Roman mythology Roman mythology is the body of myths of ancient Rome as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans. One of a wide variety of genres of Roman folklore, ''Roman mythology'' may also refer to the modern study of these representa ...

, Canens was the personification of song. A

nymph A nymph ( grc, νύμφη, nýmphē, el, script=Latn, nímfi, label=Modern Greek; , ) in ancient Greek folklore is a minor female nature deity. Different from Greek goddesses, nymphs are generally regarded as personifications of nature, are ...

from

Latium Latium ( , ; ) is the region of central western Italy in which the city of Rome was founded and grew to be the capital city of the Roman Empire. Definition Latium was originally a small triangle of fertile, volcanic soil ( Old Latium) on w ...

, she was the daughter of

Janus In ancient Roman religion and myth, Janus ( ; la, Ianvs ) is the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames, and endings. He is usually depicted as having two faces. The month of January is named for Jan ...

and Venilia. Because Canens' husband

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

scorned the love of the witch

Circe Circe (; grc, , ) is an enchantress and a minor goddess in ancient Greek mythology and religion. She is either a daughter of the Titan Helios and the Oceanid nymph Perse or the goddess Hecate and Aeëtes. Circe was renowned for her vas ...

, she turned him into a woodpecker. Canens searched for her husband for six days and then threw herself into the

Tiber The Tiber ( ; it, Tevere ; la, Tiberis) is the third-longest river in Italy and the longest in Central Italy, rising in the Apennine Mountains in Emilia-Romagna and flowing through Tuscany, Umbria, and Lazio, where it is joined by th ...

river. She sang one final song and then died. They had one son,

Faunus In ancient Roman religion and myth, Faunus was the rustic god of the forest, plains and fields; when he made cattle fertile he was called Inuus. He came to be equated in literature with the Greek god Pan, after which Romans depicted him as a ...

References

Sources

Ovid Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom ...

Metamorphoses The ''Metamorphoses'' ( la, Metamorphōsēs, from grc, μεταμορφώσεις: "Transformations") is a Latin narrative poem from 8 CE by the Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his '' magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the ...

'' 14.320-434 Nymphs Personifications in Roman mythology Metamorphoses characters Music and singing goddesses {{AncientRome-myth-stub