Fauna

Wine came into her temple under a false name. The jar was called a honey pot, the wine inside it was called milk, and everyone pouring knew exactly what was in the vessel. Myrtle was banned from the building altogether. A vine hung above her seat, herbs dried in the rooms where her attendants mixed medicines, and snakes moved across the floor without frightening anyone and without being frightened themselves. Roman antiquarians listed those details together, because each one was a scar left by the same story.

The story survives in two versions, and they disagree about who she was to the man who killed her. In the telling Sextus Clodius wrote out in Greek, and which Plutarch had also heard, she was Faunus’ wife: she drank off a whole jar of wine in secret, against the decency expected of a king’s household, and her husband beat her to death with myrtle rods. Afterwards he could not live with what he had done, could not bear missing her, and gave her divine honours instead. In the version Macrobius records she was Faunus’ daughter, and it was her father who pressed the wine on her, because he wanted her and she would not have him. The rods came out when the wine failed. Then he turned himself into a serpent and took what he wanted anyway. The second version explains the snakes on the floor.

Before any of that, she was simply the other half of a pair. Varro, writing in the first century before Christ, says the Fauni are gods of the Latins and come in both sexes, a Faunus and a Fauna, and that they were in the habit of speaking the future out loud in wooded places, in the old rough metre Romans called Saturnian. Ennius had already put them in a line of verse: the songs the Fauni and the seers once sang. Picture a farmer at the edge of his own trees, an hour before light, hearing a woman’s voice come out of the cold wood in that hammering old rhythm and telling him something he has not yet done. That is the whole of her working life, and it is the part of her the Romans never doubted.

Pompeius Trogus, whose history reaches us through Justin’s epitome, calls her Fatua and says she was filled with divine spirit and gave warning of things to come as though in a frenzy, which is where the Latin verb fatuari comes from. Servius files Faunus and Fauna together as the Fatui and says they utter prophecy in a stupor. The same root produced fatuus, meaning foolish, and Latin never fully separated the woman who sees the future from the woman who is out of her mind. Both meanings were available to anyone who used her name, and the Romans do not seem to have found this awkward.

Her other reputation is the opposite of noisy. Varro, quoted by Lactantius around the turn of the fourth century, writes that her modesty was so complete that for the whole of her life no male but her husband ever laid eyes on her, and no male ever heard her name spoken. That is why women sacrifice to her out of sight and call her the Good Goddess rather than anything more specific. Macrobius adds, again from Varro, that she never once left the women’s quarters, and that this is the reason a man may not cross the threshold of her temple. A goddess of speech whose name could not be said aloud is a strange object, and Rome kept her anyway.

By the late empire the accounting had been done. Cornelius Labeo, cited by Macrobius, reported that the temple dedicated on the Kalends of May belonged to Maia, that Maia was the earth, that the earth was the Good Goddess, and that the books of the pontiffs indigitate one and the same deity under four names: Bona, Fauna, Ops and Fatua. Bona because she is the source of everything good we eat. Ops because life stands up with her help. Fatua from fari, speaking, since a newborn makes no sound until it touches the ground. Fauna, in Macrobius’ derivation, because she favours every use of living creatures, which quietly abandons the prophecy etymology in favour of a kinder one.

Other identifications piled on top. Some gave her Juno’s authority and put a royal sceptre in her left hand. Others made her Proserpina and sacrificed a sow to her, on the reasoning that a pig had once eaten the grain Ceres gave to mortals. Others called her Chthonian Hecate. The Boeotians, Macrobius says, thought she was Semele. One group argued she was Medea, because her temple was full of every kind of herb and her priestesses handed out medicines from them, and because no man could enter after what Jason did.

What she can do follows from all this without much strain. She knows what has not happened yet, and she tells women, which in a household with a farm attached is the more useful arrangement. She makes things grow and keeps them useful. Her rites heal, or her attendants do, with the plants stacked along her walls.

What she cannot do is appear on her own. Fauna has no festival of her own, no priesthood of her own, and effectively no inscriptions; a survey of Cisalpine Gaul found not a single one. Her name is a feminine formed off a male name, and Michael Lipka has read the pair as an instance of a very Roman habit of manufacturing gender-complementary deities inside a single function, in which the two halves are never equally real. Robert Schilling was blunter and dismissed her as an artificial construction of scholarly casuistics. The counterweight is a short Oscan dedication from Aeclanum in Irpinia, naming Fatuveis, which puts the idea of the prophesying Fatuus in Italy well outside the reach of any Roman grammarian who might have invented her. Something was there. Whether its name was hers is a question the surviving record does not answer.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Fauna in Roman mythology?

Fauna is a Roman goddess of prophecy and the countryside, and the female counterpart of Faunus. Ancient sources disagree about their relationship, calling her his wife, his sister or his daughter. Varro described the Fauni as gods of the Latins who spoke the future aloud in wooded places, in the old Saturnian metre.

Is Fauna the same goddess as Bona Dea?

According to Cornelius Labeo, quoted by Macrobius, the books of the Roman pontiffs treated Bona, Fauna, Ops and Fatua as four names for one goddess, identified with Maia and with the earth. Women who worshipped her in private called her the Good Goddess, Bona Dea. Other ancient writers identified the same figure with Proserpina, Chthonian Hecate, Semele or Medea, so the equation was never tidy.

Why is myrtle banned from Fauna’s temple?

Because of the story in which she was beaten with myrtle rods. In one version, recorded by Sextus Clodius and known to Plutarch, Faunus killed his wife with myrtle after she secretly drank a jar of wine; in another, told by Macrobius, he beat his daughter with a myrtle rod when she refused him. The ban on myrtle, the vine hung over her image and the wine renamed milk were all cited by Roman writers as proof of the tale.

What does the name Fauna mean?

Ancient etymologists split two ways. Varro and Servius derived Fauna and Faunus from fari, to speak, because they prophesied, and the related name Fatua gave Latin the verb fatuari, to speak under divine inspiration. Macrobius preferred favere, to favour, on the grounds that she favours everything living creatures need.

Did the Romans actually worship Fauna?

Not under that name, as far as the evidence goes. Fauna has no festival, no priesthood and virtually no inscriptions; a survey of Cisalpine Gaul turned up none at all. Her worship happens inside the rites of Bona Dea, and modern scholars including Robert Schilling have argued that Fauna as a separate goddess is largely a construction of ancient scholarship, though an Oscan dedication from Aeclanum shows the underlying idea of a prophesying Fatuus was genuinely Italic.

Related Entries

Faunus, Faun, Silvanus, Priapus, Anna Perenna, Flora, Pomona, Vertumnus, Juno, Vesta, Pan, Hecate, Semele, Medea