Happy Monday, Missians!
I hope you all had a great weekend, and have an even better Memorial Day planned. I was gonna go ahead and get this out to you guys yesterday, due to my plans later on today, but I decided to keep the post on Monday as I usually do for my May Mythical Beasts posts. This year's beast posts seemed to have flown by much quicker, (not to mention, this month flew by quick too), but that was probably due to my only having one post per week this time around. At any rate, today is our last Mythical Beast blog entry for 2019. Today's May Mythical Beast is none other than the pipe-playing goat-man, himself, Pan.
Even if you've never heard of him, most of you have probably at least seen pictures of Pan. Pan is the dude you see in paintings or sculptures, playing pipes, who's half-man, half goat, (the top half human, and the bottom half goat). If you've ever seen the Percy Jackson movies, and saw Percy's friend, the satyr, then you should have somewhat of an idea of how Pan looks.
Today's Pan information is courtesy of Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_(god)
According to Wikipedia, Pan is the god of: the wild, shepherds and flocks, nature of mountain wilds, rustic music and impromptus, and companion of the nymphs.
Worship
In two late Roman sources, Hyginusand Ovid, Pan is substituted for the satyr Marsyas in the theme of a musical competition (agon), and the punishment by flaying is omitted.
My Love of Mythology:
Well, I hope you guys enjoyed this year's edition of our May Mythical Beasts posts. We'll see you back here next year for more of the same. Until then, you still have October Pet Spooktacular to look forward to, (there's no telling what interesting creatures, you might run across in those episodes).
But before we get into all that, I'll see you back here on Friday for our upcoming June Missy Show episode schedule, and on Saturday for the June Pet and Animal schedule.
Until then,
This is your host J,
I hope you all had a great weekend, and have an even better Memorial Day planned. I was gonna go ahead and get this out to you guys yesterday, due to my plans later on today, but I decided to keep the post on Monday as I usually do for my May Mythical Beasts posts. This year's beast posts seemed to have flown by much quicker, (not to mention, this month flew by quick too), but that was probably due to my only having one post per week this time around. At any rate, today is our last Mythical Beast blog entry for 2019. Today's May Mythical Beast is none other than the pipe-playing goat-man, himself, Pan.
Even if you've never heard of him, most of you have probably at least seen pictures of Pan. Pan is the dude you see in paintings or sculptures, playing pipes, who's half-man, half goat, (the top half human, and the bottom half goat). If you've ever seen the Percy Jackson movies, and saw Percy's friend, the satyr, then you should have somewhat of an idea of how Pan looks.
Today's Pan information is courtesy of Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_(god)
 |
| Pan teaching Daphnis to play the flute, public domain. |
According to Wikipedia, Pan is the god of: the wild, shepherds and flocks, nature of mountain wilds, rustic music and impromptus, and companion of the nymphs.
Worship
The worship of
Pan began in Arcadia which was always the principal seat of
his worship. Arcadia was a district of mountain people, culturally separated
from other Greeks. Arcadian hunters used to scourge the statue of the god if
they had been disappointed in the chase.
Being a rustic
god, Pan was not worshipped in temples or other built edifices, but in natural
settings, usually caves or grottoes such as the one on the north slope of
the Acropolis of Athens.
These are often referred to as the Cave of Pan. The only exceptions are the Temple of
Pan on the Neda River gorge in
the southwestern Peloponnese – the ruins
of which survive to this day – and the Temple of Pan at Apollonopolis
Magna in ancient Egypt. In the 4th century BCE Pan was depicted on the coinage
of Pantikapaion.
Representations
of Pan on 4th-century BCE gold and silver Pantikapaion coins.
Parentage
The parentage
of Pan is unclear; generally he is the son of Hermes, although occasionally in some myths of Dionysus, with whom his mother is said to be a wood
nymph, sometimes Dryope or, even in the
5th-century AD source Dionysiaca by Nonnus (14.92), Penelope of Mantineia in Arcadia. In some early sources such
as Pindar, his father is Apollo via Penelope, the wife of Odysseus. Herodotus (2.145), Cicero (ND 3.22.56), Apollodorus
(7.38) and Hyginus (Fabulae 224) all make Hermes and Penelope his
parents. Pausanias
8.12.5 records the story that Penelope had in fact been unfaithful to her
husband, who banished her to Mantineia upon his return. Other sources (Duris of Samos; the Vergilian commentator Servius) report that Penelope slept with all 108
suitors in Odysseus' absence, and gave birth to Pan as a result. According to Robert Graves, his mother was called Oeneis, a
nymph who consorted with Hermes.
