(Povnoos), a people of ancient Italy, who settled at an early period in a portion of Latium adjoining the sea-coast, their capital city being Ardea, have acquired considerable celebrity from the prominent part which their king, Turnus, played in the settlement of Æneas, as poetically told by Virgil. An old tradition representing Ardea as founded by a colony from Argos has led Niebuhr to conjecture the Pelasgic origin of the Rutuli. (Nieb. vols. i. and ii.) Schweigger again considers them as Etruscans (Rom. Gesch., vol. i.); but the whole subject is so bound up with poetical invention, that it is almost impossible to extract the smallest grain of truth from it.