Lusus is the supposed son or companion of Dionysus, the Roman mythology of wine and divine madness, to whom Portugal attributed the foundation of ancient Lusitania and the fatherhood of its inhabitants, the Lusitanians, seen as the ancestors of the modern Portuguese people. Lusus thus has functioned in Portuguese culture as a founding myth.
Origins of the name
With the Roman conquest of the Iberian Peninsula (between 219 and 17 BC), the
Roman province of
Lusitania was established, broadly in what is today Portugal south of the
Douro river together with
Extremadura in
Spain. There are no historic records of the
Luso or
Lusus amongst the Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (in this specific areas,
Celts or pre-Celts).
The etymology of Lusitania, like that of Lusitani, is unclear. The name may be of Celtic origin, or derive from Lucis or Lusis, an ancient people mentioned in Avienius's Ora maritima (4th century AD, but drawing on the Massaliote Periplus of the 6th century BC).
Origins of the mythological character
The entire character of Lusus in fact seems to derive from a
mistranslation of an expression in Pliny's
Naturalis Historia. Pliny writes: "M. Varro informs us that... the name 'Lusitania' is derived from the games (
lusum) of Father Bacchus, or the fury (
lyssam) of his frantic attendants, and that Pan was the governor of the whole of it." The mistake would have been in the interpretation of the word
lusum as a
proper name ("Lusus") rather than as the
common noun meaning "games": thus "
lusum ... liberi patris"
becomes "Lusus of father Bacchus" rather than "the sportiveness of father Bacchus." The resulting interpretation made "Lusus" a companion or son of Bacchus. It is this interpretation that is seen in Luís Vaz de Camões's
Lusiads (canto III, strophe 21):
- Esta foi Lusitania, derivada
- De Luso, ou Lysa, que de Baccho antigo
- Filhos foram, parece, ou companheiros,
- E nella então os incolas primeiros.
- This Lusitania was; in whom we greet
- Lusus, or Lysa, who the offspring were,
- Or friends, of ancient Bacchus, as appears,
- And her first dwellers in her earliest years.
In Portugal
In
The Lusiads by Camões (1572), Lusus was the progenitor of the tribe of the Lusitanians and the founder of Lusitania. For the Portuguese of the 16th century it was important to look at the past prior to the
Moors Al Andalus to find the origins of the nationality.
These interpretations would strongly be propagated by the authoritarian right-wing regime of the Estado Novo during the 20th century.
See also
