Prayer to Mercury

The fifteenth of May, the festival of Mercury. A trader comes to the spring by the Porta Capena, draws water with a laurel branch, sprinkles his goods and himself — and prays. It is the most shameless prayer in this corpus.

He asks first for absolution for the past: wash away the perjuries of the day now gone. But it emerges at once that no repentance is intended — he asks for the future as well: "and let the gods above take no notice of anything I may say". Absolution is requested in advance and in bulk.

In the middle of this he says outright that he called to witness "the empty divinity of Jupiter, who will not hear". He tells one god to his face that the other gods are deaf and that oaths by them mean nothing. The blasphemy is not a slip but part of the transaction: Mercury is the god of profit, and one speaks to him in his own language.

The conclusion matches: "only give me profits, give me joy in profit made, and see that I enjoy having cheated the buyer".

What here is rite and what is Ovid. The washing at Mercury's spring on the Ides of May is an attested practice. The words, however, come from Ovid alone, and he puts them in the mouth of an unnamed merchant rather than quoting them as a formula. How much is record and how much satire on a class, there is no way to determine.