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 Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

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

Faunus In Religion in ancient Rome, ancient Roman religion and Roman mythology, 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 ...

(the Roman counterpart of Pan).

Varro Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BCE) 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 Virgil and Cicero). He is sometimes call ...

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. ...

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

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

''*bʰh₂u-n'' ('favourable'). Consequently,

Georges Dumézil Georges Edmond Raoul Dumézil (4 March 189811 October 1986) was a French Philology, philologist, Linguistics, linguist, and religious studies scholar who specialized in comparative linguistics and comparative mythology, mythology. He was a prof ...

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 and South Picene. Oscan was spoken by a number of t ...

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 ...

singular), found at

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

in Irpinia, 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 term Latins has been used throughout history to refer to various peoples, ethnicities and religious groups using Latin or the Latin-derived Romance languages, as part of the legacy of the Roman Empire. In the Ancient World, it referred to th ...
, 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 may refer to: * Servius (praenomen), a personal name during the Roman Republic * Servius the Grammarian (fl. 4th/5th century), Roman Latin grammarian * Servius Asinius Celer (died AD 46), Roman senator * Servius Cornelius Cethegus, Roma ...

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 () 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 Crispus. His most impo ...

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 and fictional characters * Justin (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Justin (historian), Latin historian who lived under the Roman Empire * Justin I (c. 450–527) ...

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 monographic series of books originally published by Heinemann and since 1934 by Harvard University Press. It has bilingual editions of ancient Greek and Latin literature, ...

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 ''( 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 among married Women in ancient Rome, Roman women, healing, and the protection of t ...

, Fauna, Ops, and Fatua as names for the same goddess,

Maia Maia (; Ancient Greek: Μαῖα; also spelled Maie, ; ), 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 daughter of A ...

References

Citations

General bibliography