Prayer to Mercury

The opening of the satire about the Sabine farm, which Horace received as a gift from Maecenas. Three prayers from this poem stand together in this corpus: this one, mercurius-002, and the address to Janus of the Morning (janus-003).

The request is single and entirely worldly: "I ask nothing further … except that you make these gifts my own". Propria is a term of property law: not "may I have them" but "may they become mine by right". The poet has been given land by his patron and asks the god to perfect his title.

Mercury is precisely the right choice. He is the god of gain, of windfall, of everything that comes to a man from outside and without labour; Maecenas' gift falls squarely within his department.

Faxis for feceris is an archaic form, already antique in Horace's day. Even in a satire conversational in tone, prayer shifts into the language of ritual: one asks in the old way, whatever one is asking for.