And here my tender goats defends
From rainy winds and summer's heat.
For when the vales, wide-spreading round,
The sloping hills, and polish'd rocks,
With his harmonious pipe resound,
In fearless safety graze my flocks.
Hor. Od. l. i. c. 17. v. 1-12.
The names Pan and Faun, scarcely differ except in this, that the one begins with P, the lenis, and the other with F, which is its aspirate: in the second place, both were conceived to have not only the same form and appearance, but the same habits, dispositions, and employments: thirdly, the goat was sacrificed to Pan in Greece[1] and to Faunus in Italy[2], because the Arcadian and Roman deity was conceived to be the guardian of goats as well as sheep, but this animal was not sacrificed to the Egyptian Mendes, because
In safety through the woody brake
The latent shrubs and thyme explore,
Nor longer dread the speckled snake,
And tremble at the wolf no more.
Francis's Translation, abridged.
in Egypt the goat itself was supposed to be Mendes, an incarnation of the god; and lastly, it is recorded as an historical fact, that the worship of Faunus was brought to Rome from Arcadia, whereas the supposition of the introduction of the same worship into Arcadia from Egypt, though found in the pages of an historian, is not given by him as a matter of history, but only as a matter of opinion. The account of the origin of the worship of Faunus at Rome, is as follows: Evander, the Arcadian, introduced a colony of his countrymen into Italy, and established there the rights of Mercury and of the Lycean Pan on the hill, which was afterwards called the Palatine Mount and became part of the city of Rome. A cave
