Prayer to Silvanus

Half a line from a votive inscription of AD 156, set up in the valley of the Tritanus below Capestrano by a man who dedicated a statue and an altar to Silvanus.

Of the whole inscription three words survive in this card: fautor tu dexter adesto. That is instructive in its own way, for it is the smallest possible unit of Roman prayer. Name the god's role (patron), ask for presence (adesto), specify the disposition (dexter — favourable, literally "standing on the right"). Everything else in the inscription is narrative — the river, the cypress, the vow — while the prayer proper fits into these three words.

The prayer is not addressed to Apollo. The poem opens "Magne deum, Silvane potens, sanctissime pastor", and Apollo does not appear in it at all. The deities field has been corrected from the Latin; the card's identifiers still carry "apollo", a trace of the original mistake, and changing them would mean touching references in Sanity.