t always for
business, they became the patrons of the travelling merchant. It was
also natural that they should go with the settlers away from the
mother-city into the new colony. Thus it was that they came from the
mother-land into the colonies of Magna Graecia in Southern Italy, and
once being established there made their way slowly but inevitably
northwards. The story of Hermes, under the name of Mercury, belongs to a
later chapter, but that of Herakles = Hercules must be recounted here.
It is only within the last few years that the scholarly world has been
persuaded that there was no such thing as an original Italic Hercules;
at first sight it was very difficult to believe, because there seemed to
be so many apparently very old Italic legends centering in Hercules. But
it has been shown, either that these legends never existed and rest
solely upon false interpretation of monuments, or that, though they did
exist at an early date, they were introduced under Greek influence. It
was the trading merchant therefore who brought Herakles northward. And
as the god went, his name was softened into Hercules, and with the
assimilation of the name to the tongue of the Italic people, there went
hand in hand an adaptation of his nature to their needs, so that by
degrees he became thoroughly italicised both in form and content. It is
probable that the cult came into Rome as well as into the other cities
of Latium, but in Rome it was confined to a few individuals, and at
first obtained no public recognition. On the contrary, for reasons that
we are at a loss to find, this Greek cult seems to have reached very
large proportions in the little town of Tibur (Tivoli), fourteen miles
north-east of Rome. There it dominated all other worship and lost so
much of its foreign atmosphere that it became thoroughly latinised. In
the course of time the Roman state acknowledged this Tivoli cult of
Hercules and accepted a branch of it as its own. But the extraordinary
thing about this acknowledgment is that the Romans felt it to be a Latin
and not a foreign cult. They showed this intimate and friendly feeling
by permitting an altar to Hercules to be erected within the city proper,
in the Forum Boarium. But in order to understand the significance of
this act a word of digression is necessary.

Under the old Roman regime every act of life was performed under the
supervision of the gods, and this godly patronage was especially
emphasised in acts whic