Mercury Hellenic and Phœnician.
The Phœnician origin of Mercury will also account for his position in the poems, in relation to the Trojans and Greeks respectively. Not simply is he one of the five Hellenizing deities: for his talents would naturally with Homer tend to place him on that side. But he appears almost wholly unknown to the Trojans. The abundance of the flocks of Phorbas is indeed referred to his love (Il. xiv. 490): and he reveals himself to Priam by his name (Il. xxiv. 460): but it is remarkable, and contrary to the general rule of the poems, that Priam, notwithstanding his great obligations, takes no notice whatever of his deity, either upon his first revelation and departure, or when a second time he appears, and afterwards quits him anew (682–94).
On the other hand, we have abundant signs of his familiarity with the Greeks. He conveys the sceptre from Jupiter to Pelops: he carries the warning of the gods to Ægisthus: sacrifice is offered to him in Ithaca: and he is liberally treated with sacrifices by Autolycus in Parnesus, where he repays his worshipper by bestowing on him the arts of perjury and purloining[447].
Now it is plain, from many places in the poems, that the Greeks had much intercourse with the Phœnicians. On the other hand, the Trojans, wealthy by internal products and home trade, seem to have known little or nothing of maritime commerce. Their intercourse with Thrace, the fertile Thrace that furnished a contingent of allies, required no more than that they should have the means of crossing the Straits of Gallipoli. We nowhere hear that they had a port or harbour. A Phœnician deity would therefore, of course, be on the Achæan side during the war.
Independently of such an origin, he might, in his usual capacity of agent, have been with perfect propriety sent to Calypso: but his mythical relationship to her as a nephew, and her evident connection with Phœnician traditions, give a peculiar propriety to his employment on this errand.
Another passage of the Odyssey seems, however, to place this relationship beyond doubt. Ulysses, in the Twelfth Book, recounts to Alcinous the transaction that occurred in the Olympian Assembly after his crew had slain the oxen of the Sun. On that occasion, the offended deity declared that, unless he got compensation, he would go down and shine in the realm of Aides; upon which Jupiter at once promised to destroy the ship of Ulysses. ‘This,’ adds Ulysses, ‘I heard from Calypso, and she told me that she had herself heard it from Mercury[448].’
Now this was no affair of Calypso’s; none, that is, on which the gods could make a communication to her in regard to Ulysses: but it was one in which, from her passion for the hero, she would take a natural interest, and on which she might well obtain information from a deity who was her relative. Nor does it appear on what other ground Mercury should be named, as the person who brought her this extra-official report.
Again, it is probably on account of his Phœnician connection, that the intervention of Mercury is employed in the Tenth Odyssey[449], to supply Ulysses with the instructions that were necessary, in order to enable him to cope with Circe.
For we are here in the midst of a cluster of traditions, which we have every reason to presume to be wholly Phœnician[450]. It is the cluster, which occupies the outer circle of the geography of the Odyssey: and it is severed from the Grecian world and experience, not only by a geographical line, but by an entire change in mythological relations. From the time when Ulysses enters that circle in the beginning of the Ninth Book, until his appearance near Scheria, on the outskirt of the known familiar sphere, his ancient friend Minerva nowhere attends him: and there are four whole books without even a mention of the goddess, who, except for this interval, stands prominently forth in almost every page of the Odyssey. The divine aid is given to him, during this period, through Circe and Calypso; while Mercury is appointed to command the latter, and to enable Ulysses to overcome the former. Both the company and the traditions, amidst which Mercury is found, thus invite us to presume that he is a deity of Phœnician importation into Greece.
Mercury recent in Greece.