In Roman mythology, Mens, also known as Mens Bona ( Latin for "Good Mind"), was the

personification Personification occurs when a thing or abstraction is represented as a person, in literature or art, as a type of anthropomorphic metaphor. The type of personification discussed here excludes passing literary effects such as "Shadows hold their b ...

of thought, consciousness and the mind, and also of "right-thinking". Her festival was celebrated on June 8. A temple on the Capitoline Hill in Rome was vowed to Mens in 217 BC on advice from the

Sibylline Books The ''Sibylline Books'' ( la, Libri Sibyllini) were a collection of oracular utterances, set out in Greek hexameters, that, according to tradition, were purchased from a sibyl by the last king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus, and were consulted at mo ...

, after the defeat of

Lake Trasimene Lake Trasimeno ( , also ; it, Lago Trasimeno ; la, Trasumennus; ett, Tarśmina), also referred to as Trasimene ( ) or Thrasimene in English, is a lake in the province of Perugia, in the Umbria region of Italy on the border with Tuscany. Th ...

, and was dedicated in 215 BC.

In Latin poetry

Propertius Sextus Propertius was a Latin elegiac poet of the Augustan age. He was born around 50–45 BC in Assisium and died shortly after 15 BC. Propertius' surviving work comprises four books of ''Elegies'' ('). He was a friend of the poets Gallus a ...

celebrated his escape from erotic bondage to his Cynthia by dedicating himself to the shrine of Mens Bona. * Ovid depicted Cupid as leading Good Sense (Mens Bona) as a captive in his triumphal parade.A D Melville trans., ''Ovid: The Love Poems'' (OUP 2008) p. 5 and p. 176 (Amores I.2.32-3)

Later developments

The Latin word ''mens'' expresses the idea of "mind" and is the origin of English words like ''mental'' and ''dementia''. The gifted-only organization Mensa International was originally to be named ''mens'' in the sense of "mind", but took instead the name ''Mensa'' (Latin: "table") to avoid ambiguity with "men's" in English and "mens" in other languages.

In Latin poetry

Later developments

See also

References

Further reading