Mythology of Italy

The mythologies in present-day Italy encompass the mythology of the Romans, Etruscans, and other peoples living in Italy, those ancient stories about divine or heroic beings that these particular cultures believed to be true and that often use supernatural events or characters to explain the nature of the universe and humanity.

In particular, the versions of Greek myths in Ovid's Metamorphoses, written during the reign of Augustus, came to be regarded as canonical.

This perception is a product of Romanticism and the classical scholarship of the 19th century, which valued Greek civilization as more "authentically creative.

These narratives focus on human actors, with only occasional intervention from deities but a pervasive sense of divinely ordered destiny.

Other important sources are the Fasti of Ovid, a six-book poem structured by the Roman religious calendar, and the fourth book of elegies by Propertius.

The Trojan prince Aeneas was cast as husband of Lavinia, daughter of King Latinus, patronymical ancestor of the Latini, and therefore through a convoluted revisionist genealogy as forebear of Romulus and Remus.

The gods were listed by the poet Ennius:[14] Livy[15] arranges them in six male-female pairs: Jupiter-Juno, Neptune-Minerva, Mars-Venus, Apollo-Diana, Vulcan-Vesta and Mercury-Ceres.

[16] The belief in the evil eye among humans has existed since prehistory,[16] and amulets to protect against it have been found from dating to about 5,000 years ago.

[17] It is found in many cultures in the Mediterranean region, the Balkans, the Middle East and Central Asia, with such cultures often believing that receiving the evil eye will cause misfortune or injury,[18] while others believe it to be a kind of supernatural force that casts or reflects a malevolent gaze back upon those who wish harm upon others (especially innocents).

[22] One idea that the ribald suggestions made by sexual symbols distract the witch from the mental effort needed to successfully bestow the curse.

Among the ancient Romans and their cultural descendants in the Mediterranean nations, those who were not fortified with phallic charms had to make use of sexual gestures to avoid the eye.

He often has a reputation for clandestine involvement with dark powers and is the object of gossip about dealings in magic and other forbidden practices.

Pope Pius IX was dreaded for his evil eye, and a whole cycle of stories about the disasters that happened in his wake were current in Rome during the latter decades of the 19th century.

Two other key traits were his disproportionate obesity, he was estimated to weigh 500 kilos and he had a very serious form of bad breath, called Alitorum fecantis.