LINUS is one of a numerous class of heroic figures in Greek legend, of which other examples may be found under Hyacinthus, Adonis. The connected legend is always of the same character: a beautiful youth, fond of hunting and rural life, the favourite of some god or goddess, suddenly perishes by a terrible death in spite of the heavenly love that would fain protect him. In some cases nothing is known to us with certainty beyond the mythological figure, but in many cases the religious background from which the legend stands out in relief has been preserved to us; in such cases we see that an annual ceremonial, everywhere of the same enthusiastic character, commemorated the legend. At Argos this religious character of the Linus myth was best preserved: the secret child of Psamathe by the god Apollo, Linus is exposed, nursed by sheep, and torn in pieces by the sheep-dogs. Every year in the festival Arnis or Cynophontis, the women of Argos mourned for Linus and propitiated Apollo, who in revenge for his child’s death had sent a plague on the Argive children. The grave of Linus, like that of Hyacinthus at Amyclae, was shown at Argos, at Thebes, at Chalcis, and probably at other places. The enthusiasm and abandon which characterized the similar festivals over Greece, Asia Minor, and Syria prove that it was part of the nature worship which spread in various forms by different roads and at different periods from the East into Greece. The songs of lamentation which accompanied the festival strongly impressed the Greeks, and it is most probable that the Phoenician words ai lenu, ai lenu, which formed the burden of the Adonis songs, originated the Greek words Linus and Αίλινος. The Linus song is frequently mentioned in Greek literature, Homer, H., xviii. 569; Pind., Pr. 139 ...(Bergk), Ac.; the tragic poets often use the word Αιλινος as the refrain in mournful songs, and Euripides calls the custom Phrygian (Or. 1380). In Phrygia the mythic correspondent of Linus is called Lityerses. There can be no doubt that Linus, Adonis, Manerus, Narcissus, Ac., are personifications of the life and bloom of nature suddenly slain by the hot sun of summer, while with the religious mourning over the catastrophe of nature were intertwined the ideas of life in relation to death, of good and evil, and so on. The religious side of the Linus myth seems hardly to have existed in Greece outside of Argos; in Thebes, which also was a chief home of the legend, Linus was a hero of song and music. In this form he has passed into literature, e.g., Virgil, Pel., vi. 67. He is conceived as the inventor of musical methods, especially of the 0pηvο<s, a kind of lament; this idea was expanded in various ways, particularly by the Alexandrine poets, and finally he was, after the analogy of Musaeus, transformed into a composer of prophecies and legends.
See Brugsch, Lie Adonis Klage und das Linos Lied, kc.
LINUS, one of the saints of the Gregorian canon, was, according to the Breviarium Romanum, the immediate successor of Peter in the see of Rome. He was a native of Volterra, who had attained a high degree of sanctity, and by his prevailing faith was able, not only to cast out devils, but to raise the dead. He wrote an account of the res gestae of Peter, especially of his controversy with Simon Magus. He was beheaded by the orders of the ungrateful consul Saturninus, whose daughter he had freed from demoniac possession, after a pontificate of eleven years two months and twenty-three days. The authorities for the statement that Linus was, leaving Peter out of account, the earliest president of the Roman Church, are very early (Irenaeus, Adv. Haer., iii. 3, 3; Euseb., H. E., iii. 2, 13); and that there actually was a presbyter of that name may be gathered from 2 Tim. iv. 21. According to Tertullian, however (Z>e Presser., 32), Peter appointed Clement to be his successor. The genuineness of the alleged epitaph of Linus found in Rome is now no longer maintained; and the two books on the martyrdom of Peter and Paul, which pass under his name, must also be regarded as apocryphal and late.
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