Picus, the son of Saturn, was a king in the regions of Ausonia, an
admirer of horses useful in warfare. The form of this person was such as
thou beholdest. Thou thyself {here} mayst view his comeliness, and thou
mayst approve of his real form from this feigned resemblance of it. His
disposition was equal to his beauty; and not yet, in his age, could he
have beheld four times the {Olympic} contest celebrated each fifth year
in the Grecian Elis. He had attracted, by his {good} looks, the Dryads,
born in the hills of Latium; the Naiads, the fountain Deities, wooed
him; {Nymphs}, which Albula,[28] and which the waters of Numicus, and
which those of Anio, and Almo but very short[29] in its course, and the
rapid Nar,[30] and Farfarus,[31] with its delightful shades, produced,
and those which haunt the forest realms of the Scythian[32] Diana, and
the neighbouring streams.

"'Yet, slighting all these, he was attached to one Nymph, whom, on the
Palatine hill, Venilia is said once to have borne to the Ionian
Janus.[33] Soon as she was ripe with marriageable years, she was
presented to Laurentine Picus, preferred {by her} before all others;
wondrous, indeed, was she in her beauty, but more wondrous still,
through her skill in singing; thence she was called Canens.[34] She was
wont, with her voice, to move the woods and the rocks, and to tame the
wild beasts, and to stop {the course of} the long rivers, and to detain
the fleeting birds. While she was singing her songs with her feminine
voice, Picus had gone from his dwelling into the Laurentine fields, to
pierce the wild boars there bred; and he was pressing the back of his
spirited horse, and was carrying two javelins in his left hand, having a
purple cloak fastened with yellow gold. The daughter of the Sun, too,
had come into the same wood; and that she might pluck fresh plants on
the fruitful hills, she had left behind the Circaean fields, {so} called
after her own name.

"'Hidden by the shrubs, soon as she beheld the youth, she was astounded;
the plants which she had gathered fell from her bosom, and a flame
seemed to pervade her entire marrow. As soon as she regained her
presence of mind from {so} powerful a shock, she was about to confess
what she desired; the speed of his horse, and the surrounding guards,
caused that she could not approach. 'And yet thou shalt not escape me,'
she said, 'even shouldst thou be borne on the winds, if I only know
myself, if all potency in herb