Lusus
![Cover from Naturalis Historia from Pliny the Elder, the work that could have involuntarily been the origin of the mythical character Lusus.](/Images/godic/202501/25/Naturalishistoria5254.jpg")
Lusus is the supposed son or companion of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and divine madness, to whom Portuguese national mythology attributed the foundation of ancient Lusitania and the fatherhood of its inhabitants, the Lusitanians, seen as the ancestors of the modern Portuguese people. Lusus thus has functioned in Portuguese culture as a founding myth.