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Fauna[ˈfau̯na] is aRoman rustic goddess said in differing ancient sources to be the wife, sister,[1] or daughter ofFaunus (the Roman counterpart ofPan).[2]Varro regarded her as the female counterpart of Faunus, and said that thefauni all hadprophetic powers. She is also calledFatua orFenta Fauna.
The nameFauna is a feminine form of LatinFaunus, the deity of the countryside.Faunus itself is generally thought to stem fromProto-Italic*fawe or*fawono, ultimately fromProto-Indo-European*bʰh₂u-n ('favourable').[3] Consequently,Georges Dumézil translated her name as "the Favourable."[4]
In his conceptual approach to Roman deity, Michael Lipka sees Faunus and Fauna as an example of a characteristically Roman tendency to form gender-complementary pairs within a sphere of functionality. The male-female figures never have equal prominence, and one partner (not always the female) seems to have been modelled on the other.[5] AnOscan dedication namingFatuveís (=Fatui,genitive singular), found atAeclanum inIrpinia, indicates that the concept isItalic.[6] Fauna has also been dismissed as merely "an artificial construction of scholarlycasuistics."[7]
Varro explained the role of Faunus and Fauna as prophetic deities:
Fauni are gods of theLatins, so that there is both a maleFaunus and a femaleFauna; there is a tradition that they used to speak of (fari) future events in wooded places using theverses they call 'Saturnians', and thus they were called 'Fauni' from 'speaking' (fando).[8]
Servius identifies Faunus with Fatuclus, and says his wife is Fatua or Fauna, deriving the names as Varro did fromfari, "to speak," "because they can foretell the future."[9] The early Christian authorLactantius called herFenta Fauna and said that she was both the sister and wife of Faunus; according to Lactantius, Fatua sang thefata, "fates," to women as Faunus did to men.[10]Justin said that Fatua, the wife of Faunus, "being filled with divine spirit assiduously predicted future events as if in a madness(furor)," and thus the verb for divinely inspired speech isfatuari.[11]
While several etymologists in antiquity derived the namesFauna andFaunus fromfari, "to speak,"Macrobius regarded Fauna's name as deriving fromfaveo, favere, "to favor, nurture," "because she nurtures all that is useful to living creatures."[12] According to Macrobius, the Books of thePontiffs(pontificum libri) treatedBona Dea, Fauna,Ops, and Fatua as names for the same goddess,Maia.
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