Pan

In Greek mythology, **Pan** (Ancient Greek Πὰν, *Pan*, lit. "all") is the god of the wilderness, shepherds, flocks, nature, mountain wilds, fields, groves, glens, panic, sex, fertility and theatrical criticism.

There were no temples attributed to Pan, but he was rather worshiped in natural settings such as caves. It was believed that he often chased nymphs in order to seduce them, but he was always turned down due to his ugly appearance. Moreover, the word 'panic' derives from the name of the goat-like deity. Pan's angry voice was so frightening, that caused panic to anyone who was unlucky to be close enough to hear it.

Pan is a very old god, older even than Mycenaean Greece; he seems to be an offshoot of \*Péh₂usōn, a hypothesized god of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion, from which Pushan also sprang, who some point very early on split into Pan and Hermes as we know them.

His Roman counterpart is the god Faunus.

## Myths

### Hermes

Pan is closely related to his mythological father Hermes, the Olympian god of messengers, commerce, trade, messengers, thieves and liars. Pan is very old, and traces of his origins and development are often blurry. He was worshipped in the region of Arcadia, which is also the birthplace of Hermes. Pan was usually worshipped in groves and caves rather than state-sponsored temples; in fact only two are recorded, one of them in the Peloponnese (where Arcadia is). Pan is said to have given Artemis her hunting dogs and taught Apollo the gift of prophecy. Pan is notable for two things; the word **pan**ic, a feeling of sudden terror attributed to Pan creeping up on people from the behind and scaring them, and the panpipes, created when Pan chased a nymph named Syrinx who transformed into reeds in order to escape him. Pan cut the reeds and created the panpipes from them.

Pan is probably older than Mycenaean Greece; in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion (a hypothetical religion from which Norse, Greek, Roman, Vedic and various other mythologies derive) Pan, or an ancestor of his, is found as \*Péh₂usōn, a pastoral deity. \*Péh₂usōn's only other descendant is the Vedic god Pūṣan. Due to lack of information, it's unclear what Pan's deal was pre-Greece, but Pūṣan was characterized as a god of marriage, road and journey, cattle-herding, the sun, travel, pastoralism, goats and was a psychopomp, a leader of the dead souls to the Underworld. If original Pan was anything like Pūṣan, then he probably split in or before Mycenaean times into Pan (who took the herds, forest and wilderness) and Hermes (who got the roads and journeys, herding and soul-leading). Hermes and Pan are naturally very connected; in many versions, they are father and son, and they both share a "large penis" imagery.

This brings us to the herms: herms (literally: "piles of stone") were boundary and border markers in the shape of steels with Hermes' head and penis found along roadways connected to Hermes' name. Before the sculpted statues, roads were marked with large heaps of piled stones, which, despite not being humanoid, were not any less sacred and revered; it was common to add another stone to the pile or anoint it with oil. Pan was probably revered through the herms, as god of journeys, in the old times, and might have a Hermes-related epithet (like "Pallas Athena") and perhaps this epithet split from Pan to form an entirely new deity in the form of Hermes.

By the 800s BC Hermes was properly established given his role in *the Iliad*, Homer's epic. Pan at this point has already been reduced to a wilderness deity. Pan also has a fun anecdotal story about him; according to Plutarch (100s AD) a few decades years earlier than his writing during the reign of Tiberius, a divine voice called out to a sailor named Thamus that the great god Pan was dead. Thamus did so, and thus making Pan a deity that died. However people did not stop worshipping Pan, and his cult continued on like nothing had happened. This in fact might be a translation issue; Tammuz, the consort of the goddess Ishtar ho died, had his cult had been brought over to Greece. In Greek, "Thamus, the great god Pan is dead" is written as "Θαμούς, Πὰν ὁ μέγας τέθνηκε" (*Thamoús, Pan ho mégas téthnēke*). However Pan means "all" in Greek, so what that voice might have actually said was "Θαμούς πανμέγας τέθνηκε" ("Thamous panmégas téthnēke", *Tammuz the all-great died*), meaning some sailors possibly overhead the cult of Tammuz lamenting their dead hero, and mistaking it to be that Pan was dead.

### Io

In the myth of Io, Hermes lulled the giant Argus to sleep by telling him the story of how Pan chased Syrinx and she turned into reeds. Pan created the panpipes using the reeds.

### Typhon

Pan, along with Hermes, found the sinews Typhon had removed from Zeus and gave them back to him, restoring Zeus to full power.

## Physical Appearance

As a god of the wilderness, Pan is bright green-coloured. He has goat legs instead of human-like ones, and horns.

## Appearances

Hermes

Io

Typhon