Animals and Naming
The animals sacred to Mars that led the group sometimes became the eponyms of the new community. These included the wolf, hirpus, after which the Hirpini of Campania were supposed to have been named; the woodpecker, picus, which gave its name to the Piceni or Picenti who settled present-day Marche (hence the green woodpecker as the symbol of the region); the vulture, vultur, of the Vultures; and the horse, equus of the Aequi or Aequicolae in Latium. The Samnites were led by an ox, bos, after which was named their capital Bovianum, founded upon the hill on which the ox had stopped. The Mamertini of Sicily received their name directly from the god Mars.
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Famous quotes containing the words animals and/or naming:
“I wish more and more that health were studied half as much as disease is. Why, with all the endowment of research against cancer is no study made of those who are free from cancer? Why not inquire what foods they eat, what habits of body and mind they cultivate? And why never study animals in health and natural surroundings? why always sickened and in an environment of strangeness and artificiality?”
—Sarah N. Cleghorn (1976–1959)
“The night is itself sleep
And what goes on in it, the naming of the wind,
Our notes to each other, always repeated, always the same.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)