Final Draft - Preview Matter - Florida State University

passage, 280 which would accord with other rites of renewal and rebirth in ancient religions. The
shedding of humanity and rites in which a youth undergoes a major change are both liminal in
nature. 281 A second way in which the wolf and werewolf are used to symbolize the other and
liminality is through their association with criminals, outsiders, and outlaws. 282 M. Midgley has
noted that man projects vice, evil, and wickedness onto the wolf more so than on any other
animal. 283 It has also been noted that the ancients observed both the communal nature of the
wolf pack and the phenomenon of the “lone wolf,” which was then used as a symbol of exile and
separation from the community. 284 It is possibly the observation of the lone wolf’s behavior that
contributed to the development of the werewolf myth, for Aristotle observed that it was only the
lone wolf that ate men. 285
Connections between the wolf and the gods Aita and Apollo are made clear by lupine
iconography, religious rituals, and tales of werewolves, but traditions of wolf-priests and
lycanthropy were not limited to these two deities. I would assert, as others have done in the past,
that both Faunus and Silvanus also possess a lupine nature. Even more than Aita and Apollo
Soranus, Faunus and Silvanus underwent a process of syncretization and are sometimes difficult
to separate; thus they must be dealt with together. By examining the evidence indicating a
connection between Faunus and wolves, the syncretization of Faunus with Silvanus, and Ovid’s
account of a myth in which Faunus plays a central role, I advance my own hypothesis of Faunus’
lupine nature for which there is an Italian literary tradition.
The god Faunus is generally taken as a Latin equivalent of the Greek god Pan. While this
connection is predominant after the age of Augustus, the matter is not a simple one. 286 Evidence
indicates that Faunus was, in his earliest incarnation, a wolf-man hybrid, not a goat-man hybrid
280
Buxton 1994, 71.
281
Eliade (1972, 5-7) notes that the transformation of a young man into a soldier is accompanied by the symbolic
transformation into a predatory animal, oftentimes a wolf.
282
Eliade 1972, 3-4.
283
Midgley 2001, 182.
284
Buxton 1994, 63. Buxton (1994, 62) notes that cooperation among wolf packs was also recognized by the
ancient Greeks. See also Eliade 1972, 4.
285
Aris. Hist. An. 488b17. Buxton (1994, 62) suggests that any attack on a man was due to the limited availability
of other prey.
286
Pan was adopted by the Romans, and I shall discuss the caprid nature of Faunus and his links with Pan in the next
chapter. Holleman (1974, 146) sees the reign of Augustus as a pivotal point in the history of the Lupercalia.
According to his opinions, Augustus tamed the Lupercalia and sublimated many of its darker aspects. Schilling
(1992, 127) asserts that “In the third century B.C.E , the Latin interpretation of Pan was not Faunus, but Silvanus.”
This distinction is not clear as Faunus and Silvanus were closely tied in Roman religion. What it may indicate,
though, is that Pan and Faunus were not simply mirror images of one another.
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