Canens

Role: nymph and wife of Picus · First appears: Fable 107

Life events

Picus refuses Circe’s proposal, declaring his fidelity to Canens.(Fable107)
- With: Circe Picus
- “He roughly repels her and her entreaties: and he says, ‘Whoever thou art, I am not for thee; another female holds me enthralled, and for a long space of time, I pray, may she so hold me. I will not pollute the conjugal ties with the love of a stranger, while the Fates shall preserve for me Canens, the daughter of Janus.’”
Canens wastes away from grief and vanishes into light air.(Fable107 · 📍 Tiber)
- “At last, melting with grief, {even} to her thin marrow, she pined away, and by degrees vanished into light air.”
The place where Canens disappeared thereafter bears her name.(Fable107 · 📍 Canens)
- “Yet the Fame of it became attached to the spot, which the ancient Muses have properly called Canens, after the name of the Nymph.’”

parent: Venilia “one Nymph, whom, on the Palatine hill, Venilia is said once to have borne to the Ionian Janus.”
parent: Janus “one Nymph, whom, on the Palatine hill, Venilia is said once to have borne to the Ionian Janus.”
married with Picus “I will not pollute the conjugal ties with the love of a stranger, while the Fates shall preserve for me Canens, the daughter of Janus.”

Extracted from the original text of The Metamorphoses of Ovid. Made with Rho MD.