Fauna is a

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...

rustic goddess said in differing ancient sources to be the wife, sister, or daughter of

Faunus In ancient Roman religion and myth, Faunus was the rustic god of the forest, plains and fields; when he made cattle fertile he was called Inuus. He came to be equated in literature with the Greek god Pan, after which Romans depicted him as a ...

(the Roman counterpart of Pan).

Varro Marcus Terentius Varro (; 116–27 BC) was a Roman polymath and a prolific author. He is regarded as ancient Rome's greatest scholar, and was described by Petrarch as "the third great light of Rome" (after Vergil and Cicero). He is sometimes calle ...

regarded her as the female counterpart of Faunus, and said that the ''fauni'' all had prophetic powers. She is also called Fatua or Fenta Fauna.

Name

Etymology

The name ''Fauna'' is a feminine form of Latin ''

'', the deity of the countryside. ''Faunus'' itself is generally thought to stem from

Proto-Italic The Proto-Italic language is the ancestor of the Italic languages, most notably Latin and its descendants, the Romance languages. It is not directly attested in writing, but has been reconstructed to some degree through the comparative method. P ...

''*fawe'' or ''*fawono'', ultimately from

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-E ...

''*bʰh₂u-n'' ('favourable'). Consequently, Georges Dumézil translated her name as "the Favourable." In his conceptual approach to Roman deity, Michael Lipka sees Faunus and Fauna as an example of a characteristically Roman tendency to form gender-complementary pairs within a sphere of functionality. The male-female figures never have equal prominence, and one partner (not always the female) seems to have been modelled on the other. An

Oscan Oscan is an extinct Indo-European language of southern Italy. The language is in the Osco-Umbrian or Sabellic branch of the Italic languages. Oscan is therefore a close relative of Umbrian. Oscan was spoken by a number of tribes, including th ...

dedication naming ''Fatuveís'' (= ''Fatui'',

genitive In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...

singular), found at

Aeclanum Aeclanum (also spelled Aeculanum, it, Eclano, grc, Ἀικούλανον) was an ancient town of Samnium, Southern Italy, about 25 km east-southeast of Beneventum, on the Via Appia. It lies in Passo di Mirabella, near the modern Mirabell ...

Irpinia Irpinia (Modern Latin ''Hirpinia'') is a geographical and cultural region of Southern Italy. It was the inland territory of the ancient ''Hirpini'' tribe, and its extent matches approximately today's province of Avellino. Geography The territor ...

, indicates that the concept is Italic. Fauna has also been dismissed as merely "an artificial construction of scholarly casuistics."

Ancient interpretations

Varro explained the role of Faunus and Fauna as prophetic deities:

''Fauni'' are gods of the
Latins The Latins were originally an Italic tribe in ancient central Italy from Latium. As Roman power and colonization spread Latin culture during the Roman Republic. Latins culturally "Romanized" or "Latinized" the rest of Italy, and the word Latin ...
, so that there is both a male ''Faunus'' and a female ''Fauna''; there is a tradition that they used to speak of (''fari'') future events in wooded places using the verses they call 'Saturnians', and thus they were called '' 'Fauni' '' from 'speaking' (''fando'').

Servius Servius is the name of: * Servius (praenomen), the personal name * Maurus Servius Honoratus, a late fourth-century and early fifth-century grammarian * Servius Tullius, the Roman king * Servius Sulpicius Rufus, the 1st century BC Roman jurist See ...

identifies Faunus with Fatuclus, and says his wife is Fatua or Fauna, deriving the names as Varro did from ''fari'', "to speak," "because they can foretell the future." The early Christian author

Lactantius Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius (c. 250 – c. 325) was an early Christian author who became an advisor to Roman emperor, Constantine I, guiding his Christian religious policy in its initial stages of emergence, and a tutor to his son Cr ...

called her ''Fenta Fauna'' and said that she was both the sister and wife of Faunus; according to Lactantius, Fatua sang the ''fata'', "fates," to women as Faunus did to men.

Justin Justin may refer to: People * Justin (name), including a list of persons with the given name Justin * Justin (historian), a Latin historian who lived under the Roman Empire * Justin I (c. 450–527), or ''Flavius Iustinius Augustus'', Eastern Rom ...

said that Fatua, the wife of Faunus, "being filled with divine spirit assiduously predicted future events as if in a madness ''(furor)''," and thus the verb for divinely inspired speech is ''fatuari''. While several etymologists in antiquity derived the names ''Fauna'' and ''Faunus'' from ''fari'', "to speak,"

Macrobius Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, usually referred to as Macrobius (fl. AD 400), was a Roman provincial who lived during the early fifth century, during late antiquity, the period of time corresponding to the Later Roman Empire, and when Latin was ...

regarded Fauna's name as deriving from ''faveo, favere'', "to favor, nurture," "because she nurtures all that is useful to living creatures."''Quod omni usui animantium favet'':

, ''Saturnalia'' 1.12.21–22,

Loeb Classical Library The Loeb Classical Library (LCL; named after James Loeb; , ) is a series of books originally published by Heinemann in London, but is currently published by Harvard University Press. The library contains important works of ancient Greek and L ...

translation, Robert A. Kaster, ''Macrobius. Saturnalia Books 1–2'' (Harvard University Press, 2011), p. 147, note 253. According to Macrobius, the Books of the

Pontiffs A pontiff (from Latin ''pontifex'') was, in Roman antiquity, a member of the most illustrious of the colleges of priests of the Roman religion, the College of Pontiffs."Pontifex". "Oxford English Dictionary", March 2007 The term "pontiff" was late ...

''( pontificum libri)'' treated

Bona Dea Bona Dea (; 'Good Goddess') was a List of Roman deities, goddess in Religion in ancient Rome, ancient Roman religion. She was associated with chastity and fertility in Women in ancient Rome, Roman women, healing, and the protection of the SPQR, st ...

, Fauna,

Ops In ancient Roman religion, Ops or ''Opis'' (Latin: "Plenty") was a fertility deity and earth goddess of Sabine origin. Her equivalent in Greek mythology was Rhea. Iconography In Ops' statues and coins, she is figured sitting down, as Chthon ...

, and Fatua as names for the same goddess,

Maia Maia (; Ancient Greek: Μαῖα; also spelled Maie, ; la, Maia), in ancient Greek religion and mythology, is one of the Pleiades and the mother of Hermes, one of the major Greek gods, by Zeus, the king of Olympus. Family Maia is the daugh ...

References

Citations

General bibliography