Page:Greek and Roman Mythology.djvu/167

 THE ROMAN GODS 153 which were celebrated with running matches on the 21st of August and the 15th of December. With Consus is intimately associated Ops Consiva, i.e. Ops, the wife of Consus. She represented the opima frag um copia, the abundance of the products that were stored away at harvest time ; her two feasts, the Opicon- slvia and the Opalia, were separated from those of her husband by intervals of only three days in each case. At a later period Saturn was identified with Cronus, and Ops with Rhea, and many peculiarities of the Greek forms of their worship were transferred to this worship in Rome. 199. (3) The vital forces operating in forest and field were ascribed to the activity of various impregnating gods and conceiving goddesses. The country people and shep- herds believed that they owed to these divinities the prod- ucts of the ground and the abundance of their flocks, and worshiped them ; and the divinities, as did their worship- ers, had their favorite abodes in shady groves and at bubbling springs. Their nature was as simple and rustic as the mind of the worshipers, and everything dear and precious to the countryman was committed to their pro- tecting care. Faunus was the husband or father of Fauna, who was usually invoked as Bona Dea. His name signifies ' the benevolent god/ being derived from favere (' to be gra- cious'). He appeared in human form under the name Evander (Gk. Euandros, 'good man'), who was said to have established the first settlement on the site where Rome was afterwards located. It was also told of this Evander that he had founded the oldest sanctuary of Faunus in a grotto on the Palatine hill, and instituted the "feast of the Luper-