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Inuus
| Religion in ancient Rome |
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In ancient Roman religion, Inuus (Classical Latin: [ˈɪnuʊs]) was a god, or aspect of a god, who embodied sexual intercourse. The evidence for him as a distinct entity is scant. Maurus Servius Honoratus wrote that Inuus is an epithet of Faunus (Greek Pan), named from his habit of intercourse with animals, based on the etymology of ineundum, "a going in, penetration," from inire,[1] "to enter" in the sexual sense.[2] Other names for the god were Fatuus and Fatuclus (with a short a).
Walter Friedrich Otto disputed the traditional etymology and derived Inuus instead from in-avos, "friendly, beneficial" (cf. aveo, "to be eager for, desire"), for the god's fructifying power.[3]
- ^ See the infinitive form inire; ineundum is a gerund.
- ^ Maurus Servius Honoratus, note on Aeneid 6.775; Julian Ward Jones, Jr., An Aeneid Commentary of Mixed Type: The Glosses in Mss Harley 4946 and Ambrosianus G111 inf. (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1996), pp. 24, 31–32.
- ^ Katherine Nell MacFarlane, "Isidore of Seville on the Pagan Gods (Origines VIII. 11)," Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 70 (1980), p. 36, citing Otto's entry on Faunus in PW.
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