Mercury1.0000_Reid

Mercury.
The italic patron god of circulation, received his first Roman temple on the Aventine in 459 BCE. Mercury (or Mercurius) may have been transformed almost directly from the Greek tradition. "If all the evidence for his cult...is taken together, he emerges, like the Greek Hermes, as the patron god of circulation, the movement of goods, people, and words and their roles. Mediator between gods and mortals, between the dead and the living, and always in motion, Mercury is also a deceiver, since he moves on the boundaries and in the intervening space; he is patron of the shopkeeper as much as the trader, the taveller as well as the brigand." (Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th ed. [Scheld])
      Because post-classical culture does not carefully distinguish between Hermes and Mercury, find the OGCMA's usages of "Mercury" primarily gathered under "Hermes.