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