To set the scene for the battle of Lake Trasimene, Silius presents a unique aetiologynfor the lake’s name, which he gives as Thrasymennus.1 The beautiful son of Tyrrhenus,nthe Lydian colonist and eponymous king of Etruria, catches the eye of the localnnymph Agylle, who, inflamed with passion, carries him down to the depths of thenlake. The nymphs comfort him and, in the capping aetiological couplet, the lake isnnamed Thrasymennus. This story, almost certainly invented by Silius, is one of severalnaetiologies in the poem with a markedly Ovidian character, most closely resemblingnthe (likewise invented) story of the maiden Pyrene, raped and abandoned by Hercules,nwho gave her name to the mountain range.2 As the story of a nympholept, it demandsnto be read against the abductions of Hylas by the nymphs and the rape ofnHermaphroditus by Salmacis, but it also has points of comparison with AnnanPerenna’s union with the river Numicius, of which Silius himself offers a version innPunica 8.3 Silius regularly adopts and plays with the role of the doctus poeta, both innthe way he manipulates his genuine doctrina and as he wittily invents aetiologies (andnother learned details) in the manner of Callimachus, Propertius and especially Ovid.4nThis inventiveness includes a passion for etymologizing, and I shall argue that, in thencase of Thrasymennus, a further etymology lies behind both the name of the lake andnof the beautiful youth. Moreover, this etymology is part of the way in which the story
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