Mercury

Mercury. Classical commentators used the name of this Roman god of commerce, travel, and thievery (Greek counterpart, Hermes) to denote what was apparently the most popular god in Roman-occupied Gaul and Britain. Through their imperial-minded interpretatio romana (see GAUL), the Romans simply ignored the native divine name and substituted their correlative. The vast number of depictions and descriptions of him, however, give us an outline of his cult. Julius Caesar remarks that Mercury was the inventor of all the arts, one of several reasons he is thought comparable to the Irish Lug Lámfhota and the Welsh Lleu Llaw Gyffes. Caesar also describes his money-making abilities; he is a god of commercial success and plenty. The Celtic propensity for triplism is evident in his iconography, both triple-faced and triple-phallused. Several important shrines survive, most notable in the Vosges mountains of eastern France. Sometimes he is shown to be horned, and sometimes he is the consort of Rosmerta, an indigenous deity.

Despite the Roman indifference to providing Mercury with a native name, modern commentators favour two choices. One is Lugos/Lugus, a name found in inscriptions and implicit in the Roman town name of Lug(u)dunum, the root of such modern sites as Lyon, Laon, Loudon, Leiden, Léon, and Liegnitz. Lugos also links Mercury more firmly with Lug Lámfhota, Lleu Llaw Gyffes, and the festival of Lughnasa. A second possibility is Erriapus, a deity of southern Gaul.

Additionally, at many sites Mercury takes on different epithets, implying almost a separate identity, notably Artaios [bear], Moccus [pig, boar], and Visucius. Other epithets, denoting shades of differing identity, are Arvernus, Cissonius, and Gebrinius. And despite the lack of a shared epithet, Mercury may also be linked to Teutates, the Gaulish war-god. Lastly, although never linked directly to Cúchulainn, Gaulish Mercury may find echoes in that hero's first name, Setanta.

Bibliography

See Jan de Vries , La Religion des Celtes (Paris, 1963), 48–63;
Paul-Marie Duval , Les Dieux de la Gaule (Paris, 1976), 69–71;
Waldemar Deonna , ‘Trois, superlatif absolu: à propos du taureau tricornu et de Mercure triphallique’, L’Antiquité Classique, 23 (1954), 403–28;
J. Santrot , ‘Le Mercure phallique du Mas-Agenais et un dieu stylite inédit’, Gallia, 44 (1986), fasc. 2, pp. 203–28.