36 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap, xxxvi simple rites were expressive of an early state of society before the invention of arts and agriculture. The rustic deities who presided over the toils and pleasures of the pastoral life, Pan, Faunus, and their train of satyrs, were such as the fancy of shepherds might create, sportive, petulant, and lascivious ; whose power was limited, and whose malice was inoffensive. A goat was the offering the best adapted to their character and attri- butes ; the flesh of the victim was roasted on willow spits ; and the riotous youths who crowded to the feast ran naked about the fields, with leather thongs in their hands, communicating, as it was supposed, the blessing of fecundity to the women whom they touched. 89 The altar of Pan was erected, perhaps by Evander the Arcadian, in a dark recess in the side of the Palatine hill, watered by a perpetual fountain, and shaded by an hanging grove. A tradition that, in the same place, Komulus and Eemus were suckled by the wolf rendered it still more sacred and venerable in the eyes of the Eomans; and this sylvan spot was gradually surrounded by the stately edifices of the Forum. 90 After the conversion of the Imperial city, the Christians still continued, in the month of February, the annual celebration of the Lupercalia; to which they ascribed a secret and mysterious influence on the genial powers of the animal and vegetable world. The bishops of Eome were solicitous to abolish a profane custom, so repugnant to the spirit of Chris- tianity ; but their zeal was not supported by the authority of the civil magistrate : the inveterate abuse subsisted till the end of the fifth century, and pope Gelasius, who purified the capital from the last stain of idolatry, appeased, by a formal apology, the murmurs of the senate and people. 01 In all his public declarations, the emperor Leo assumes the authority, and professes the affection, of a father for his son 89 Ovid (Fast. 1. ii. 267-452) has given an amusing description of the follies of antiquity, which still inspired so much respect that a grave magistrate, running naked through the streets, was not an object of astonishment or laughter. 90 See Dionys. Halicarn. 1. i. p. 25, 65, edit. Hudson [79]. The Roman anti- quaries, Donatus (1. ii. c. 18, p. 173, 174) and Nardini (p. 386, 387), have laboured to ascertain the true situation of the Lupercal. 91 Baronius published, from the Mss. of the Vatican, this epistle of pope Gela- sius (a.d. 496, No. 28-45), which is entitled Adversus Andromachum Senatorem, cseterosque Romanos, qui Lupercalia secundum morem pristinum colenda constitue- bant. Gelasius always supposes that his adversaries are nominal Christians, and, that he may not yield to them in absurd prejudice, he imputes to this harmless festival all the calamities of the age.
