PAN, the god of shepherds, of hunters, and of all country exercises. But he bore a higher character amongst the earliest Greeks, as well as amongst the Egyptians, from whom his worship was borrowed by the former people. In Egypt he was known by the name of Mendes, which, according to Jablonski,^[1. Pantheon. Egyptiorirn. ] signifies fecundity. Hence his symbol was a living he-goat, the most salacious of all animals: “Hircum Mendesium colunt Aegypti, eo quod virtuti pro-lificae ac genitivae consecratus est. Namque animal hoc coitus valde cupidum est.” His principal temple was a magnificent building in a city of Lower Egypt, called after his name. It is well known, that from dedicating certain animals to certain gods, the Egyptians proceeded to consider the animals themselves as actuated by the divinities to whom they were sacred. Hence, perhaps, the origin of animal worship. In the temple of Mendes was kept a he-goat, to which sacrifices of a very monstrous kind were offered.

The deity whom the Egyptians adored by the name of Mendes was no other than the Soul of the Universe, for he was their most ancient god; and we are told by Plutarch, “that they took the first God and the Universe for one and the same thing.”^[2. De Iside et Osiride. ] Hence his name of ∏αv amongst the Greeks. Not that either the Greeks or their masters in theology worshipped, as their first god, mere brute matter, but that spirit which they conceived to be co-eternal with matter, and to animate all things, making them one. Thus Orpheus, who imported the Egyptian doctrine into

Greece, declares that all things are one; and after him Parmenides and other philosophers taught tv 'ειναι το ∙καν, that “one is the universe,” and that the “universe is immoveable.” That the ancient Grecian Pan, or the Egyptian Mendes, was not the corporeal world, as senseless and inanimate, but the whole system of things animated and eternal, appears further from the following testimony of Macrobius: “Hunc deum Arcades colunt, appellantes m της iιλης κυξιοv, non sylvarum dominum, sed universae sub-stantiae materialis dominatorem.” The Arcadians worship this god, calling him the lord of Hyle, that is, not the lord of the woods, but the lord of all material substance. In the same manner Pharnutus describes the Pan of the other Greeks, not as the mere corporeal world, but as the intellectual principle actuating it and presiding over it; and he adds, that “Pan was feigned to be lascivious, because of the multitude of spermatic reasons in the world, and the continual mixtures and generation of things.”

The Egyptians, as we learn from Jablonski, had nearly the same notion with the Greeks of the spirit which they worshipped as the soul of the universe, only they ascribed to it both sexes. As the maker, governor, and bountiful father of universal nature, they considered it as a male, whose symbol was the he-goat of Mendes; and as a female it was adored by the name of Isis, to whom the she-goat was consecrated, though not held in such veneration as the male. From this view of the Egyptian creed, the sacrifice which we have mentioned appears no longer unaccountable. It was made to a god, believed to be the universal source of fecundity, and to whom, from the well-known character of the animal which he was supposed to actuate, they had reason to believe that it would be most acceptable.

The Greeks never worshipped their Pan by the emblem of a living goat; but they painted him with the lower parts of a goat, for a reason which will be afterwards mentioned. How he came to degenerate amongst that people, from one of the Dii majorum gentium, or rather from the first principle of all things, to the rank of a demon or demi-god, we cannot pretend to say. But that such was his fate is certain, for under this last character mention is made both of his birth and his death.

It is not agreed whose son he was. Homer makes him the son of Mercury, and says he was called Pan, from τα∣⅛ οrnne, because he charmed all the gods with his flute; but others say that he was the son of Demogorgon, and first invented the organ, of seven unequal reeds, joined together in a particular manner. Having upon a time fought with Cupid, the latter in spite made him fall in love with the nymph Syrinx, who, flying from him to the banks of Ladon, a river of Arcadia, was, at the instant prayers of the Nymphs, turned into a reed, as her name in Greek signifies, which the god grasping instead of her, made a pipe of, and for his music was worshipped by the Arcadians. The most common opinion was, that he was the son of Mercury and Penelope. But Naturae Comes makes his birth scandalous, by saying he was called παv, because begotten by all Penelope’s suitors. He was painted half-man half-goat, with large goats’ horns, a chaplet of pine on his red face, a pleasant laughter, with the feet and tail of a goat; a motley skin covered his body, and he had a crooked stick in one hand, and his pipe in the other. He is described by Silius Italicus (xiii. 326, et seq.) as a sight enough to frighten women and children, nay, even armed men too; for when Brennus the Gaul was about to pillage the temple of Apollo at Delphos, Pan struck such a terror into his army, that he quitted his sacrilegious design; and hence Panici terrores. Yet, homely as he was, he pleased the goddess Luna, [7:16:781]turning himself easily into a white ram (Virgil, Georg. iii. 392, et deinceps) ; and also the nymph Dryope, almost putting off his divinity, and turning shepherd, for her sake. Neither was he displeasing to other nymphs, who are generally represented dancing around him to hear the charms of his pipe. The usual offerings made to him were milk and honey, in shepherds’ wooden bowls. A dog, the wolf’s enemy, was also sacrificed to him; and hence his usual epithet is ∖ vκαιος, and his priests are called Luperci.

