The gate of the year

Marble statue of the god Silvanus, from the Baths of Diocletian, III-IV century A.D., now in the National Museum (Museo Nazionale Romano), Rome.
Silvanus is a very old divinity, who already appears among the Etruscans, with the name of Selvans, deriving from the Latin selva “woodland”. He was originally a god of the woods, and later became also protector of the trees planted and cultivated by man. Anciently, the Romans subdivided the land near their settlements in two large contiguous areas: one into which men regarded themselves as masters and one in which they were strangers. In the former ruled the Lares (gods who protected the house), while in the latter the primacy was of Silvanus and Faunus, divinities who, for their functions and attributes, could be assimilated one with the other. Both these areas had nothing to do with the unknown lands (terrae incognitae) which had no attractive for the Romans. They were lands easily reachable by man, though not thoroughly domesticated. These territories comprised also the countryside itself, beyond the confines of the cultivated fields. Places in which lived creatures who could fecundate the crops, multiply the cattle, which offered a summer pasture on the wooded mountains (Dumézil, 1974). But when the colonization took possession of a previously uncultivated land, Silvanus, the god of the farmhouse, of the agricultural activities, intervened allowing the domestic animals to penetrate into the woodland. His own function was sometimes assimilated to that of Terminus, protector of the boundaries (tutor finium).
Silvanus’s iconography anticipates partially the image of the Medieval Wild Man: bearded, with an uprooted tree or a knotted staff in his hand.

[Image: http://ancientrome.ru/art/artwork/sculp/mythology/rom/silvanus/sil001.jpg]




Wild Men

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Marble statue of the god Silvanus, from the Baths of Diocletian, III-IV century A.D., now in the National Museum (Museo Nazionale Romano), Rome. Silvanus is a very old divinity, who already appears among the Etruscans, with the name of Selvans, deriving from the Latin selva “woodland”. He was originally a god of the woods, and later became also protector of the trees planted and cultivated by man. Anciently, the Romans subdivided the land near their settlements in two large contiguous areas: one into which men regarded themselves as masters and one in which they were strangers. In the former ruled the Lares (gods who protected the house), while in the latter the primacy was of Silvanus and Faunus, divinities who, for their functions and attributes, could be assimilated one with the other. Both these areas had nothing to do with the unknown lands (terrae incognitae) which had no attractive for the Romans. They were lands easily reachable by man, though not thoroughly domesticated. These territories comprised also the countryside itself, beyond the confines of the cultivated fields. Places in which lived creatures who could fecundate the crops, multiply the cattle, which offered a summer pasture on the wooded mountains (Dumézil, 1974). But when the colonization took possession of a previously uncultivated land, Silvanus, the god of the farmhouse, of the agricultural activities, intervened allowing the domestic animals to penetrate into the woodland. His own function was sometimes assimilated to that of Terminus, protector of the boundaries (tutor finium). Silvanus’s iconography anticipates partially the image of the Medieval Wild Man: bearded, with an uprooted tree or a knotted staff in his hand. [Image: http://ancientrome.ru/art/artwork/sculp/mythology/rom/silvanus/sil001.jpg]