Pan

Pan, among the Greeks, a divinity of pastures, forests, and flocks, usually described as a son of Hermes. His worship originated in Arcadia, but spread gradually over the rest of Greece, although it did not reach Athens until after Marathon. Pan is represented as having horns, a goat's beard, a crooked nose, pointed ears, a tail, and goat's feet. Sometimes he appeared to travellers, startling them with sudden fear, whence a sudden fright was called a panic fear. During the heat of the day he used to sleep in the shady woods, and was exceedingly wroth if his slumber was disturbed by the halloo of the hunters. He was the patron of all persons occupied in the care of cattle and of bees, in hunting and in fishing. He is also represented as fond of music, and of dancing with the forest nymphs, and as the inventor of the syrinx or Pandean pipes. Cows, goats, lambs, milk, honey, and new wine were offered to him. The fir-tree was sacred to him, and he had sanctuaries and temples in various parts of Arcadia, at Træzene, at Sicyon, at Athens, &c. The Romans identified the Greek Pan with their own god Faunus. Plutarch (De Orac. Defectu) is the first to tell the story that in the reign of Tiberius one Thamus a pilot, when steering near the islands of Paxæ, was commanded by a loud voice to proclaim that 'the great Pan is dead.' As soon as he had reached Palodes he cried the news aloud from the poop of his ship, whereupon was heard a great noise of lamentation, as of nature itself expressing its grief. The coincidence of this story with the birth or the crucifixion of Christ gave occasion to an explanation that it marked the end of the old world and the beginning of the new when the old oracles became dumb. Rabelais has the story, there is a well-known allusion to it in Milton's Ode on the Nativity, and it has been finely treated by Schiller and Mrs Browning. The Devil of popular Christian superstition owes some of his attributes to Pan.