Talk:Pan (god)

Neopaganism section

Reference to Pashupati

Pashupati does not appear to have horns and there is no resemblance to Pan whatsoever (see this image for example: http://redlotus.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Shiva-Pashupati.jpeg). Unless I'm missing something, I propose that the reference to Pashupati is removed from this section. --94.209.127.141 (talk) 10:09, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Stupidity in it's best

Can/should this article mention Caesarea Phillipi, where I have heard there was a temple dedicated to Pan's worship which was visited by Christ at the time when he said "I will buld my Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against her" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.8.190.54 (talk) 15:35, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Removed folk etymology of "idiotphobia". The proper word is "stupidphobia", the fear of idiots.JHCC 18:53, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

can anyone confirm the statement about panophobic/pantophobic? I ma doing a college research paper about Pan/Horned God and would like to know how i can confirm the etymology? Woudl appreciate any help, especially from the person who did the original post

You may find the connections to "pantophobia" are as tenuous as the connection between Pan and Horned God. Sounds like a Christian university. --Wetman 10:31, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• Removed this new edit here: "Another theory about Pan's name is that it may be related to Panku, an ancient Chinese god, also horned, from whose body the Earth was created." Sure, and say! why not add "Some think there is a connection with "idots in idiotville" because the god was always fooling around with nymphs. Many see a possible reincarnation of Pan in SpongeBob SquarePANts.""

20050807 Just looking for Wiki input, should this photo be added? When posted on my defunct web page, I got two comments, both: "That's the best satyr COSTUME in the world!" File:Pan Walking.jpg

Proposed merge of "Panes"

All I know about the subject is what's at the current stub article, but what's there doesn't look like it warrants a merge - the only connection between Panes and Pan is that they look very similar. Are there any other connections between the two? Bryan 17:05, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Panes was a redirect.I redirected it here, with the added notation "Pan could be multiplied as the Panes --Wetman 22:30, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Whoops. I did it again, i fukd up ur page

Rustic Music?

The introduction mentions that Pan is also the god of "rustic music". What is rustic music? I find no reference to it on the web. --Coching (talk) 05:01, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Rural music, pastoral music, peasant music etc. There's also a song called "Rustic Raver" by Squarepusher. ;) —85.178.95.4 (talk) 17:43, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Link now added. —85.178.95.4 (talk) 17:46, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Restored original text

A common superstition in the Middle Ages was that goats whispered lewd sentences in the ears of the saints. The origin of this belief was probably the behavior of the buck in rut, the very epitome of lust. The common medieval depiction of the Devil was that of a goat-like face with horns and small beard (a goatee). The Black Mass, a probably-mythological "Satanic mass," was said to involve a black goat, the form in which Satan supposedly manifested himself for worship.

Moved this replacement for the better sourced text here, restoring the former text. Nothing re: "goat whisper Saint" could be detected at JSTOR. Anything in the above to return to the article?--Wetman (talk) 21:26, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

"all the pans"?

In the section named 'All the Pans', there's material that was inserted long ago by RammsteinViking in this diff. Is there a source for this? Dionysus battled the Indians? I'm not a greek scholar by any means, but I wasn't aware there was significant contact between Greece and India. Thanks for any insight you can provide. Syrthiss (talk) 13:37, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Didn't know this myself, but it's true. Overview and sources at theoi.com: http://www.theoi.com/Georgikos/PanesPaneides.html —91.64.51.196 (talk) 15:11, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Pan

I suggest addition of the following image to the article: 'Young satyr making love to a herm of the god Pan' Bas-relief on a marble sarcophagus from late 2nd century CE. Originally part of the Farnese collection, now in the Archeological Museum, Naples." http://www.gay-art-history.org/gay-history/gay-art/gay-rome-art/imgSuper/bacchanalia.jpg Israell (talk) 09:54, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Go on then. Rainbow Shifter (talk) 18:38, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

"Panic"?

