Final Draft - Preview Matter - Florida State University
Final Draft - Preview Matter - Florida State University
Final Draft - Preview Matter - Florida State University
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Ovid’s association of Faunus and Picus is provocative. Both are descendants of Mars according<br />
to some sources, and, if Faunus was a wolf-man at one point, the two animals sacred to Mars, the<br />
wolf and the woodpecker, are paired together in Ovid’s account. 350 What we probably have in<br />
Ovid’s account is the reflection of an earlier myth (approximately 150 years separate urns and<br />
text) that Ovid has adapted for his own purposes in his poetic calendar.<br />
Changing an Etruscan myth to fit a Roman context is typical of the way Ovid uses myths.<br />
Ovid’s myths are highly “literary” in nature; he is not merely compiling an anthology in works<br />
such as the Metamorphoses and the Fasti. 351 We should also keep in mind that myths were by<br />
no means standardized, as Kirk states, “Myths are not uniform, logical and internally consistent;<br />
they are multiform, imaginative and loose in their details. Moreover their emphases can change<br />
from one year, or generation, to the next.” 352 This dictum is often forgotten when comparing<br />
visual evidence to literature, a problem addressed by Small in her text The Parallel Worlds of<br />
Classical Art and Text. Small outlines several difficulties in relating a myth to a particular<br />
literary source: artists did not need to rely on a text when creating an image, there was no<br />
“original” source for a myth, and, in antiquity, imitation had little to do with “mimetic<br />
fidelity.” 353<br />
A bronze ash urn (Fig. III.13) that dates to the end of the 8th C BCE has been identified<br />
as “the best candidate for mythical subject matter in the earliest Etruscan period.” 354 This may<br />
be the earliest version of this story on an object that served the same function as the urns of the<br />
3 rd C BCE. The similarity of the scenes is striking. The urn has a number of armed, naked,<br />
ithyphallic warriors surrounding the central figure and moving clockwise around it. This central<br />
349 The absence of Picus may not be such a hindrance to identifying this scene as the chaining of Faunus. Oleson<br />
(1975, 192) notes the absence of Polyxena from the ambush of Troilos in the Tomb of the Bull, and so this is<br />
referred to as a variation. The scene remains accepted as the ambush of Troilos.<br />
350 Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom.I.31.2. Dionysius states that Evander and his Arcadian followers were welcomed into Italy<br />
by Faunus, a native Italian, who was in control of the lands they wished to settle. Immediately after the Arcadian<br />
presence was established, they set up a temple to Lycaean Pan. Altheim (1937, 67, 226), in his discussion of Mars<br />
as a bull-god, remarks that Faunus belongs to the circle of Mars and further links the wolf and the woodpecker in the<br />
forms of Faunus and Picus in his discussion of the woodpecker god. Rosivach (1980, 143) vigorously asserts that<br />
this story of Faunus and Picus has nothing to do with the god Mars because of the playful nature of the account. I<br />
disagree and would point out that Ovid often treats serious subjects playfully.<br />
351 Barchiesi (1997, 47-51) makes this quite clear in relation to the Fasti, but Ovid’s “playful” nature can be seen in<br />
all of his works.<br />
352 Kirk 1974, 29.<br />
353 Small 2003, 156-9.<br />
354 De Grummond 2006a, 2.<br />
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