Picus Martius
Umbrian · deity · Iguvine Umbrian religion; 3rd 1st c. BCE · deity
Picus Martius enters the Iguvine Tablets as a landowner: the Clavernii owe the Atiedian Brethren spelt from the Ager Tlatius and the Ager Casilus, fields held in his name. That is the whole of his Umbrian dossier, and the record is kept to it. His name is the woodpecker's, a bird of augury in Italic practice, and the epithet ties him to Mars — but the well-known Latin story of Picus, king of Latium and father of Faunus, transformed by Circe, belongs to a different body of tradition and is deliberately not carried over. A god who is attested only as the owner of two grain fields is recorded as exactly that.
Domains
- agriculture
- augury
Powers
- to hold the estates whose spelt supplies the sacrifices of the Atiedian Brethren
Epithets
- Martier (Martius)
Sources
- Iguvine Tablets, Tabula Vb 8-18.
- Reference summary of Tabula Vb on the Clavernii, the spelt render and the two named fields of Picus Martius.
- J. W. Poultney, The Bronze Tables of Iguvium (American Philological Association, 1959) — the English translation from which these tablet references were recorded; see data-sources/audits/lane-1/umbrian-census.tsv.