SILVANUS A purely Roman god, Silvanus' function was to watch over the interests of herdsmen living inwoods and fields, and taking care to preserve boundary lines and banks of rivers. He was saidto have been the first to mark a boundary with stones, and thus was looked on as the founderof a regular system of landowning. He is represented as a human figure, a cheerful aged manholding a shepherd's pipe, being given to music, like most forest and wood deities, and carrying abranch of a tree to mark him specifically as a forest god. This branch is supposed to have been Cyparissus, whom he changed into a cypress tree, having fallen in love with her.