic peoples “chiefly worship Mercury, and count it no sin to win his favor on certain days even by human sacrifices.” The identification was based on the interpretatio Romana, matching foreign gods to Roman equivalents. Tacitus’s “Mercury” was almost certainly Odin/Woden: a god of wisdom, poetry, the dead, and sacrifice. Wednesday (Wōdnesdæg, Woden’s day) is the Germanic calque of dies Mercurii, Mercury’s day.

Gaul

Caesar reported that Mercury was the most worshipped god among the Gauls, “inventor of all arts, guide on roads and journeys, and the most influential for making money.” The Gallo-Roman Mercury was a hybrid figure who absorbed local Celtic gods. Over 400 inscriptions to Mercury survive from Roman Gaul, more than any other deity.