Horacio, Vir Mercurialis

Abstract

We examine the Mercury's configuration in Horace's poetry. Although it is partiallyinherited from Homeric tradition and Greek hymnody, its presence in the poet from Venusa goes beyond the Hellenic archetype, and when it is received sorne features are purified, already mitigated and improved from the Satires, to end up in the Odes, where Mercury also acquires so6 me new features created by his personal experiences or others of unsuspected polí­tical nature associated with August [Ode 1,2]