Cult of Gods

Mercury

Roman tradition. See the whole pantheon.

Domains
trade, messengers, travellers
Symbols and attributes
Winged cap; caduceus
Parents (per the sources used)
Jupiter
Giacomo Caneva, photograph of a statue of Jupiter in the Campana collection, 1850s.
Giacomo Caneva, photograph of a statue of Jupiter in the Campana collection, 1850s.

Key myth

A god of merchants, whose temple was dedicated in 495 BCE near the Circus Maximus. His name is related to merx, 'merchandise'.

Greek counterpart: Hermes on thegreekgods.org. Roman and Greek versions share names and stories in many places but began as different cults.

Primary sources

  • Livy II.21

All sources for the Roman pantheon

Lineage in the sources used: Jupiter, Saturn, Ops.

Place in the family graph

Choose a deity to see where it comes from. Dashed lines are links the sources describe that are not parent and child.

SaturnOpsJanusJupiterJunoNeptunePluto / Dis PaterCeresVestaQuirinusMinervaApolloDianaMercuryBacchus / LiberMarsVulcanVenus

More traditions

Odin rides to Hel, W. G. Collingwood, after the Poetic Edda.NorsePapyrus of Ani, British Museum (New Kingdom), a Book of the Dead.EgyptianA chaos monster and a sun god, drawn by L. Gruner for A. H. Layard's Monuments of Nineveh.MesopotamianVishvarupa Vishnu, Kashmir or Himachal, in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art collection.Hindu

Elsewhere in the world

Deities in other traditions who share a theme with Mercury: trickery, boundaries and travel. This is overlap in one area only.

Norse

Loki

trickery, shape-changing

Egyptian

Seth

storm, desert, chaos

Mesopotamian

Enki / Ea

fresh water, wisdom, craft

Japanese (Shinto)

Susanoo

storms, the sea (in some versions), the land of Izumo

Yoruba (Orisha)

Èṣù

crossroads, messenger, communication

Compare across cultures