Pan

Pan, the Roman Faunus, is the goat-legged god of the wild — of shepherds and flocks, mountains and woodland, of the rustic pipe (the syrinx) he invented, and of the sudden gripping fear that bears his name, 'panic'. A companion of the Nymphs and of Dionysus, he embodies untamed nature in its fertile, exuberant, half-animal life.

His name was early heard as Pan, 'the All', and so the philosophers and Orphics made him a god of the universe itself — the whole cosmos as a single living, piping being, nature divinized. The famous tale that 'Great Pan is dead', reported by Plutarch, was later taken to mark the passing of the old pagan world.

Epithets

• Nomios Νόμιος — of shepherds and pastures
• Aigipan Αἰγίπαν — the goat-Pan
• Lyterios Λυτήριος — the deliverer
• Faunus Lat. — his Roman counterpart