12/19/2018 Fauna (deity) - Wikipedia

Fauna (deity)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In ancient Roman religion, Fauna [fau̯na] is a goddess said in differing ancient Look up Fauna in
sources to be the wife, sister, or daughter of Faunus (the Roman counterpart Wiktionary, the free
dictionary.

Religion in
ancient Rome

Marcus Aurelius (head covered)

sacrificing at the Temple of Jupiter
Practices and beliefs
libationsacrificevotumtemplesfestivalsludifuneralsImperial cultmystery religions
Priesthoods
PontificesAuguresVestalesFlaminesFetialesEpulonesFratres Arvales
Deities
List of Roman deitiesTwelve major godsCapitoline TriadAventine Triadunderworld godsindigitamenta
Deified emperors:
Divus JuliusDivus Augustus
Related topics
nRoman mythologyAncient Greek religionEtruscan religionGallo-Roman religionInterpretatio graecaDecline of Greco-Roman polytheism

of Pan).[1]Varro 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.

Names [ edit ]

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

Fauni are gods of the Latins, 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).[2]

Servius 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."[3] The early Christian author Lactantius 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.[4]Justin 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.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fauna_(deity) 1/2
 12/19/2018 Fauna (deity) - Wikipedia
While several etymologists in antiquity derived the names Fauna and Faunusfrom fari, "to speak," Macrobius said
Fauna's name derived from faveo, favere, "to favor, nurture," "because she nurtures all that is useful to living
creatures."[6] Dumézilregarded her as "the Favorable."[7] According to Macrobius, the Books of the Pontiffs (pontificum
libri) treated Bona Dea, Fauna, Ops, and Fatua as names for the same goddess, Maia.

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 modeled
on the other.[8] An Oscandedication naming Fatuveís (= Fatui, genitivesingular), found at Aeclanum in Irpinia, indicates
that the concept is Italic.[9] Fauna has also been dismissed as merely "an artificial construction of
scholarly casuistics."[10]

See also [ edit ]

List of Roman deities

References [ edit ]

1. ^ Joseph Clyde Murley, The Cults of Cisalpine Gaul (Banta, 1922), p. 28 (noting that Fauna appears in
no inscriptions in Cisalpine Gaul)
2. ^ Varro, De lingua latina 7.36. At 6.55, Varro says that Fatuusand Fatua also derive from fari. See also Auguste Bouché-
Leclercq, Histoire de la divination dans l'Antiquité (Éditions Jérôme Millon, 2003), pp. 902–903.
3. ^ Servius, note to Aeneid 7.47; see also note to 7.81 and 8.314.
4. ^ Lactantius, Institutiones I 22, 9, citing Gavius Bassus.
5. ^ Justin, 43.1.8.
6. ^ Quod omni usui animantium favet: Macrobius, Saturnalia1.12.21–22, Loeb Classical Librarytranslation, Robert A.
Kaster, Macrobius. Saturnalia Books 1–2(Harvard University Press, 2011), p. 147, note 253.
7. ^ Georges Dumézil, Camillus: A Study of Indo-European Religion as Roman History (University of California Press, 1980), p.
208.
8. ^ Michael Lipka, Roman Gods: A Conceptual Approach(Brill, 2009), pp. 141–142
9. ^ E. Vetter Handbuch der italischen DialekteHeidelberg 1953 p. 114 n. 165; J. Champeaux "Sortes et divination inspirée.
Pour une préhistoire des oracles italiques" in Mélanges de l'École française de Rome. Antiquité 102, 2 1990 p. 824 and n.
52.
10. ^ Robert Schilling, "Roman Gods," Roman and European Mythologies(University of Chicago Press, 1992, from the French
edition of 1981), p. 70.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fauna_(deity) 2/2