...means fear with hysteria. No sane connection to the god Pan. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.147.120.224 (talk) 16:40, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

The English word panic is from the Greek πανικός, meaning "of or pertaining to Pan". It was believed that Pan was the source of the sudden, unreasoning fear that sometimes gripped people or animals. So yes, there's a direct connection. P Aculeius (talk) 21:00, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

God of War

Pan is the God of the Wilds and of war, he's a stratiton, the wilds require a great deal of knowledge of war and planning, please stop removing this edit. 71.89.245.71 (talk) 05:25, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Please provide reliable sources for the edit. --‖ Ebyabe ^talk - Repel All Boarders ‖ 17:10, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Although it is true that Herodotus reports a widespread rumor claiming that Pan aided the Athenians in the Battle of Marathon, Pan was not principally a war god and to call him the "god of war" is not an accurate statement. --Katolophyromai (talk) 20:07, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

God of theatrical criticism

Is Pan indeed the god of theatrical criticism?

I cannot find anything on the web about it, or in any other sources. I could not find it in the cited source here, either: Alfred Wagner, Das historische Drama der Griechen, Münster 1878, p. 78. https://archive.org/details/dashistorisched00wagngoog/page/n82

Is this the correct page number? Year 78 and page 78 suggest that something was confused.

With Pan being the God of pure natural instinct, loving rustic music, sex and easily panicked, I find it also a bit out of character for him to be a theatre critic – something much more in the realms of Dionysus and Apollo. Note that Pan is often confused with the Satyrs, who accompanied Dionysus, and who were central to Greek theatre. They had an entire Satyr play, as addition to the trilogy of tragedies, often commenting on the trilogy to lighten up the mood. Is this confusion what is happening here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:2000:1280:C50F:AC6E:6A80:AE71:D655 (talk) 18:51, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

I suspect you're right, but unfortunately I can't understand Greek or German at all, and my Latin is woefully deficient. Google Translate does a credible job on German, but not so much on Latin or Greek. The copy on Archive.org appears to have half the text missing from the page cited. This copy on Google Books is intact. It's definitely saying something about drama, but I can't make out what it is. I don't see where Pan is mentioned, but I could easily have missed it. The statement was added to the article by an IP editor on June 3, 2009, and that IP has no other edits to Wikipedia. Could someone who can make sense of the text verify whether or not it supports the statement? Perhaps it says it, perhaps not, and maybe it's relevant to the article, but the statement about it needs to be rewritten. P Aculeius (talk) 19:29, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

I cannot get you a source right now, but in Athens he was indeed invoked as a god of theatrical criticism. (Or so I've heard from someone who tends to do their research.) The history behind it is somewhat complicated, and yes it was indeed out of character. Then again,I might not be remembering that correctly, or read that on this wiki and assigned it to them instead. If I'm wrong, I'll just cross this out. 216.56.145.37 (talk) 17:20, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

side note, my IP seems to keep changing, so I may get an account soon to keep my talk posts straight — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.56.145.37 (talk) 17:22, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

I deleted the comment on theatrical criticism a while ago. There was no mention of Pan from the original citation. Someone has changed it back since then and has added two new sources. I was able to verify one of them but it was hardly a primary source and since this was added well over a decade ago, it could be a feedback loop. I would like to think that Cambridge Press would be above that but it can’t be assumed. I’m not changing it again but I don’t trust the information and I’m putting that out there for anyone that might want to look into it. Vitleysa (talk) 22:40, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm calling it bogus. The citation names three sources: Minchev, which is too new to be searchable on Google Books, but the citation seems to be claiming that it's cited by Braund et al., which it doesn't appear to be. That book says, "Pan was also considered a patron of theatrical criticism and impromptus," citing Seyffert, not Minchev (although Minchev is cited for other things on the same page). So Minchev is irrelevant to this claim. A check of Seyffert, however, fails to justify the statement in Braund et al. Here's the English version of "Pan", and here's the German original. I may have missed something, but I don't see anything remotely connected to "theatrical criticism and impromptus" in the article that's cited for the claim, in the only source that appears to make it.

So, if the source cited by Braund et al. doesn't support the claim, what do we have? Poor research? Erroneous citation? Wishful thinking? An academic mountweasel? I could have seen Pan connected with the theatre, but why theatrical criticism in particular? It's a bit like having a patron god of encyclopedia salesmen or frequent flyer miles. Sure, we could figure out which god would naturally be assumed as a patron—but in the absence of evidence that the Greeks had a patron god for something, it's just a modern inference. And if classical encyclopedias don't bother mentioning this unexpected connection, does Pan's Wikipedia article suffer if it's omitted due to reasonable doubts about where the claim comes from? Given how improbable it sounds, I think we need some statement in support of it from a Greek or Roman author. P Aculeius (talk) 00:16, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Pan "had sex with" Selene

