Palinurus

The son of Iasus, and helmsman of Aeneas. Somnus, the god of sleep in the disguise of Phorbas approached him, sent him to sleep at the helm, and then threw him down into the sea.1

In the lower world he saw Aeneas again, and related to him that on the fourth day after his fall, he was thrown by the waves on the coast of Italy and there murdered, and that his body was left unburied on the strand. The Sibyl prophesied to him, that by the command of an oracle his death should be atoned for, that a tomb should be erected to him, and that a cave (Palinurus, the modern Punta della Spartivento) should be called after him.

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References

Notes

  1. Virgil. Aeneid v, 833 ff.

Sources

  • Smith, William. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly.
  • Strabo. Geography vi, p. 252.
  • Virgil. Aeneid vi, 337 ff.

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