entities: ENT_ITA_SILVANUS

The core table — every entity in the database, spanning gods, angels, demons, aeons, prophets, saints, heroes, spirits, monsters, personified abstractions, cosmological realms, and ritual categories. Use category to filter by functional type (146 values: Underworld Deity, Hero, Adversarial Being, Revealer Figure, etc.). Use tradition to filter by tradition. The short_note column contains a scholarly description with source citations.

Data license: MIT · Data source: jebboone/deitydb

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entity_id canonical_name greek_name tradition entity_type category primary_domains tags cult_scope primary_period evidence_confidence review_status inclusion_basis earth_association_score chthonic_flag serpent_flag short_note entity_class
ENT_ITA_SILVANUS Silvanus   Italic/Sabine deity / guardian of forests and boundaries deity forests; wildlands; boundaries; uncultivated land; property limits; woodcutters; herdsmen; di indigetes       A           Silvanus ("Of the Forest," from silva) is the Roman-Italic god of forests, uncultivated land, and the boundaries that separate the cultivated from the wild. He guards the edges of fields (the silvester locus — the wooded margin), the boundary stones (termini) of property, and the liminal zones between human settlement and wild nature. Cato the Elder (De Agricultura 83) gives the oldest extended ritual prescription for Silvanus: a farmer should propitiate Silvanus with offerings of wine, pork, meal, and grain when working woodland that borders cultivated fields — a purely functional, contractual religion of the boundary. Unlike Faunus (who is prophetic and liminal) or Fauna (the female companion/sister), Silvanus is primarily protective and territorial: he guards the specific boundary of THIS field, not the wild in general. Plautus, Pliny, and Ovid all emphasize his forest and boundary role. In social terms, Silvanus was one of the few major Roman deities whose cult was primarily associated with slaves and freedmen (CIL inscriptions show Silvanus collegii — clubs of Silvanus worshippers — heavily populated by slaves): this may reflect his role as protector of those who work the boundary lands and forests outside the ordered civic space. The structural parallel with Pan (both are goat-legged, boundary-guarding, rural deities) was noted in antiquity, and Virgil in the Eclogues places Silvanus and Pan in equivalent roles. Wissowa (1912) pp. 213-216; North, J.A. (2000), Roman Religion, pp. 60-62. deity

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