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.
[450] See ‘Achæis, or Ethnology,’ sect. iv.
There is one other point connected with him, which, tending to mark that he had somewhat recently become known to the Greeks, agrees with other indications of his introduction from beyond sea. He figures, indeed, in legends as old as Hercules and Pelops[451]; and we do not receive any account of his infancy, as we do of the infancy of Dionysus and of Vulcan. But we may observe that, whenever he assumes human form, it is the form of one scarcely emerging from boyhood. In the last Iliad, he is a πρῶτον ὑπηνήτης, in the fairest flower of youth[452]. And in the Tenth Odyssey, where he makes his second and only other appearance to a mortal, the same line is repeated in order to describe his appearance, as if it were an established formula for himself, and not merely adapted to a particular occasion. Indeed it may reasonably be questioned, whether such adaptation exists at all. A very young person was not the most appropriate conductor for Priam, on such an errand as that which he had undertaken: nor the best instructor in the mode of coping with the formidable Circe. Therefore, without laying too much stress upon the point, the meaning of the youthful appearance seems to be, that he was young in the Greek Olympus.