In Greek and Roman mythology, Salius is an Acarnanian who in one alternative tradition was the legendary founder of the ancient Roman priesthood of the Salii.Joseph Rykwert, The Idea of a Town: The Anthropology of Urban Form in Rome, Italy and the Ancient World (MIT Press, 1988), p. 96.
Varro says that Salius had come to Italy with Evander, the Arcadian king to whom several Roman religious institutions were attributed. In Book 5 of the Aeneid,Vergil, Aeneid 5.286ff.; see also Hyginus, Fabulae 273.14. Salius, who lives in Segesta, competes in the funeral games held for Anchises. Salius is among the runners in the footrace, along with Nisus and Euryalus. When the frontrunner Nisus falls, Salius finds himself in the lead, but Nisus trips him deliberately to secure the victory for his friend Euryalus. Salius expresses his indignation at the foul, and receives a fine lion skin as a consolation prize.Lee Fratantuono, Madness Unchained: A Reading of Virgil's Aeneid (Lexington Books, 2007), p. 141. The episode is given comic treatment, particularly in John Dryden's translation.Fredric V. Bogel, The Difference Satire Makes: Rhetoric and Reading from Jonson to Byron (Cornell University Press, 2001), p. 230; W.S. Anderson, The Art of the Aeneid (Bolchazy-Carducci, 2005, originally published 1969), p. 60.
Salius remains among the company of Aeneas in Latium. In Aeneid Book 10, he is killed by Nealces in the war against the local population.Vergil, Aeneid 10.753.
The Latin name Salius is the equivalent of Halios (Ἅλιος), the Phaeacian dancer in the Odyssey who loses his athletic competition.Odyssey 8.119, 370; Francis Cairns, Virgil's Augustan Epic (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 230. Plutarch says that a Salius from Samothrace or Mantinea was reputed to be the legendary founder of the Salian priests, but that the sodality in fact was named from the leaping (Latin salire) of their armed dance.Plutarch, Life of Numa 13.4.
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