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.
[345] Appian apud Photium.
[346] Virgil, Æn. vii. 48, 81-105, and Heyne, Excursus v. ad loc.
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.
The altar to Silvanus exhibits that divinity crowned with the cones and foliage of the pine. A pine grows moreover beside his terminal statue, bearing the large cones, which were used for food at entertainments and carried in bacchanalian processions. Faunus, or Pan, sits at the foot of the pine, the syrinx and the double pipe being placed at his feet. In his right hand he holds an olive branch, while a young winged genius advances towards him as if to receive it, and another genius of the same kind appears to be caressing him and whispering into his ear. On the other side of the terminal statue of Silvanus we see the caduceus of Mercury and the bale of wool, manifest indications of success in the wool trade. In this sculpture the bale is surrounded with cords, which are twisted round one another where they cross. In the former instance the compression of the wool appears to be effected by the use of thongs instead of cords[347]. There is also introduced the figure of a shepherd of the same country. This statue was found in the vicinity of Rome and is now preserved in the Vatican[348]. The extremities are in part restorations. A cameo in the Florentine Museum[349] represents the shepherd Faustulus sitting upon a rock, and contemplating the she-wolf, which is suckling Romulus and Remus. It is of the Augustan age, and no doubt exhibits the costume and general appearance of a Roman shepherd of that period. He wears a tunica cucullata, i. e. a tunic of coarse woollen cloth with a cowl, which was designed to be drawn occasionally over the head and to protect it from the injuries of the weather. This garment has also sleeves, which Columella mentions (tunica manicata) as an additional comfort. On his feet the shepherd wears high shoes, or boots, which, as we may suppose, were made of leather.
[347] The bas-relief on the first altar is copied from Boissard by Montfaucon, Ant. Expliquée, tome i. p. 332. and that on the second, tome ii. p. 275. The latter is also represented by the Rev. Henry Moses, Collection of Antique Vases, &c. Plate 52.
[348] Museo Pio-Clementino, tomo iii. tav. 34 and p. 44.
[349] Museum Florentinum. Gemmæ Antiquæ a Gorio illustratæ, tav. ii. No. 10.