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278 SHEEP BREEDING AND
The reader will have perceived from the observations already
made on the worship of Faunus in Italy, that the Roman Fau-
nus was the same with the Arcadian Pan. It seems no suffi-
cient objection to this hypothesis, that a few Roman authors
have supposed Faunus to be either the son of Mars*, 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
reputet. It is here sufficient to remark, that we find him ex-
tensively recognized in Italy as a pastoral divinity.
Stretch'd on the springing grass, the shepherd swaiu
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 asso-
ciated with that of Faunus in reference to the success of all
agricultural pursuits including that of sheep-breeding. Bois-
sard, in the Fourth Part of his Antiquitates Romanae, has pub-
lished somewhat rude engravings of the bas-reliefs upon two
altars, one of them (No. 130) dedicated to Hope, the other (No.
134) to Silvamis. The altar to Hope was erected, as the in-
scription expresses, in a garden at Rome by M. Aur. Pacorus,
keeper of the temple of Venus. He says, that he had been ad-
monished to this deed of piety by a dream ; and, if the repre-
sentation in the bas-relief was the image thus presented to liis
mind, his dream was certainly a very pleasant one. Hope,
wearing on her head a wreath of flowers, places her right hand
upon a piUar and holds in her left popp)'-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.
* Appian apud Photium.
t Virgil, Mn. vii. 48, 81-105, and HejTie, Eecursus v. ad loc.