Erycina

A surname of Aphrodite, derived from Mount Eryx, in Sicily, where she had a famous temple, which was said to have been built by Eryx, a son of Aphrodite and the Sicilian king Butes.1 Virgil2 makes Aeneas build the temple. Psophis, a daughter of Eryx, was believed to have founded a temple of Aphrodite Erycina, at Psophis, in Arcadia.3

From Sicily the worship of Venus Erycina was introduced at Rome about the beginning of the second Punic war,4 and in 181 BCE a temple was built to her outside the Porta Collatina.5

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References

Notes

  1. Diodorus Siculus, iv, 83.
  2. Aeneid v, 760.
  3. Pausanias. Description of Greece viii, 24.3.
  4. Livy. History of Rome xxii, 9, 10; xxiii, 30 ff.
  5. Livy. History of Rome xl, 34; Ovid. Fasti iv, 871; Remedia Amoris, 549; Strabo. Geography vi, p. 272; comp. Cicero. Against Verris iv, 8; Horace. Carmina i, 2. 33; Ovid. Heroides xv, 57.

Source

  • Smith, William. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly.

This article incorporates text from Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) by William Smith, which is in the public domain.