His festival, celebrated on the 15th of February by the Romans, was brought into Italy by Evander the Arcadian, and revived afterwards by Romulus, in memory of his preserver. He was also called by the Romans Inuus, ab ineundo. (Liv. i. 5; Macrob. Sat. i. 21; and Serv. in Virg. Aen. vi. 775.) The ancients, by giving so many adjuncts and attributes to this idol, seem to have designed him as the symbol of the universe. His upper parts are human, because the upper part of the world is fair, beautiful, and smiling, like his face; his horns symbolize the rays)of the sun and of the moon; his red face indicates the splendour of the sky; the spotted skin wherewith he is clothed, the stars which bespangle the firmament; the roughness of his lower parts, beasts and vegetables; his goat’s feet, the solidity of the earth; his pipe, compacted of seven reeds, the seven planets, which, they say, produce the harmony of the spheres; and his crook, bending round at the top, the years circling into one another.

Having said so much of Pan, both as a self-existent god and as a generated demon, we shall conclude this article with some observations on Plutarch’s account of the prodigy which happened at his death; for, in the Pagan creed, demons were not all believed immortal. “In the reign of Tiberius,” says he,^[3. Lit>. de Oracul. Defect. ] “certain persons on a voyage from Asia to Italy, and sailing towards the evening by the Echinedes, were there becalmed, and heard a loud voice from the shore calling on one Thamus, an Egyptian pilot, whom they had on board. Thamus, as may be supposed, listened with attention; and the voice, after repeating his name thrice, commanded him when he came to the Pelodes, to declare that the Great Pan was dead. The man, with the advice of his companions, resolved, that if they should have a quick gale off the Pelodes, he would pass by in silence; but that if they should be becalmed, he would perform what the voice had commanded. Adhering to this resolution, they soon arrived off the destined islands, andwere immediately becalmed, there being neither breath of wind nor agitation of water. Upon this, Thamus, looking from the hinder part of the ship towards the land, pronounced with a loud voice, ‘ the Great Pan is dead,’ and was instantly answered from the shore by numberless bowlings and lamentations.”

This story, which has so much the air of imposture, has not only been admitted as true by men of the first eminence for learning and acuteness, but has been applied to our Saviour, whose death, says Cudworth, the demons mourned, not from love, but from a presage that it would put a period to the tyranny and domination which they had so long exercised over the souls and' bodies of men. In support of this opinion, he quotes several passages of Scripture, such as, “Now is the prince of this world judged ;"’ and, “Having spoiled principalities and powers (by his death upon the cross), he triumphed over them in it.” He affirms likewise, that “Pan being taken for that reason or understanding by which all things were made, and by which they are all governed, or for that divine wisdom which diffuseth itself through all things, is a name which might very well signify Gcd manifested in the fleshy

The authority of Cudworth is great; but a groundless opinion has seldom been propped by weaker reasoning than he makes use of on this occasion. Plutarch indeed says, and seems to believe, that this prodigy fell out during the reign of Tiberius; but as he mentions not the year of that reign, there is no evidence that it was at the crucifixion of our Saviour. The demons who inhabited the Echinedes knew what had been transacted at Jerusalem, far distant from their islands; they knew the name of the pilot of a strange ship; they knew that the mariners of that ship had resolved to disobey their command, unless becalmed off the Pelodes; they had power over both the winds and waves at the Pelodes, and exerted that power to enforce obedience to their command; and yet these all-knowing and powerful beings were under the necessity of calling in the aid of a man to deliver a message to their companions, inhabiting a place to which the very same story assures us that their own power and knowledge reached. Should it be said that the demons were compelled by divine power thus publicly to make known to man Christ’s triumph over the kingdom of darkness, we beg leave to ask why they were not likewise compelled to give him another name, since it is certain, that at the era of Tiberius, and long before, illiterate Pagans, such as common seamen must be supposed to have been, knew no other Pan than the fabled son of Penelope and Mercury? Indeed the other Pan, taken for that reason or understanding by which all things were made, could not possibly be the being here meant. For, erroneous as the Pagan system was, there is nothing in it so completely absurd as the death of the soul of the universe, the maker of all things; nor do we believe that any Pagan ever existed, who dreamed that such a death was possible.

What, then, it will be asked, are we to understand by this story? Plutarch was eminent for knowledge and integrity, and he relates it without expressing a doubt of its truth. But many a man of worth has been credulous; and though that was not his character, this prodigy may be accounted for by natural means. Germanicus was believed to have been poisoned, at least with the knowledge, if not by the command, of Tiberius; and there was nothing which the Romans so deeply deplored as the untimely death of that accomplished prince.^[4. Tacitus, Annal, cap. 72, 83, et lib. iii. cap. 1. ] They fancied that his body was animated, not by a human soul, but by a superior demon; and they decreed to him statues, religious ceremonies, and even sacrifices. His widow was highly honoured, as having been nearly related to a divinity, and his children were adored as demi-gods. These facts being admitted, nothing appears to us more probable than the opinion of the learned Mosheim,^[5. Cudworth’s Intel. Syst. cap. iv. note 132. ] who thinks that some shrewd statesman, in order to excite the popular fury against Tiberius to the highest pitch, invented this story, and bribed foreign mariners to spread it amongst the people, who would naturally believe, that by the Great Pan was meant their favourite Germanicus. This hypothesis is at least countenanced by what Plutarch tells us of the anxiety of the emperor to discover what personage could be meant by the Pan whose death was announced to the seamen. He consulted the learned men of Rome, who, in order to restore peace to the city, declared that they understood it of none other than the son of Penelope and Mercury.