Italus
Ἰταλός
(Ἰταλός), an ancient king of the Pelasgians, Siculians, or Oenotrians, from whom Italy was believed to have derived its name. (Thuc. 6.2; Dionys. A. R. 1.35.) Hyginus (Hyg. Fab. 127) calls him a son of Telegonus by Penelope. By Electra, the daughter of Latinus, he is said to have become the father of Remus, the founder of Rome, and by Lucania, the father of the heroine Rome, to whom is likewise ascribed the foundation of Rome. (Dionys. A. R. 1.72; Plut. Romul. 2; comp. Serv. ad Aen. 1.6, 8.328; Aristot. Pol. 7.10.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.