Oenotrus

The youngest son of Lycaon who emigrated with a colony from Arcadia to Italy, and called the district in which he settled, after himself, Oenotria.1 According to Varro, he was a king of the Sabines, and not a Pelasgian, and his brother was called Italus.2 According to Dionysius,3 Oenotrus was accompanied by his brother Peucetius, and landed in the bay of Ausonia.

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Oenotria, "wine-land," is the ancient name for the southeastern part of Italy: Bruttium and Lucania. Poetically it is also used for the whole of Italy (Aeneid I, 532).

References

Notes

  1. Pausanias. Description of Greece viii, 3.2; Virgil. Aeneid i, 532, iii, 165, vii, 85; Strabo. Geography vi, p. 253 ff.
  2. Servius on Virgil's Aeneid i, 536.
  3. i, 11 ff.; ii, 1

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.