In some
accounts, two Pans were distinguished, one being the son of Zeus
and Thymbreus
(Thymbris?
or Hybris?) and the
other the son of Hermes and Penelope.
This myth reflects
the folk etymology that equates Pan's name (Πάν) with the Greek word for
"all" (πᾶν).[19]
In the mystery cults of the highly syncretic Hellenistic
era, Pan is made cognate with Phanes/Protogonos,
Zeus, Dionysus and Eros.[21]
Accounts of
Pan's genealogy are so varied that it must lie buried deep in mythic time. Like
other nature spirits, Pan appears to be older than the Olympians, if it is true that he gave Artemis her hunting dogs and taught the secret of
prophecy to Apollo. Pan might be multiplied as the Pans
(Burkert 1985, III.3.2; Ruck and Staples, 1994, p. 132) or the Paniskoi. Kerenyi (p. 174) notes
from scholia that Aeschylus in Rhesus distinguished between
two Pans, one the son of Zeus and twin of Arcas,
and one a son of Cronus. "In the retinue of Dionysos, or in depictions of wild landscapes,
there appeared not only a great Pan, but also little Pans, Paniskoi, who played
the same part as the Satyrs".
Mythology
Battle with Typhon
The goat-god Aegipan was nurtured by Amalthea with
the infant Zeus in Crete. In Zeus' battle with Typhon, Aegipan and Hermes stole back Zeus' "sinews" that
Typhon had hidden away in the Corycian Cave. Pan aided his foster-brother in the battle with the Titans by letting out a horrible
screech and scattering them in terror. According to some traditions, Aegipan was the son of Pan, rather than his
father.
Nymphs
One of the
famous myths of Pan involves the origin of his pan flute, fashioned from lengths of hollow reed.
Syrinx was a lovely wood-nymph
of Arcadia, daughter of Ladon, the river-god. As she was returning from
the hunt one day, Pan met her. To escape from his importunities, the fair nymph
ran away and didn't stop to hear his compliments. He pursued from Mount Lycaeum
until she came to her sisters who immediately changed her into a reed. When the
air blew through the reeds, it produced a plaintive melody. The god, still
infatuated, took some of the reeds, because he could not identify which reed
she became, and cut seven pieces (or according to some versions, nine), joined
them side by side in gradually decreasing lengths, and formed the musical
instrument bearing the name of his beloved Syrinx. Henceforth Pan was seldom
seen without it.
Echo was a nymph who was a great singer and
dancer and scorned the love of any man. This angered Pan, a lecherous
god, and he instructed his followers to kill her. Echo was torn to pieces and
spread all over earth. The goddess of the earth, Gaia, received the pieces of Echo, whose voice
remains repeating the last words of others. In some versions, Echo and Pan had
two children: Iambe and Iynx.
In other versions, Pan had fallen in love with Echo, but she scorned the love
of any man but was enraptured by Narcissus. As
Echo was cursed by Hera to only be able to repeat words that had
been said by someone else, she could not speak for herself. She followed
Narcissus to a pool, where he fell in love with his own reflection and changed
into a narcissus flower.
Echo wasted away, but her voice could still be heard in caves and other such
similar places.
Panic
Disturbed in
his secluded afternoon naps, Pan's angry shout inspired panic
(panikon deima) in lonely places. Following the Titans' assault on Olympus, Pan claimed credit for the victory of
the gods because he had frightened the attackers. In the Battle of Marathon
(490 BCE), it is said that Pan favored the Athenians and so inspired panic in
the hearts of their enemies, the Persians.
Erotic aspects
Pan is famous
for his sexual powers, and is often depicted with a phallus. Diogenes of Sinope,
speaking in jest, related a myth of Pan learning masturbation from his father, Hermes, and teaching the habit to shepherds.
Pan's greatest
conquest was that of the moon goddess Selene. He accomplished this by wrapping himself
in a sheepskin to hide his hairy black goat form, and drew her down
from the sky into the forest where he seduced her.
