Mercury’s Golden Axe

Mercury’s Golden Axe is the first of three axes raised from a deep river pool by Mercury in a fable about honesty and greed. The Workman’s refusal to claim the gold as his own earns him both the golden and silver axes in addition to the tool he lost; when a companion stages the same loss and falsely claims the gold, he receives nothing and loses his own axe as well.

The Lost Axe and the Test

A Workman felling wood beside a river accidentally drops his axe into a deep pool. Deprived of the means of his livelihood, he sits on the bank and laments his hard fate. Mercury appears and asks the cause of his tears. After hearing what happened, he dives into the stream and returns with a golden axe, asking whether it is the lost tool. The Workman says it is not his.

Mercury submerges himself a second time and brings up a silver axe. The Workman again refuses to claim it. Only on Mercury’s third dive does the Workman recognize and claim his own axe, expressing joy at its recovery. The sequence makes the golden axe a test before it becomes a reward: its value lies not only in its precious material, but in the truthful answer it elicits.

Reward and Counterfeit

Pleased by the Workman’s honesty, Mercury gives him the golden and silver axes as well as his own. The lost tool is thus restored, and the Workman returns home with two additional axes. The gift turns a moment of deprivation into unexpected gain, but only after he has distinguished what belongs to him from what does not.

When the Workman tells his companions what happened, one resolves to secure the same good fortune for himself. He runs to the river, deliberately throws his axe into the pool at the same place, and sits down to weep. Mercury appears as he hoped and raises the golden axe. This time the claimant seizes it greedily and declares that it is the very axe he lost.

Consequence and Meaning

Mercury is displeased by the companion’s knavery. He takes away the golden axe and refuses even to recover the axe the man threw into the pool. The contrast between accidental loss and staged loss, and between truthful recognition and greedy falsehood, gives the object its narrative force: the golden axe exposes the difference between honesty and an attempt to imitate its reward. Unlike the first Workman, the companion ends with less than he began with, having lost both the promised prize and the tool he sacrificed in pursuit of it.