Sylvanus biography
Sylvanus biography
Woodlands, nature, fertility...
Silvanus (mythology)
Roman tutelary deity of woods
Silvanus (;[1] meaning "of the woods" in Latin) was a Romantutelary deity of woods and uncultivated lands.
As protector of the forest (sylvestris deus), he especially presided over plantations and delighted in trees growing wild.[2][3][4][5] He is also described as a god watching over the fields and husbandmen, protecting in particular the boundaries of fields.[6] The similarly named Etruscan deity Selvans may be a borrowing of Silvanus,[7] or not even related in origin.[8]
Silvanus is described as the divinity protecting the flocks of cattle, warding off wolves, and promoting their fertility.[2][9][10][11] Dolabella, a rural engineer of whom only a few pages are known, states that Silvanus was the first to set up stones to mark the limits of fields, and that every estate had three Silvani:[12]