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The corpus record — Latin

Perseus

Perseus · m

Son of Jupiter and Danăē

Generated live from the audited Latin corpus — every figure on this page is a database query, not prose from memory.

Where it lives

Densest 12 of 36 attested works shown, by occurrences per 10,000 attested tokens.

What it meant

1. Perseus — Lewis & Short

Perseus, ĕi and ĕos (m., = *perseu/s.

acc., Persea, Ov. M. 4, 610),
I Son of Jupiter and Danăē, abandoned by his grandfather Acrisius, but rescued and brought up by Polydectes, king of Seriphus. When grown up, he undertook, at the instigation of Polydectes, an expedition against the islands of the Gorgons, and received from Vulcan a sickle-shaped sword, from Mercury winged shoes, and from Minerva a shield and the flying horse Pegasus. Thus armed, he killed and cut off the head of Medusa, whose look turned every thing into stone. On his way back, he, by means of it, turned into stone a sea-monster to which Andromeda, the daughter of Cepheus, was exposed, and married her. Their son Perses became the progenitor of the Persians. After his death, Perseus was placed among the constellations, Ov. M. 4, 609 sq.; Hyg. Fab. 64; 244; id. Astron. 12; Cic. N. D. 2, 44, 112; Prop. 2, 30 (3, 28), 4; 2, 28 (3, 24), 22; Serv. Verg. A. 4, 246.—
B Hence,
1 Per-sēus, a, um, adj., of or belonging to Perseus, Persean, Prop. 3 (4), 22, 8. Perseos alter in Argos scinditur, i. e. where Perseus's grandfather, Acrisius, reigned, Stat. Th. 1, 255: Persei culmina montis, the mountain where Perseus first mounted Pegasus, id. ib. 3, 633: Persea Tarsos, founded by Perseus, Luc. 3, 225: Babylon, id. 6, 449.—
2 Per-sēïus, a, um, Persean: Perseia castra sequi, to fight in his army, Ov. M. 5, 128.—
II The last king of Macedonia, v. Perses, IV.

2. Persēus — Lewis & Short

Persēus, a, um,

I v. the preced. art., I. B. 1.

In the wild

6 of 578 attestations shown.

Where it came from

No etymology authority pointer is recorded for this lemma yet — an honest gap, not an omission.

Latin text and lemmatization derived from the Perseus Digital Library (canonical-latinLit), CC BY-SA 4.0. Lewis & Short (public domain) via Perseus. This derived data is shared under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 license.