According to late/Byzantine citations of earlier authors (recorded by Eustathius and Photius via Alexander of Paphos and Ptolemaeus Chennus), Picolous is one of the Gigantes, born of Gaia and Uranus. During the Gigantomachy he fled the beaten Giants, sailed or came to Aeaea, and attempted to assault Circe; Helios, acting in defense of his daughter, slew Picolous. The narrative survives in these later scholarly quotations rather than in a continuous archaic literary tradition.
The surviving attestations do not preserve a distinct physical description of Picolous beyond identifying him as one of the Gigantes. Contextually he would be understood as a member of the giant, chthonic race born of Gaia, but the cited sources supply no details of size, coloration, or distinctive features.
The sources attribute to Picolous martial aggression typical of the Gigantes: participation in the Gigantomachy and an attempted attack on Circe. He is not credited with specific supernatural powers in the preserved citations; rather, his death produces an etiological effect in the world-story: the herb moly is said to grow from his blood (a mythic causal motif). His narrative role is therefore descriptive—combatant and source of an origin-myth for a magical plant—rather than presented as a catalogue of powers.
Weaknesses
- othervulnerability to divine force (Helios slain him)
Wards
- substancemoly (herb said to have sprung from Picolous's blood; associated in sources with counteracting enchantment)
Circe
Circe is a figure of Greek myth known as a practitioner of potent pharmacological and ritual arts who occupies a liminal status between goddess, nymph, and witch. She is famed for her knowledge of herbs and potions, her ability to transform humans into animals in narrative episodes, and for performing ritual purification in at least one classical source.
Medea
Medea is a mythic Greek woman of royal lineage associated with practiced pharmakeía (drugcraft) and ritual knowledge; in epic she functions as the helper who enables Jason's success, and in tragedy she becomes a transgressive avenger whose actions include murder. Sources present her variably as mortal with divine ancestry (granddaughter of Helios) and as a skilled worker in magical substances and rites often linked in literature to Hecate.
Community Record
- [1]Picolous — Wikipedia. Wikipedia article 'Picolous' (summarizing Byzantine attestations; cites Eustathius and Photius quoting earlier authors)wiki
- [2]Picolous — Wikidata. Wikidata entry for Picolouswiki