The poet imagines an ancient race, sprung from the trees themselves: a ‘genus indocile et dispersum montibus altis,’ living on the forest-clad hills[1137], to whom foreign invaders brought the means of civilization. Why should not this tradition be a native one? It is singularly in accord with the most recent results of Italian excavation; for it is now absolutely certain that the oldest inhabitants of central Italy dwelt on the hill-tops, and that the first traces of foreign influence only occur in lower and later settlements[1138]. The valleys were still undrained and malarious. These earliest inhabitants who have left their traces for the excavator, or a still older race scattered on the hills after their invasion, may have been the traditional representatives of what Preller has called ‘the period of Faunus[1139],’ regarded by the later civilization, from their wild and woodland habits, as half demons and half men. The name of the kindred Silvanus tells its own tale; and his actual connexion with trees was even closer than that of Faunus[1140]. (3) A third well-attested point is the attribution to Faunus or the Fauni of power for good or evil over the crops and herds, as we have seen it already implied in Horace’s ode. Porphyrion[1141] in his commentary on this ode tells us that Faunus, on the Nones of December, wishes the cattle, which are under his protection, to be free from danger. Just before this passage he had spoken of him as ‘deum inferum et pestilentem,’ thus giving us the dark and hurtful side of his power as well as the bright and gracious. The same combination of the powers of doing and averting harm is seen in Mars, as we have already learnt from the hymn of the Arval Brethren and the formula of prayers preserved by Cato[1142]. Under this head may be mentioned the belief that both Faunus and Silvanus were dangerous for women, an idea which finds expression in the significant word _incubus_, so often applied to them[1143]. We may perhaps find a reason for the identification of Faunus as god of the Lupercalia in the most striking feature of the festival—the pursuit of the women by the _creppi_, who struck them with thongs in order to render them productive[1144].