FAUNI, _or_ FAUNS, a species of demi-gods, inhabiting the forests, called also _Sylvāni_. They were sons of Faunus and Fauna, or Fatua, king and queen of the Latins, and though accounted demi-gods, were supposed to die after a long life. Arnobius, indeed, has shown that their father, or chief, lived only one hundred and twenty years. The Fauns were Roman deities, unknown to the Greeks. The Roman Faunus was the same with the Greek Pan; and as in the poets we find frequent mention of _Fauns_, and _Pans_, or _Panes_, in the plural number, most probable the Fauns were the same with the Pans, and all descended from one progenitor. The Romans called them _Fauni_ and _Ficarii_. The denomination _Ficarii_ was not derived from the Latin _ficus_ a _fig_, as some have imagined, but from _ficus_, _fici_, a sort of fleshy tumor or excrescence growing on the eyelids and other parts of the body, which the Fauns were represented as having. They were called Fauni, _a fando_, from _speaking_, because they were wont to speak and converse with men; an instance of which is given in the voice that was heard from the wood, in the battle between the Romans and Etrurians for the restoration of the Tarquins, and which encouraged the Romans to fight. We are told that the Fauni were husbandmen, the Satyrs vine-dressers, and the Sylvāni those who cut down wood in the forests. They were represented with horns on their heads, pointed ears, and crowned with branches of the pine, which was a tree sacred to them, whilst their lower extremities resembled those of a goat. Horace makes Faunus the guardian and protector of men of wit, and Virgil, a god of oracles and predictions; but this is, perhaps, founded on the etymology of his name, for φωνειν in Greek, and _Fari_ in Latin, of which it has been supposed a derivative, signify to _speak_; and it was, perhaps, for the same reason, they called his wife _Fauna_, that is, _Fatidica_, _prophetess_. Faunus is described by Ovid with horns on his head, and crowned with the pine tree. PRIAPUS is said, by some, to have been the son of Bacchus and Nais, or as others will have it, of Chiŏne; but the generality of authors agree, that he was son of Bacchus and Venus. He was born at Lampsăchus, a city of Mysia, at the mouth of the Hellespont, but in so deformed a state, that his mother, through shame, abandoned him. On his growing up to maturity, the inhabitants of the place banished him their territories, on account of his vicious habits; but being soon after visited with an epidemic disease, the Lampsacans consulted the oracle of Dodōna, and Priāpus was in consequence recalled. Temples were erected to him as the tutelar deity of vineyards and gardens, to defend them from thieves and from birds.