Warbling with me in woods: 'twas mighty Pan
To join with wax the various reeds began.
Pan, the great god of all our subject plains,
Protects and loves the cattle and the swains:
Nor thou disdain thy tender rosy lip
Deep to indent with such a master's pipe.
Bucol. ii. 28-34.—Warton's Translation.
Besides the four places in Arcadia, which are referred to in the above-cited passages of Virgil, Pausanias informs us of several others, in which he saw temples and altars erected to Pan. He says[1], that Mount Mænalus was especially sacred to this deity, so that those who dwelt in its vicinity asserted, that they sometimes heard him playing on the syrinx. A continual fire burnt there near his temple.
Herodotus gives a very curious account of the introduction of the worship of Pan into Attica[2]. He says, that before the battle of Marathon the Athenian generals sent Philippides as a herald to Sparta. "On his return Philippides asserted, that Pan had appeared to him near Mount Parthenius above Tegea, had addressed him by name and with a loud voice, and commanded him to ask the Athenians why they did not pay any regard to him, a god, who was kind to them, who had been often useful to them and would be so in future. The Athenians, believing the statement of Philippides, when they found themselves prosperous, erected a temple to Pan below the Acropolis, and continued to propitiate him by annual sacrifices and by carrying the torch." From various authorities we know, that this temple was in the cave on the northern side of the Acropolis below the Propylæa[3].*
- ↑ L. viii. c. 36. 5. and c. 37. 8.
- ↑ Lib. vi. c. 105.
- ↑ Eurip. Jon. 492-504. 937. Paus. i. 28. 4. Stuart's Ant. of Athens. Hobhouse's Travels, p. 336. Dodwell's Tour, vol. i. p. 304. In Sir R. Worsley's collection of Antiques at Appledurcombe in the Isle of Wight is a bas-relief, in which Pan is reclining as if after the chase near the mouth of this cave. He holds the syrinx in the left hand, a drinking-horn in the right. A train of worshippers are conducting a ram to the altar within the cave. See Museum Worsleianum, Lon. 1794. plate 9. In the vestibule of the University Library at Cambridge is a mutilated statue of Pan clothed in a goat-skin and holding the syrinx in his left hand. This statue was discovered near the