Music
"Sweet,
piercing sweet was the music of Pan's pipe" reads the caption on this
depiction of Pan (by Walter Crane)In two late Roman sources, Hyginusand Ovid, Pan is substituted for the satyr Marsyas in the theme of a musical competition (agon), and the punishment by flaying is omitted.
Pan once had
the audacity to compare his music with that of Apollo, and to challenge Apollo, the god of the lyre,
to a trial of skill. Tmolus, the mountain-god, was
chosen to umpire. Pan blew on his pipes and gave great satisfaction with his
rustic melody to himself and to his faithful follower, Midas,
who happened to be present. Then Apollo struck the strings of his lyre. Tmolus
at once awarded the victory to Apollo, and all but Midas agreed with the
judgment. Midas dissented and questioned the justice of the award. Apollo would
not suffer such a depraved pair of ears any longer and turned Midas' ears into
those of a donkey.
Capricornus
The constellation Capricornus is traditionally depicted as a
sea-goat, a goat with a fish's tail (see "Goatlike" Aigaion called Briareos, one of the
Hecatonchires). A myth reported as "Egyptian" in Hyginus' Poetic
Astronomy[31] that would seem to be invented to justify a connection
of Pan with Capricorn says that when Aegipan – that is Pan in his goat-god aspect — was attacked by the monster Typhon, he dove into the Nile;
the parts above the water remained a goat, but those under the water
transformed into a fish.
Epithets
Aegocerus "goat-horned" was an epithet
of Pan descriptive of his figure with the horns of a goat.
All of the Pans
Marble table
support adorned by a group including Dionysos, Pan and a Satyr;
Dionysos holds a rhyton (drinking vessel) in the shape of a
panther; traces of red and yellow
colour are preserved on the hair of the figures and the branches; from an
Asia Minor workshop, 170–180 AD, National
Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece
Pan could be
multiplied into a swarm of Pans, and even be given individual names, as in Nonnus' Dionysiaca, where the god Pan had twelve sons
that helped Dionysus in his war against the Indians. Their names were
Kelaineus, Argennon, Aigikoros, Eugeneios, Omester, Daphoenus, Phobos,
Philamnos, Xanthos, Glaukos, Argos, and Phorbas.
Two other Pans
were Agreus and Nomios. Both were the sons of Hermes, Agreus'
mother being the nymph Sose, a prophetess: he inherited his mother's gift of
prophecy, and was also a skilled hunter. Nomios' mother was Penelope (not the
same as the wife of Odysseus). He was an excellent shepherd, seducer of nymphs,
and musician upon the shepherd's pipes. Most of the mythological stories about
Pan are actually about Nomios, not the god Pan. Although, Agreus and Nomios
could have been two different aspects of the prime Pan, reflecting his dual
nature as both a wise prophet and a lustful beast.
Aegipan, literally "goat-Pan," was a
Pan who was fully goatlike, rather than half-goat and half-man. When the
Olympians fled from the monstrous giant Typhoeus and hid themselves in animal
form, Aegipan assumed the form of a fish-tailed goat. Later he came to the aid
of Zeus in his battle with Typhoeus, by stealing back Zeus' stolen sinews. As a
reward the king of the gods placed him amongst the stars as the Constellation
Capricorn. The mother of Aegipan, Aix (the goat), was perhaps associated with
the constellation Capra.
Sybarios was an
Italian Pan who was worshipped in the Greek colony of Sybaris in Italy.
The Sybarite Pan was conceived when a Sybarite shepherd boy named Krathis
copulated with a pretty she-goat amongst his herds.
For some reason when I was younger and obsessed with Greek and Roman mythology, (even going so far as reading encyclopedias just to get more info), I always found Pan to be among the most interesting of the creatures I came across, with the only exception probably being Medusa. So, most of this year's beasts were an homage to my nerdier, past self, who loved herself some Greek and Roman myths.
Well, I hope you guys enjoyed this year's edition of our May Mythical Beasts posts. We'll see you back here next year for more of the same. Until then, you still have October Pet Spooktacular to look forward to, (there's no telling what interesting creatures, you might run across in those episodes).
But before we get into all that, I'll see you back here on Friday for our upcoming June Missy Show episode schedule, and on Saturday for the June Pet and Animal schedule.
Until then,
Have a great Memorial Day!
This is your host J,
signing off...
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