The Ancient God Pan Plays His Pipes In The Castle Garden

The Ancient Nature God Pan Plays His Pipes In The Castle Garden

PAN is the god of shepherds and flocks, of mountain wilds, hunting and rustic music. He wanders the hills and mountains of Arkadia playing his pan-pipes and chasing Nymphs. His unseen presence arouses feelings of panic in men passing through the remote, lonely places of the wilds.

The god is a lover of nymphs, who commonly flee from his advances. Syrinx ran and was transformed into a clump of reeds, out of which the god crafted his famous pan-pipes. Pitys escaped and was turned into a mountain fir, the god's sacred tree. Ekho spurned his advances and fading away left behind only her voice to repeat forever the mountain cries of the god.

Pan is depicted as a man with the horns, legs and tail of a goat, and with thick beard, snub nose and pointed ears. He often appears in the retinue of Dionysos alongside the other rustic gods. Greeks in the classical age associated his name with the word pan meaning "all". However, it true origin lies in an old Arkadian word for rustic.

Pan is frequently identified with other similar rustic gods such as Aristaios, the shepherd-god of northern Greece, who like Pan was titled both Agreus (the hunter) and Nomios (the shepherd); as well as with the pipe-playing Phrygian satyr Marsyas; and Aigipan, the goat-fish god of the constellation Capricorn. Sometimes Pan was multiplied into a host of Panes, or a triad named Agreus, Nomios, and Phorbas.