The reader will have perceived from the observations already made on the worship of Faunus in Italy, that the Roman Faunus was the same with the Arcadian Pan. It seems no sufficient objection to this hypothesis, that a few Roman authors have supposed Faunus to be either the son of Mars[1], or of Picus and the grandson of Saturn, thus connecting him with their native mythology, or that his oracle was held by them in high repute[2]. It is here sufficient to remark, that we find him extensively recognized in Italy as a pastoral divinity.
Stretch'd on the springing grass, the shepherd swain
His reedy pipe with rural music fills;
The god, who guards his flock, approves the strain,
The god, who loves Arcadia's gloomy hills.
Horat. Carm. iv. 12. 9-12.—Francis's Translation.
The above stanza occurs in a description of the beauties of spring, and the poet no doubt alludes to the pastoral habits of his Sabine neighbors.
From ancient monuments as well as from the language of the poets we find, that the worship of other divinities was associated with that of Faunus in reference to the success of all agricultural pursuits including that of sheep-breeding. Boissard, in the Fourth Part of his Antiquitates Romanæ, has published somewhat rude engravings of the bas-reliefs upon two altars, one of them (No. 130) dedicated to Hope, the other (No. 134) to Silvanus. The altar to Hope was erected, as the inscription expresses, in a garden at Rome by M. Aur. Pacorus, keeper of the temple of Venus. He says, that he had been admonished to this deed of piety by a dream; and, if the representation in the bas-relief was the image thus presented to his mind, his dream was certainly a very pleasant one. Hope, wearing on her head a wreath of flowers, places her right hand upon a pillar and holds in her left poppy-heads and ears of corn. Beside her is a bee-hive on the ground, and on it there is also fixed a bunch of poppy-heads and ears of corn. Above these emblems of the fruitfulness of the field and of the garden is the figure of a bale of wool.
