Silvanus

SILVANUS. - God of the Roman religion. His name, although attempts have been made to explain it differently as well (Etruscan selvans), seems to be an adjective derived from the word silva, and indeed S. remains throughout Roman history a god of the woods: at most a distinction is made between a S. silvester and a S. domesticus, according to the god's functions in the woods and, respectively, in houses and on farms.

It is very significant that S. at Rome has no public festival nor a temple, while his private veneration is abundantly documented, especially by inscriptions. In literature the same traits are attributed to him as to the god Faunus, who, conversely, has a public cult but almost no inscriptions: it seems clear that this is the same deity appearing under one name (an older one?) in the public cult and under another in the private cult. S., conceived no differently from Faunus as an "incubus," was considered dangerous to women: to protect women in childbirth from him, the deities Intercidona, Pilumnus and Deverra were invoked, corresponding to three instruments of a domestic apotropaic magic. S. reigns in the baths reserved for men. Women are excluded from his cult. Like Faunus, S. is identified with the Greek Pan. His sphere is that of wild nature. In the Illyrian provinces of the Empire his veneration, linked with that of Diana, proves particularly intense and suggests an interpretatio Romana of a kindred indigenous deity. In depictions S. has the appearance of a woodcutter, with a sickle, a tree branch in his hands and a dog at his feet.

Angelo Brelich