Here, in what at first sight looks like a grotesque jumble, there are two clearly distinguishable elements; (1) an extremely primitive ritual, probably descended from the pastoral stage of society; (2) a certain co-ordination of this with definite local settlements. The sacrifices, the smearing and wiping, the wearing of the skins, and the striking with the _februa_, all seem to be survivals from a very early stage of religious conceptions; but the two companies of runners, and their course round the Palatine, which apparently followed the most ancient line of the pomoerium, bring us into touch with the beginning and with the development of urban life. Surviving through the whole Republican period, with a tenacity which the Roman talent for organization alone could give it, the Lupercalia was still further developed for his own purposes by the dictator Caesar, and thenceforward lived on for centuries under his successors into the age of imperial Christianity. Let us now examine the several acts of the festival, to see how far they admit of explanation under the light of modern research into primitive ideas and ritual. It began, as we saw, with the sacrifice of goats and a dog. Unluckily we cannot be sure of the god to whom they were offered, nor of the sacrificing priest. According to Ovid[1395] the deity was Faunus; according to Livy it was a certain mysterious Inuus, of whom hardly anything else is known[1396], though much has been written. There was no Lupercus, as some have vainly imagined; much less any such combination as Faunus Lupercus, which has been needlessly created out of a passage of Justin[1397]. Liber is suggested by Servius[1398]; who adds that others fancied it was a ‘bellicosus deus.’ Recently Juno has been suggested, because the strips which the runners carried were called ‘Iunonis amiculum’[1399]. Thus it is quite plain that the Roman of the literary age did not know who the god was. The common idea that he was Faunus is discredited by Livy’s account and his mention of Inuus, and also by the fact that Faunus is not associated with urban settlements: and may easily be accounted for by the myth of Evander and the Arcadians, whose Pan Lycaeus was of course identified with Faunus[1400], or by the girding of the Luperci with skins, which made them resemble the popular conception of the Fauni[1401]. Possibly the name was a secret; for there was a tendency to avoid fixing a god’s name in ritual, in order to escape making mistakes, and so offending him. ‘Iure pontificum cautum est ne suis nominibus dii Romani appellarentur, ne exaugurari possint[1402].’ We must also remember that the Lupercalia undoubtedly descends from the very earliest period of the Roman religion, when the individuality of deities was not clearly conceived, and when their names were unknown, doubtful, or adjectival only. In fact, we need not greatly trouble ourselves about the name of the god: his nature is deducible to some extent from the ritual.