Gods of this type naturally make little figure in literature though Proserpina, in consequence of her identification with the Greek Persephone, achieved a great place and is indeed the subject of the last great poem written under the Roman Empire. But there were other gods of countryside and woodland, whom we know better in art and poetry. "Faunus lover of fugitive Nymphs" is charming enough in Horace's ode, and Fauns, Pans and Satyrs lend themselves readily to grotesque treatment in statue and gem and picture. But the country people took them seriously. Lucretius, speaking of echoes among the hills, says:--"These spots the people round about fancy that goat-footed Satyrs and nymphs inhabit; they say that they are the Fauns, whose noise and sportive play breaks the still silence of the night as they move from place to place.... They tell us that the country people far and wide full oft hear Pan, when, nodding the pine-cap on his half-bestial head, he runs over the gaping reeds with curved lip.... And of other like monsters and marvels they tell us, that they may not be thought to inhabit lonely places, abandoned even by the gods."[32] Cicero {13} makes his Stoic say their voices are often to be heard.[33] Pliny, in his _Natural History_, says that certain dogs can actually see Fauns; he quotes a prescription, concocted of a dragon's tongue, eyes and gall, which the Magi recommend for those who are "harassed by gods of the night and by Fauns";[34] for they did not confine themselves to running after nymphs, but would chase human women in the dark. Plutarch has a story of King Numa drugging a spring from which "two daemons, Picus and Faunus," drank--"creatures who must be compared to Satyrs or Pans in some respects and in others to the Idaean Dactyli," beings of great miraculous power.[35] A countryside haunted by inhabitants of more or less than human nature, part beasts and part fairies or devils, is one thing to an unbeliever who is interested in art or folk-lore, but quite another thing to the uneducated man or woman who has heard their mysterious voices in the night solitude and has suffered in crop, or house, or herd from their ill-will.[36] What the Greek called "Panic" fears were attributed in Italy to Fauns.[37] "Trees," says Pliny, "were temples of divinities, and in the old way the simple country folk to this day dedicate any remarkable tree to a god. Nor have we more worship for images glittering with gold and ivory than for groves and the very silence that is in them."[38] The country people hung rags and other offerings on holy trees--the hedge round the sacred grove at Aricia is specially mentioned by Ovid as thus honoured.[39] The river-god of the Tiber had his sacred oak hung with spoils of fallen foes.[40]