ancient Faventia, a town in the delegation of Ravenna, Papal States, situated in a fertile plain at the junction of the canal of Zanelli with the Lamone, 20 miles S.W. of Ravenna. Pop. about 20,000. It is regularly built, and is surrounded by walls, and defended by a citadel. Around the market-place (a spacious square in the centre of the town, with a fine marble fountain) are ranged the cathedral, town-hall, theatre, and many handsome private residences. Faenza possesses numerous churches and monasteries, a lyceum, college, school of painting, hospital, and two orphan asylums. A kind of porcelain which has been supposed to take its name of faience from this town, one of the earliest sites of this peculiar product, still continues to be manufactured here, though not to such an extent as formerly. Faenza has also manufactories for spinning and weaving silk, some paper-mills, and a considerable trade by the Zanelli canal. Faventia is noted in history as the place where Carbo and Norbanus were defeated with great loss by Metellus, the general of Sulla, in B.C. 82. In the time of Pliny it was celebrated for its manufactures of linen, which was considered to surpass all other linens in whiteness. Torricelli the famous natural philosopher was born here.

Faernus, Gabriel, a distinguished modern Latin poet and critical scholar, was born at Cremona early in the sixteenth century, and died at Rome in 1561. His claims to distinction as an original author depend chiefly on his Fabulae Centum ex antiquis auctoribus defectae, which have been greatly admired for the purity and elegance of their diction and the skill which they show their author to have possessed in imitating the classical tone and modes of thought. Faernus rendered good service to literature by his edition of Terence, his notes on which were esteemed by Bentley so highly, that he incorporated them bodily in his own edition of that poet. His other works are not possessed of much intrinsic value.

Fesule (now Fiesole), in Ancient Geography, an important city of Etruria, situated on the side of a hill sloping down to the Arno, about three miles from Florence. It was a place of great antiquity, and in the old Etrurian times its inhabitants were famous for their skill in divination. Fesule was a place of some note in the Gallic and Punic wars, and was afterwards selected by Sulla as a site for a colony of his veteran soldiers. These colonists, twenty years later, rendered themselves formidable to the Roman state by the support which they gave to Catiline when organizing his conspiracy, and the town itself was selected by the leader of the revolt for his head-quarters in his attempt to maintain himself against the armies of Metellus and Antony. The story of Catiline and his exploits became engrained on the early legendary history of Florence, in which his memory is still preserved as that of a national hero. From this time Fesule gradually sank in importance, and though it offered a protracted and vigorous resistance to the arms of Belisarius, it finally fell into decay before the increasing power and prosperity of the adjoining Florence. It is said to have been finally destroyed by its powerful neighbour in the beginning of the eleventh century; but this is a point still contested among historians. The modern Fiesole is a small town with about 2400 inhabitants. It still retains, however, its ancient rank as an episcopal city; and its cathedral is a handsome building adorned with some good paintings and pieces of sculpture.

Fagging, a term used more particularly to denote a degrading species of servitude still (1855) authorized at Eton, and perhaps imitated in one or two other schools, by which the junior boys (or those of the lower school as it is called) are compelled to act in the capacity of servants, or "fags," to the older or more advanced pupils. Several attempts have of late years been made to abolish this remnant of barbarism,—a reform, it is to be hoped, that will soon be effected.