Pan

Summary

Pan is the Greek god of herdsmen and their flocks, at home in Arcadia, the mountain country in the middle of the Peloponnese. He is the son of Hermes, with a goat's feet, two horns and a beard; he lives on the mountain peaks and in the woods and plays a pipe made of reeds.

The fullest account of his birth is the nineteenth Homeric Hymn. Hermes came to Arcadia, the land of many springs and mother of flocks, and tended sheep for a mortal man, because he had fallen in love with the daughter of Dryops and wished to marry her. She bore him a son marvellous to look at, with a goat's feet and two horns, noisy and laughing; when the nurse saw his face and beard she was afraid, sprang up and ran away, leaving the child. Hermes took him, wrapped him in the skins of mountain hares, carried him up to the gods and set him beside Zeus. All the gods were glad of him, and Dionysus most of all, and they called him Pan "because he delighted all their hearts". The hymn describes his life: he ranges over snowy crests and rocks, climbs to the highest peak that overlooks the flocks, and hunts wild beasts; returning from the chase in the evening he plays a tune on his pipes that the bird of spring cannot better, the mountain nymphs dance with him by a spring of dark water, and Echo wails about the mountain top.

Ovid tells how he came by his pipe. Syrinx was a nymph of Mount Nonacris in Arcadia who followed Artemis, dressed like her and vowed herself to virginity. Pan saw her coming back from Mount Lycaeus and pursued her; she fled until the river Ladon stopped her, and she begged her sister nymphs to change her form. When Pan caught her he found himself holding marsh reeds instead of her body; he sighed, the wind moved in the reeds with a sound like a lament, and he said that this at least would remain between them. He joined reeds of different lengths with wax and named the pipe after her. Hermes himself tells the story to the many-eyed watchman Argus, meaning to lull him to sleep and kill him.

The idea his story turns on is the life of the flock in the mountains. The god walks with the sheep, watches them from the peak, hunts, and plays when the work is done; he is between man and goat, a child his nurse runs from and the gods rejoice in. He shows himself to people suddenly in lonely places: a runner hears his voice on a mountain, and sailors hear the news of his death from an island, as told in the narratives below.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. Πάν, Pan, plural Πᾶνες, Panes, leaves pan- once the case ending is removed. The project's Roman essay sets the Greek Pan beside the Roman Faunus and reads both from fann. Greek p answers Arabic f, as in this wiki's reading of Pandora. Lane's entry has a sense that meets the herdsman directly: fanna al-ibila, he drove the camels away; iftanna al-ḥimāru bi-utunihi, the he-ass took to driving his she-asses to the right and to the left, straight and aslant. The same root gives fanan, a branch, and a fannāʾ tree, one with many branches. On this reading Pan is the driver who sends the flock right and left over the mountain, and the dweller among the branches. The limit of the reading is set out under the linguistic root.

Linguistic Root

LSJ gives the genitive Πανός and dative Πανί, an uncontracted dative Πάονι in an inscription from Melpea in Arcadia of the sixth century BCE, and the hymn's line deriving the name from πᾶσιν, "all", because the child delighted the hearts of all the gods.

We read Pan from fann: p is f, n is n, and the Arabic n is doubled. In Lane, fanna al-ibila, yafunnuhā, fannan is to drive the camels away, and iftanna al-ḥimāru bi-utunihi is said of the he-ass that takes to driving his she-asses to the right and the left, straight and aslant. The hymn makes Pan the lord of the flocks who climbs to overlook them and ranges the mountains "hither and thither" through the thickets. The same root gives fanan, the branch of a tree, plural afnān, and a fannāʾ tree, one with many branches, and Ovid describes Pan "whose head was girt with prickly pines". It also gives fann, a sort or kind, which is how the Roman essay reads Faunus, so the reading here joins the three senses as the Faunus page does.

The limit of the reading is that the oldest written form of the name, Πάονι, makes it Πάων, and many Greek names end in -ων, so the n may belong to the ending rather than to the name, leaving only pa-, while fann needs the n as a root letter. The hymn's derivation from πᾶν, "all", is a play on the word, as the Hymn to Apollo plays on the name Pytho, and this wiki reads πᾶν itself as fann in the name Pandora.

Key Mythic Narratives

Pan at Marathon

When the Persians landed at Marathon, the Athenian generals sent the runner Philippides to Sparta to ask for help, and on his return he said that he had met Pan on Mount Parthenion above Tegea. Pan called him by name and told him to ask the Athenians why they paid him no attention, though he wished them well, had often served them and would serve them again. The Athenians believed it, and when their affairs prospered they built Pan a sanctuary beneath the Acropolis and honoured him with yearly sacrifices and a torch race. Pausanias mentions a Hill of Pan and a Cave of Pan beyond the plain of Marathon, with rocks inside shaped like goats that people call "Pan's herd of goats".

The death of Great Pan

Plutarch tells, from his teacher Epitherses, that Epitherses once sailed for Italy, the wind dropped one evening near the Echinades, and the ship drifted near the island of Paxi. The passengers heard a voice from the island calling "Thamus"; Thamus was an Egyptian pilot whose name most of them did not know. He did not answer the first two times; at the third he replied, and the voice said: when you come opposite Palodes, announce that Great Pan is dead. The passengers debated, and Thamus decided to sail past in silence if there were a breeze, and to say what he had heard if there were none. When he reached the place there was neither wind nor wave, and he called from the stern towards the land: "Great Pan is dead." Before he had finished there rose a great cry of lamentation, not of one voice but of many, mixed with cries of amazement. The story reached Rome, Tiberius sent for Thamus and had inquiries made about Pan, and the scholars at his court concluded that he was the son of Hermes and Penelope.

Pan in Egypt

Herodotus says that the people of Mendes in the Delta do not sacrifice goats, because they count Pan among the eight gods who were before the twelve; they paint and carve him with a goat's head and legs, as the Greeks do; they hold all goats sacred, and when the most sacred he-goat dies the whole district mourns; and in their language "Mendes" is the name of both the he-goat and Pan. Among the Greeks, he says, Pan is one of the youngest gods, among the Egyptians one of the oldest. The Greeks also identified Min of Akhmim with Pan and called his city Panopolis.

Symbolic Reading

The project's Greek rereading essay lists Pan among the names that carry natural phenomena and reads him as mountain herding, and the sudden fright ascribed to him, named after him in European languages as "panic", as the echo of voices in the mountains, a voice heard whose speaker cannot be seen. The hymn itself puts the echo beside him: when he plays in the evening, Echo wails about the mountain top.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

The Romans likened Faunus, the god of the woods and flocks who speaks from the trees, to the Greek Pan. Livy says the Arcadian Evander founded at Rome a festival in which young men ran naked in honour of Lycaean Pan, whom the Romans called Inuus: the Lupercalia, at the Lupercal cave. Evander's story is told under Evander and Cacus.

In Egypt the Greeks identified Pan with Min, god of fertility and of the Eastern Desert at Koptos and Akhmim, and the people of Mendes made Pan one of the oldest gods, as told above.

The death of Pan brings a lament of many voices for a dead god, as Dumuzi and Adonis are mourned in the dying and rising god. It differs from them in that the text tells of no return for Pan.