Turnus
（
Τύρνος).
1.
The son of Daunus and Venilia, brother of
Iuturna
(q.v.), king of the Rutulians at Ardea. He was induced by Amata, the sister of his mother,
and wife of Latinus, to make war upon Aeneas for his bride Lavinia, who had already been
betrothed to himself. After many hard fights he was slain in single combat by his rival
(
Verg. Aen. vii. 408;
x. 76;
xii. 408,
Verg. Aen., 926;
Livy, i. 2). His name
is probably connected with Tyrrhenus, and in the legends is associated with that of
Mezentius; so that the story is supposed by some to refer to a struggle of the Latins against
the Etruscans. (See
Etruria.)
2.
A satirical poet who lived in the first and second centuries A.D. (
Mart.vii. 97). Thirty hexameter lines that bear his name were written in the
seventeenth century by J. L. G. Balzac. See Quicherat,
Mélanges de
Philologie, p. 259
(Paris, 1879).
