Picus

• Citations for source (s) of myth

Picus (Latin, " woodpecker ") was the legend, king of Laurentum and was worshiped as the Roman god of the fields and the forest. As Faunus, to whom he has a relationship in various myths, he loved the sources and was prophesy generic spirit. Adored he was also a demon of agriculture, including fertilizing. He was said to be the son of Saturn and was often associated with Mars. ( The woodpecker was sacred bird of Mars. )

According to the 14th book of Ovid's Metamorphoses, he was with the nymph Canens, a subsidiary of Janus, married and to have been transformed by Circe into a woodpecker, after he had spurned her love and wanted to remain faithful to his wife. This must be done before the age of 19, if we are to believe the passage of the book that " it is not in Olympia four times had the games of the Greeks can view ".

In Virgil's Aeneid is the father of Picus and Faunus grandfather of Latinus. From Kirke is also reported that she had turned him into a woodpecker. However, it is referred to in the Aeneid as coniunx (wife ) of Picus, so that Virgil might have used an alternative tradition in which Picus and Circe were really married. ( Conflicting traditions about the same figures were the rule rather than the exception. )