Inuus

In ancient Roman religion, Inuus was a god, or aspect of a god, who embodied sexual intercourse. The evidence for him as a distinct entity is scant. Maurus Servius Honoratus wrote that Inuus is an epithet of Faunus (Greek Pan), named from his habit of intercourse with animals, based on the etymology of ineundum, "a going in, penetration," from , "to enter" in the sexual sense. Other names for the god were Fatuus and Fatulcus.

Walter Friedrich Otto disputed the traditional etymology and derived Inuus instead from in-avos, "friendly, beneficial" (cf. aveo, "to be eager for, desire"), for the god's fructifying power.

Livy is the sole source for identifying Inuus as the form of Faunus for whom the Lupercalia was celebrated: "naked young men would run around venerating Lycaean Pan, whom the Romans then called Inuus, with antics and lewd behavior." Although Ovid does not name Inuus in his treatment of the Lupercalia, he may allude to his sexual action in explaining the mythological background of the festival. When Romulus complains that a low fertility rate has rendered the abduction of the Sabine women pointless, Juno, in her guise as the birth goddess Lucina, offers an instruction: "Let the sacred goat go into the Italian matrons" (Italidas matres … sacer hirtus inito, with the verb inito a form of inire). The would-be mothers recoil from this advice, but an augur, "recently arrived from Etruscan soil," offers a ritual dodge: a goat was killed, and its hide cut into strips for flagellating women who wished to conceive; thus the aetiology for the practice at the Lupercalia.Rutilius Namatianus offers a similar verbal play, Faunus init ("Faunus enters"), in pointing out a statue depicting the god at Castrum Inui ("Fort Inuus").Georg Wissowa rejected both the etymology and the identification of Inuus with Faunus.

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