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Siro (also Syro, Siron, or Syron; fl. c. 50 BC) was an Epicurean philosopher who lived in Naples.
He was a teacher of Virgil, [1] and taught at his school in Naples. There are two poems attributed to Virgil in the Appendix Vergiliana, [2] which mention Siro, and where the author speaks of seeking peace in the company of Siro:
I am setting sail for the havens of the blest to seek the wise sayings of great Siro, and will redeem my life from all care. [3]
Cicero also mentions Siro several times and speaks of Siro along with Philodemus as being "excellent citizens and most learned men." [4] The 5th-century commentator Servius claimed that Siro was commemorated in Virgil's sixth Eclogue as the character Silenus. [5]
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Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: the Eclogues, the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid. A number of minor poems, collected in the Appendix Vergiliana, were attributed to him in ancient times, but modern scholars consider his authorship of these poems as dubious.
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.
In ancient Greek religion Artemis Caryatis (Καρυᾶτις) was an epithet of Artemis that was derived from the small polis of Caryae in Laconia; there an archaic open-air temenos was dedicated to Carya, the Lady of the Nut-Tree, whose priestesses were called the caryatidai, represented on the Athenian Acropolis as the marble caryatids supporting the porch of the Erechtheum. The late accounts made of the eponymous Carya a virgin who had been transformed into a nut-tree, whether for her unchastity or to prevent her rape. The particular form of veneration of Artemis at Karyai suggests that in pre-classical ritual Carya was goddess of the nut tree who was later assimilated into the Olympian goddess Artemis. Pausanias noted that each year women performed a dance called the caryatis at a festival in honor of Artemis Caryatis called the Caryateia.
Servius was a late fourth-century and early fifth-century grammarian. He earned a contemporary reputation as the most learned man of his generation in Italy; he authored a set of commentaries on the works of Virgil. These works, In tria Virgilii Opera Expositio, constituted the first incunable to be printed at Florence, by Bernardo Cennini, in 1471.
An eclogue is a poem in a classical style on a pastoral subject. Poems in the genre are sometimes also called bucolics.
Aelius Donatus was a Roman grammarian and teacher of rhetoric.
In Greek mythology, Hesperus is the Evening Star, the planet Venus in the evening. He is one of the Astra Planeta. A son of the dawn goddess Eos, he is the half-brother of her other son, Phosphorus. Hesperus' Roman equivalent is Vesper. By one account, Hesperus' father was Cephalus, a mortal, while Phosphorus was the star god Astraios. Other sources, however, state that Hesperus was the brother of Atlas, and thus the son of Iapetus.
Scholia are grammatical, critical, or explanatory comments – original or copied from prior commentaries – which are inserted in the margin of the manuscript of ancient authors, as glosses. One who writes scholia is a scholiast. The earliest attested use of the word dates to the 1st century BC.
The Georgics is a poem by Latin poet Virgil, likely published in 29 BCE. As the name suggests the subject of the poem is agriculture; but far from being an example of peaceful rural poetry, it is a work characterized by tensions in both theme and purpose.
In Greek mythology, Nomia (Νομία) was a nymph of Arcadia, where the local people believed the Nomian Mountains to have been named after her.
The Cumaean Sibyl was the priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle at Cumae, a Greek colony near Naples, Italy. The word sibyl comes from the ancient Greek word sibylla, meaning prophetess. There were many sibyls throughout the ancient world. Because of the importance of the Cumaean Sibyl in the legends of early Rome as codified in Virgil's Aeneid VI, and because of her proximity to Rome, the Cumaean Sibyl became the most famous among the Romans. The Erythraean Sibyl from modern-day Turkey was famed among Greeks, as was the oldest Hellenic oracle, the Sibyl of Dodona, dating to the second millennium BC according to Herodotus, favored in the east.
Eclogue4, also known as the FourthEclogue, is the name of a Latin poem by the Roman poet Virgil.
In Greek mythology, Oaxes or Oaxos was the founder of the town of Oaxus within Crete, a place known to Servius and Herodotus. He was the son of the god Apollo either by the Cretan nymph Anchiale or Acacallis, daughter of Minos. Apollonius wrote in Argonautica of Crete being the Oaxian land. Vibius Sequester wrote the river Oaxes gave its name. The river Oaxes was, according to Baudrand, very cold.
Anser was a poet of ancient Rome who lived in the 1st century BCE. He was a friend of the triumvir Mark Antony, and one of the detractors of Virgil. He wrote in an indelicate or unserious style. Ovid calls him procax, an adjective meaning "shameless" or "impudent".
Aracynthus was a range of mountains in Aetolia, the exact position of which is uncertain. It was said to run in a south-easterly direction from the Achelous River to the Evenos, and separating the lower plain of Aetolia near the sea from the upper plain above the lakes Hyria and Trichonida.
The name Alcon or Alco can refer to a number of people from classical myth:
In Greek mythology, Mecon was a beautiful young Athenian man, loved by the goddess Demeter.
Lyco and Orphe are two sisters from Greek mythology. Their story survives in the works of Maurus Servius Honoratus, a Latin grammarian of the early fifth century AD.
Pelia in Greek mythology is a minor Cypriot figure, kin to Adonis, who played a role in a minor myth.
The poem Dirae is one of the poems that make up the Appendix Vergiliana. It is a pastoral poem, told from the perspective of a Sicilian herdsman forced to give up his land to Lycurgus, who is receiving this land as a reward for his participation in the Roman civil wars. The herdsman spends the entire poem cursing the land so Lycurgus cannot benefit from it.