antiquity, Roman feasts celebrated in honour of the god Faunus, who was the same among the Romans with the Pan of the Greeks.

The Faunalia were held on the day of the nones of December; i.e., on the fifth day of that month. The principal sacrifice was a roe-buck; or rather, according to Horace, a kid, attended with libations of wine and burning of incense. It was properly a country festival, being performed in the fields and villages with peculiar joy and devotion. Horace gives us a very gay description thereof in the 18th ode of his third book:

Tener pleno cadit hædus anno: Larga nec defant Veneris fodiæ Vina crateræ: vetus ara multo Fumat odore.

Struvius in his Roman calendar marks the feast of Faunus on the day of the ides of February, which is the 30th day of that month; and the Faunalia he places on the fifth of the ides of December, or the 9th of that month: and in chap. ix. he shows, that there really were two Faunalia; the one in February, mentioned by Ovid, Fast. lib. iv. ver. 246, the other on the 9th of December, mentioned by Horace in the place just cited.

Fauns (Fauni), among the ancients, were a species of demi-gods inhabiting the forests; called also Sylvans (Sylvani), and little differing from the Satyrs. They delighted more particularly in vineyards; and they generally appear as attendants of Bacchus, in the representations of Bacchanal feasts and processions.—They were represented as half men, half goats, having the horns, ears, feet, and tail of a goat, a very flat nose, and the rest human. Though the Fauns were held for demi-gods, yet they were supposed to die after a long life. Arnobius shows that their father or chief, Faunus himself, only lived 120 years.