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Ionio. There is another MS. reading ancipiti (with reference to the double face of Janus, as he is called biceps, Fast. I. 65), which Merkel regards as an evident interpolation. M has hionio, and Zingerle mentions a variant Aonio. He adopts Rappold's conjecture Ausonio, the point of which epithet would be the exclusively Italian character of Janus, cf. Fast.I. 89, quem tamen esse deum te dicam, Iane biformis? nam tibi par nullum Graecia numen habet. Ionio is interpreted of Janus merely as an immigrant from beyond the Ionian sea, with reference to an independent tradition that he came from Perrhaebia, an inland district of Thessaly, for the epithet can be connected with that district itself only by the mention in Strabo of an insignificant stream Ion, a tributary of the Peneius. Merkel believes that hionio in M has arisen from a combination of two errors, one similar to that by which the same copyist has written in 609 innominis for binominis, the other to that by which in XI. 366, he believes niveis to have arisen from mucis (where Korn reads iuncis). He thus arrives at innocuo, an epithet applied to Deucalion and Pyrrha in I. 327, which is illustrated by the description of the mild and peaceful rule of Janus in Fast.I. 247-54. [From the obvious play of sound in Ionio Iano I have no doubt that this is the right reading, though Can.7, Bod., Can.1 agree in reading ancipiti. Heinsius is probably right in explaining Ionio of Janus as a Perrhaebian god from beyond the Adriatic or Ionian sea. The other suggestion of Heinsius that Inoo is the true reading, and that Janus is here identified with Palaemon or Portunus is improbable. R.E. ].

Venilia, a sea-nymph introduced by Virgil ( Aen.X. 76), as mother of Turnus and sister of Amata wife of Latinus. She was wife of Daunus (not Faunus, as Dict. Biogr.).

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    • Vergil, Aeneid, 10.76
    • Ovid, Fasti, 1
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