Page:Greek and Roman Mythology.djvu/182

 168 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY Mercurius may have been at first that particular one of the Indigetes who was considered the god of merx and mercatura, i.e. the spirit of ' traffic.' By being identified with Hermes he became, for the first time, a fully devel- oped god. But since he always remained far more ex- clusively the god of merchants than Hermes was, the money bag was his constant attribute in Italy. The case was similar with Hercules : Herakles, the favorite son of Zeus, and the dispenser of rural fruitful- ness, was confused with the begetting Genius of Juppiter (who was supposed to have a Genius just as truly as every man had). Thus characterized he was united in wedlock with that Juno who represented the creative power of woman. But afterwards the purely Grecian form of the myth was so completely intermingled with this exclusively Italian conception that, in view of the enmity prevailing between Hera and Herakles, all sorts of contradictions resulted. 217. On the contrary, the worship of Ceres at Kome was purely Greek. To be sure the name is closely connected with crescere and creare, but the divine per- son was no more nor less than Demeter, who under that name was introduced into Kome in 496 B.C., and whose worship was so little altered in form that even in Rome her priestesses were required to be Greek women. Still older, but likewise purely Greek, was the worship of Apollo, in whose honor the ludl Apollinares were cele- brated on the 13th of July after 212 B.C., in consequence of an oracle of the Sibylline books. Dls pater, likewise, the ruler of the lower world, and the husband of Proser- pina, was Pluto-Hades, appropriated bodily and un-