Pan (god)

Pan
God of nature, the wild, shepherds, flocks, and mountain wilds[1]
Pan teaching his eromenos, the shepherd Daphnis, to play his pan flute, Roman copy of Greek original c. 100 BC, found in Pompeii.
AbodeArcadia
SymbolPan flute, goat
Genealogy
ParentsHermes and a daughter of Dryops, or Penelope
ConsortSyrinx, Echo, Pitys
ChildrenSilenus, Iynx, Krotos, Xanthus (out of Twelve)
Equivalents
Roman equivalentFaunus
Inuus

In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Pan (/pæn/;[2] Ancient Greek: Πάν, romanizedPán) is the god of the wild, shepherds and flocks, rustic music and impromptus, and companion of the nymphs.[3] He has the hindquarters, legs, and horns of a goat, in the same manner as a faun or satyr. With his homeland in rustic Arcadia, he is also recognized as the god of fields, groves, wooded glens, and often affiliated with sex; because of this, Pan is connected to fertility and the season of spring.[1]

In Roman religion and myth, Pan was frequently identified with Faunus, a nature god who was the father of Bona Dea, sometimes identified as Fauna; he was also closely associated with Silvanus, due to their similar relationships with woodlands, and Inuus, a vaguely-defined deity also sometimes identified with Faunus.[4][5][6] In the 18th and 19th centuries, Pan became a significant figure in the Romantic movement of western Europe and also in the 20th-century Neopagan movement.[7]

Ancient Roman fresco of Pan and Hermaphroditus from the House of Dioscuri in Pompeii, now in the National Archaeological Museum, Naples
  1. ^ a b Neto, F. T. L.; Bach, P. V.; Lyra, R. J. L.; Borges Junior, J. C.; Maia, G. T. d. S.; Araujo, L. C. N.; Lima, S. V. C. (2019). "Gods associated with male fertility and virility". Andrology. 7 (3): 267–272. doi:10.1111/andr.12599. PMID 30786174. S2CID 73507440.
  2. ^ "Pan" (Greek mythology) entry in Collins English Dictionary.
  3. ^ Edwin L. Brown, "The Lycidas of Theocritus Idyll 7", Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 1981:59–100.
  4. ^ Schmitz, Leonhard (1849). "Pan". In Smith, William (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. III. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. pp. 106, 107.
  5. ^ Morford, Mark P. O.; Lenardon, Robert J. (1985) [1971]. Classical Mythology (third ed.). New York and London: Longman. pp. 476, 477.
  6. ^ Grant, Michael (1984) [1971]. Roman Myths. New York: Dorset Press.
  7. ^ The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, Hutton, Ronald, chapter 3

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