Picus

Last updated
Picus Luca Giordano - Picus and Circe.jpg
Picus

Picus was a figure in Roman mythology, the first king of Latium. He was the son of Saturn, also known as Stercutus. He was the founder of the first Latin tribe and settlement, Laurentum, located a few miles to the Southeast of the site of the later city of Rome. [1] He was known for his skill at augury and horsemanship. According to Festus he got his name as a consequence of the fact that he used to rely on a woodpecker for the purpose of divination. Picus was also described to be quite handsome, sought after by nymphs and naiads. The witch Circe attempted to seduce him with her charms and herbs while he was on a hunting trip, but he savagely rejected her. She turned him into a woodpecker for scorning her love. When his comrades accused Circe of her crime and demanded Picus' release, she turned them too into a variety of beasts. Picus' wife (to whom he was wholly devoted) was Canens, a nymph. After Picus' transformation she wandered madly through the forest for 6 days until finally she lay down on the bank of the Tiber and died. They had one son, Faunus.

Contents

According to grammarian Servius, Picus's love for Pomona was itself scorned. But in another place he states she consented to marriage, but Circe transformed Picus into a woodpecker and her into a pica, a kind of bird, probably a magpie or an owl. [2] He is featured in one of the Metamorphoses of Ovid. Virgil says that he was the son of Saturnus and the grandfather of Latinus, the king of the Laurentines whom Aeneas and his Trojans fought upon reaching Italy.

Italic people believed Picus was the son of the god of war Mars and attributed his avine transformation to his skills at interpreting bird omens.

One of the functions he performed was to lead the deduction of colonies (made up of younger generation folk) with his flight, which traditionally took place in spring and was performed according to a religious ritual known as ver sacrum. The people of the Piceni derived their name from the memory of this ritual.

Notes

  1. Aug. C. D.: "exortum est regnum Laurentum ubi Saturni filius Picus regnum primus accepit". Servius Ad Aen. 7, 678: "...ut ecce Laurentum a Pico factum est, ut Laurentis regia Pici...".
  2. Servius Ad Aen. 7, 190: "Fabula autem talis est. Picus amavit Pomona, pomorum dea, et eius volentis est sortita coniugium. Postea Circe, cum eum amaret et sperneretur, irata eum in avem, picum Martium, convertit: nam altera est pica...".

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Circe</span> Enchantress-goddess in Greek mythology

Circe is an enchantress and a minor goddess in ancient Greek mythology and religion. She is either a daughter of the Titan Helios and the Oceanid nymph Perse or the goddess Hecate and Aeëtes. Circe was renowned for her vast knowledge of potions and herbs. Through the use of these and a magic wand or staff, she would transform her enemies, or those who offended her, into animals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pasiphaë</span> Queen of Crete in Greek mythology

In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, Pasiphaë was a queen of Crete, and was often referred to as goddess of witchcraft and sorcery. The daughter of Helios and the Oceanid nymph Perse, Pasiphaë is notable as the mother of the Minotaur. She conceived the Minotaur after mating with the Cretan Bull while hidden within a hollow cow that the Athenian inventor Daedalus built for her, after Poseidon cursed her to fall in love with the bull, due to her husband, Minos, failing to sacrifice the bull to Poseidon as he had promised.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scylla</span> Nymph transformed into a sea monster by Circe in Greek mythology

In Greek mythology, Scylla is a legendary monster who lives on one side of a narrow channel of water, opposite her counterpart Charybdis. The two sides of the strait are within an arrow's range of each other—so close that sailors attempting to avoid Charybdis would pass dangerously close to Scylla and vice versa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anius</span>

In Greek mythology, Anius was a king of Delos and priest of Apollo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cyparissus</span>

In Greek mythology, Cyparissus or Kyparissos was a boy beloved by Apollo or in some versions by other deities. In the best-known version of the story, the favorite companion of Cyparissus was a tamed stag, which he accidentally killed with his hunting javelin as it lay sleeping in the woods. The boy's grief was such that it transformed him into a cypress tree, a classical symbol of mourning. The myth is thus aetiological in explaining the relation of the tree to its cultural significance. The subject is mainly known from Hellenized Latin literature and frescoes from Pompeii. No Greek hero cult devoted to Cyparissus has been identified.

