PALSY. [Nealrm.] PAN, a deity of the Greek mythology, whose country was Arcadia. He is said by Homer to be the son of Hermes 1)7 the daughter of Dryops ; but other writers, while calling Hermes his father, give him a different mother ; while some make him to have been of different descent on the side of father as well as mother. Ile was the tutelar god of the shepherds. Pan is sometimes represented with sprouting horns, a goat's beard, a goat's tail, and goat's feet, holding the syrinx, a kind of musical pipe, which be was said to have invented. But in older Greek art he is often without these animal appendages ; as in the terminal statue in the British Museum. The satyrs are his attendants ; and hence they are sometimes called Panes. In Greek art he is figured with nymphs and satyrs as well as alone. Pan is mentioned in the early mythi as having been present at the battle of the Titans, whom he assisted in routing by frightening them by a wild noise which he produced by blowing in a sea-shell. He was also said to have accom
panied Bacchus to India, and that upon one occasion, by uttering a loud scream, which was repeated by the echoes, he scared away the enemy, From these incidents the expression " panic fear," meaning a terror produced by no obvious or sufficient cause, appears to have been derived. Ile is sometimes represented as the god of terror. Pan was worshipped at Athens and most other Greek cities. His worship was introduced into Italy at an early period, where he was identified with an earlier god, Inuits; and festivals, called Lupercalia, were instituted in honour of Pan Lupercus, the protector of the flocks against wolves. According to Servius (note to Virgirs Eclogues,' ii. 31) Pan was also considered as the god of Nature, a personification of the universe, the word pan (iris), in Greek, meaning " all," or "the whole," but this was a late notion.