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, animals and/or naming:
“Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are layed waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever.... Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“If everything is perfect, language is useless. This is true for animals. If animals don’t speak, it’s because everything’s perfect for them. If one day they start to speak, it will be because the world has lost a certain sort of perfection.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“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)