Picus was a figure in Roman mythology, the first king of Latium. He was the son of Saturn, also known as Sterquilinus or 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.

Picus was an agricultural deity associated particularly with the fertilization of the soil with manure due to his association with Stercutus.

Mythology

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.

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. The woodpecker is thus sacred to the god Mars.

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 Picentes derived their name from the memory of this ritual.

As son of Saturn he later came to be identified with Zeus. His earliest representations were as a wooden pillar mounted with the image of a woodpecker. In more sophisticated form, Picus is a youth carved of marble with a woodpecker on his head.

Sibling

Diodorus Siculus (6.5.1) introduces the Roman god Picus (normally son of Saturn) as a king of Italy and calls him brother of Ninus (and therefore perhaps son of Belus).

Titanomachy

The odd connection between Picus and Ninus appears in John of Nikiû's Chronicle (6.2f) which relates that Cronus was the first king of Assyria and Persia, that he married an Assyrian woman named Rhea. They had two sons, Picus (who was also called Zeus), and Ninus who founded the city of Ninus (Nineveh). Cronus moved to Italy but was then slain by his son Zeus-Picus because he devoured his children. Then Zeus-Picus became the father of Belus by his own sister. After the disappearance of Zeus-Picus (who apparently reigned over both Italy and Assyria), Belus son of Zeus-Picus succeeded to the throne in Assyria (later Faunus who is elsewhere always the son of Picus reigns in Italy before moving to Egypt and turning into Hermes Trismegistus father of Hephaestus). Upon the death of Belus, his uncle Ninus became king and then married his own mother who was previously called Rhea but is now reintroduced under the name of Semiramis. It is explained that from that time on this custom was maintained so that Persians allegedly thought nothing of taking a mother or sister or daughter as a wife.

A fragment by Castor of Rhodes, preserved only in the Armenian translation of Eusebius of Caesarea, makes Belus king of Assyria at the time when Zeus and the other gods fought first the Titans and then the Giants. Castor says Belus was considered a god after his death, but that he does not know how many years Belus reigned.

Preceded by: Saturn

King of Latins

Succeeded by Faunus

Notes

References

• Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.320-620
• Virgil, Aeneid 7.45-49, 170-191
• Servius on Aeneid 7.190
• Diodorus Siculus 6, frag. 5

Further reading

• Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Picus".
• Online Encyclopædia Britannica article of "Picus".