Roman mythology Roman mythology is the body of myths of ancient Rome as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans. One of a wide variety of genres of Roman folklore, ''Roman mythology'' may also refer to the modern study of these representat ...

, Mens, also known as Mens Bona (

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

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 The Capitolium or Capitoline Hill ( ; it, Campidoglio ; la, Mons Capitolinus ), between the Forum and the Campus Martius, is one of the Seven Hills of Rome. The hill was earlier known as ''Mons Saturnius'', dedicated to the god Saturn. Th ...

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 Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...

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 Mensa is the largest and oldest high-IQ society in the world. It is a non-profit organisation open to people who score at the 98th percentile or higher on a standardised, supervised IQ or other approved intelligence test. Mensa formally compr ...

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