in 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 hedus anno: Larga nec desunt Veneris sodali Vina cratera: vetus ara multo Fumat odore.

Struvius in his Roman kalendar 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 shews, 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.