Faun

  • Citations for source (s) of myth

Faunus, also known as the Wolf God, the Old Italic god of nature, the protector of farmers and herdsmen, their cattle and their fields. It occurs in many different shape and under many names. His festival, the Lupercalia, held on February 15. The female counterpart of Faunus is fauna that was often regarded as his wife or his sister.

Myth and cult

In Roman mythology, Faunus is the son of Picus ( which was often understood as a follower of Mars or equated with this ) and the grandson of Saturnus. According to Virgil, he is the father of Latinus, king of Latium.

Like his Greek counterpart, the god Pan, the people in the house and forest, also by bad dreams ( Incubus ) makes Faunus for the fertility of humans and animals, frightened, and often does not appear as a single entity, but as a large number of faunas. As Fatuus he 's even prophecies.

The Lupercalia, which is the feast days of Faunus, were the priests of God, the Luperci ( wolves ), sacrificed goats and cut from the fresh hides belt. The priest then walked around the Palatine and beat them Oncoming with the belt. This was the one to be the expiation and purification ritual ( hence the name of February: Latin februare means clean ), on the other, childless women expected from the contact with the belt fertility. Similar rituals are also known from other cultures, for example, the term flavor Easter.

Later Faunus was depicted as a satyr -like the mythical creature from Greek mythology ( " Faun ", can therefore also be used synonymous with "Satyr "); a shawm or flute-playing, horned forest spirit, a hybrid creature, half man and half goat, usually depicted with a human torso and goat's feet and tail. Faune to watch over cornfields and encourage their growth.

Reception

The Faun 's been a demigod or as a metaphor often the subject of literature. The most famous is L' Après -midi d'un faune ( " Afternoon of a Faun " ), a symbolist poem by the French poet Stéphane Mallarmé, written 1865-1867. The poem was the basis for the setting of Prélude à l' après -midi d'un faune ( " Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun " ) by Claude Debussy (1894 ), which, in turn, the music for the ballet L' après -midi d'un Vaslav Nijinsky by faune (1912 ) provided.

In Arno Schmidt's short novel From the Life of a Faun Faun is a metaphor for a life in the outdoors: The hero, During, studied as an official under the Nazi regime took refuge in a cabin in the woods and longs for a faun- existence. In the Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis a faun named Mr. Tumnus plays an important role.

The subject of the lustful woodland god was frequently taken up in the visual arts, where there was no difference from the beginning between the representation of Pan, the satyr and the faun. So the objection, at the most famous of all fauns, namely the Barberini Faun, a Hellenistic sculpture from the 3rd century BC that it was evidenced by the lack of goat feet and a ponytail not a Faun, but a satyr, by the iconography not covered.

Example of the representation of the faun in the painting of modern times are:

Sleeping Venus, surprised by faunas (Nicolas Poussin, 1626 )

Faun and Fae ( Daniel Maclise, 1834 )

Pan Whistling to a Blackbird ( Arnold Böcklin, 1863)

Faun and youth (Hans Thoma, 1887)

Finally, a faun appears as the titular character in the film Pan's Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro, the Spanish director of 2006 ( Original title: El Laberinto del Fauno ).

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