Picus (mythology)
According to legend, Picus ( Latin for " woodpecker ") was King of Laurence and was worshiped as the Roman god of fields and forests. Like Faunus , to whom he is related in various myths, he loved the sources and was of a prophetic spirit. He was also revered as the demon of agriculture, especially of manure. He is said to have been the son of Saturnus and was often associated with Mars . (The woodpecker was a sacred bird of Mars.)
According to the 14th book of Ovid's Metamorphoses , he was married to the nymph Canens , a daughter of Janus , and is said to have been turned into a woodpecker by Kirke after he had spurned her love and wanted to remain faithful to his wife. This must have happened before he was 19, if one can believe the passage in the book that “he could not have watched the Greek Games in Olympia four times” .
In Virgil's Aeneid , Picus is the father of Faunus and grandfather of Latinus . Kirke is also reported here as having turned him into a woodpecker. In the Aeneid, however, she is referred to as the coniunx (wife) of Picus, so Virgil may have used an alternative tradition in which Picus and Kirke were actually married. (Conflicting traditions about the same figures were the rule rather than the exception.)
literature
- Jesse Benedict Carter : Picus . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 3.2, Leipzig 1909, Col. 2494-2496 ( digitized version ).
- C. Robert Phillips: Picus. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 9, Metzler, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-476-01479-7 , Sp. 1008.
- Georg Rohde: Picus. In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume XX, 1, Stuttgart 1941, Col. 1214-1218.