Corythus is the name of six mortal men in Greek mythology.

In Greek mythology, Thaumas was a sea god, son of Pontus and Gaia, and the full brother of Nereus, Phorcys, Ceto and Eurybia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hippomenes</span> Figure from Greek myth, husband of Atalanta

In Greek mythology, Hippomenes, also known as Melanion, was a son of the Arcadian Amphidamas or of King Megareus of Onchestus and the husband of Atalanta. He was known to have been one of the disciples of Chiron, and to have surpassed other disciples in his eagerness to undertake hard challenges. Inscriptions mention him as one of the Calydonian hunters.

In Greek mythology, the name Butes referred to several different people.

In Greek mythology, the name Halaesus or Halesus may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Somnus</span> Roman deity, god of sleep

In Roman mythology, Somnus ("sleep") is the personification of sleep. His Greek counterpart is Hypnos. Somnus resided in the underworld. According to Virgil, Somnus was the brother of Death (Mors), and according to Ovid, Somnus had a 'thousand' sons, the Somnia, who appear in dreams 'mimicking many forms'. Ovid named three of the sons of Somnus: Morpheus, who appears in human guise, Icelos / Phobetor, who appears as beasts, and Phantasos, who appears as inanimate objects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Silvanus (mythology)</span> Roman tutelary deity of woods

Silvanus was a Roman tutelary deity of woods and uncultivated lands. As protector of the forest, he especially presided over plantations and delighted in trees growing wild. He is also described as a god watching over the fields and husbandmen, protecting in particular the boundaries of fields. The similarly named Etruscan deity Selvans may be a borrowing of Silvanus, or not even related in origin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caieta</span>

In Roman mythology, Caieta was the wet-nurse of Aeneas. The Roman poet Vergil locates her grave on the bay at Gaeta, to which she also gives her name. The poet Ovid, working a generation later, provides an epitaph:

In Roman mythology, Canens was the personification of song. A nymph from Latium, she was the daughter of Janus and Venilia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Juturna</span>

In the myth and religion of ancient Rome, Juturna, or Diuturna, was a goddess of fountains, wells and springs, and the mother of Fontus by Janus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Calliope</span> Muse of epic poetry

In Greek mythology, Calliope is the Muse who presides over eloquence and epic poetry; so called from the ecstatic harmony of her voice. Hesiod and Ovid called her the "Chief of all Muses".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glaucus</span> Semi-divine sea-dweller in Greek mythology

In Greek mythology, Glaucus was a Greek prophetic sea-god, born mortal and turned immortal upon eating a magical herb. It was believed that he came to the rescue of sailors and fishermen in storms, having earlier earned a living from the sea himself.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aura (mythology)</span> Divine personification of the breeze in Greek and Roman mythology

In Greek and Roman mythology, Aura is a minor deity, whose name means "breeze". The plural form, Aurae is sometimes found. According to Nonnus, Aura was the daughter of the Titan Lelantos and the mother, by Dionysus, of Iacchus, a minor deity connected with the Eleusinian mysteries, while Quintus Smyrnaeus makes the Aurae daughters of Boreas, the North-wind. Aurae was the title of a play by the Athenian comic poet Metagenes, who was contemporary with Aristophanes, Phrynichus, and Plato.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cycnus of Liguria</span>

In Greek mythology, Cycnus or Cygnus, was a king of Liguria, a beloved and kin of Phaethon, who lamented his death and was subsequently turned into a swan and then a constellation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leucothoe (daughter of Orchamus)</span> Figure in Greek mythology

In Greek mythology Leucothoe was a Babylonian princess. The daughter of Orchamus, a king of Persia, Leucothoe was either a lover of the sun god Helios or a victim of rape. A nymph or Leucothoe's own sister named Clytie, who loved Helios and was jealous of Leucothoe, informed Leucothoe's father that Leucothoe, despite being unmarried, was no longer a virgin, whereupon Orchamus buried his daughter alive in punishment. Helios then transformed Leucothoe's dead body into a frankincense tree.

References

Further reading