How should we describe Pan's relationship with Selene? I've suggested that we describe as an "affair" (Gantz, p. 36, and Kerenyi, p. 175, and Grimal, s.v. Selene, all call it an "affair", with Grimal saying Selene was famous for such "affairs"). But "affair" was objected to (by NebY) as implying an ongoing relationship. I don't think it necessarily does imply that, and there is no reason to believe that this relationship wasn't necessarily ongoing. Simply saying Pan "had sex with" her (the current wording)—although better than the previous, in my opinion too-clinical, "had sexual intercourse" with—completely fails to capture the romantic nature of the relationship. Paul August ☎ 15:33, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

I agree that most of these phrasings are jarring and ridiculous. I understand the complaint about describing Selene as Pan's "greatest conquest", but so far none of the alternatives proposed are any improvement, and all of them sound awful. We're dealing with the mythical past and affairs—so to speak—of the gods. But we don't normally speak of the gods having "affairs" (20th century slang). I find "tryst" only slightly less bothersome—the word is old, but I think as a euphemism for sex it's also rather modern. "Had sex with" sounds like something teenagers say (before picking up Anglo-Saxon words), and "had sexual intercourse" is, as Paul August suggests, "clinical"—perhaps "legalistic" as well.

At this stage I would prefer reverting to the previous wording, or perhaps Neby's objected-to "lay with"—but maybe there's a way to reword the passage to avoid the awkwardness of trying to render the mythical past using contemporary phrases. The description of a "conquest" is dated and potentially sexist by today's standards—but at least it suggests that there might be an alternative to finding a description or euphemism—for "sex" as an active verb. There may be no particularly good way to do that in English, but maybe there's a less direct way of achieving the same result. P Aculeius (talk) 16:00, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

I've been mulling alternatives too. Part of the problem is that many translations bring their own baggage and reticence; the 1900 Greenough translation of Virgil at Tufts has "snared and beguiled" for "captam te, Luna, fefellit", though fefellit's very root gives us "false" (see Lewis & Short "deceive, trick, dupe, cheat, disappoint") – and that's Virgil's comfortable version, in which Pan's described as offering a gift of wool rather than disguising himself. The previous version's "greatest conquest" isn't supported by Virgil, Servius or Hard, and I don't know what the scoring system might be (rank? beauty? difficulty?). It's in Graves, but might be his own narrative flourish. "Affair" might encompass "one-night stand" to some readers, but won't to many others (see our own Affair), and we don't have any sources for a longer relationship, let alone - particularly if Selene thought she was having sex with a sheep - a romantic one. Pan is a god of lust, not romance.

One alternative that might suffice and incidentally removes some current repetition, is

There was a legend that Pan seduced the moon goddess Selene, in one account (by Virgil) with the gift of a sheep's white fleece, and in another (by Servius, ascribed to the Greek poet Nicander) by wrapping himself in a fleece to disguise himself as a sheep.

Ah, I like that, elegantly done. P Aculeius (talk) 17:24, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I like that. Paul August ☎ 17:55, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Oh good! I've made the change. Thanks, both. NebY (talk) 18:07, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

References

By the way I suspect that the "greatest conquest" language comes by way of a rewording of Kerenyi, p. 175, which says: Pan's greatest passion was for Selene." If one thinks of Pan as something of a "lady-killer" then describing his affairs as "conquests" has some merit, in which case Selene would certainly seem to qualify as one of his "greatest". Paul August ☎ 18:22, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Oh dear, now I'm wondering where Kerenyi got that from or if it's what our Károly Kerényi aricle calls "Psychological expansion". I haven't read any of his work; do you recommend him? NebY (talk) 18:35, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

I would describe Kerényi's two books, Gods of the Greeks and Heroes of the Greek's as useful but idosyncratic. Robin Hard, somewhat diplomatically perhaps, describes these two works as "works of strong individual character founded on an exhaustive knowledge of ancient sources". Paul August ☎ 19:55, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Ah. Hard's description does seem admirably diplomatic. Maybe I won't seek those out. Thank you. NebY (talk) 20:19, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

All of the pans

Hello all,

I noticed a distinct lack of citations in the category "all of the pans," how would I mark that?

Cahmad25 (talk) 15:03, 14 October 2021 (UTC)