a Roman divinity of flocks and shepherds, represented by some writers as a female, and by others as a male, but embodying the same idea as Pan among the Greeks. A festival, termed Pallia, and sometimes Partia, as if a pariendo, was celebrated annually at Rome, in honour of this tutelary deity, on the 21st of April, the anniversary, according to early tradition, of the foundation of Rome by Romulus. (Varro, De Ling. Lat., vi. 15; Cicero, De Die, ii. 27.) From the Fasti of Ovid (iv. 731, &c.), we learn that the solemnities of this festival began by a public purification by fire and smoke. Towards the evening, when the shepherds had fed their flocks, the stables were adorned with laurel boughs, and the smoke of burnt sulphur, rosemary, fir-wood, and incense, was made to pass through the stalls to purify them. The flocks themselves were also purified by this smoke, and were made to pass through bonfires made of heaps of hay and straw. After the offerings were over, which consisted of cakes, millet, milk, &c., the shepherds engaged in prayer to Pales, and thus terminated the solemn part of the proceedings. This was followed up by the most festive joviality, the shepherds bounding over the flamma Pallis, or bonfire, with great spirit, to the sound of cymbals and flutes. They next ranged themselves on benches of turf, ate plentifully, and drank without stint, till the Pallian constellation (Hyades) had vanished in the evening twilight.