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THE RURAL DEITIES
Pan, the god of woods and fields, of flocks and shepherds, dwelt
in grottos, wandered on the mountains and in valleys, and amused
himself with the chase or in leading the dances of the nymphs. He
was fond of music, and as we have seen, the inventor of the
syrinx, or shepherd's pipe, which he himself played in a masterly
manner. Pan, like other gods who dwelt in forests, was dreaded by
those whose occupations caused them to pass through the woods by
night, for the gloom and loneliness of such scenes dispose the
mind to superstitious fears. Hence sudden fright without any
visible cause was ascribed to Pan, and called a Panic terror.
As the name of the god signifies ALL, Pan came to be considered a
symbol of the universe and personification of Nature; and later
still to be regarded as a representative of all the gods and of
heathenism itself.
Sylvanus and Faunus were Latin divinities, whose characteristics
are so nearly the same as those of Pan that we may safely consider
them as the same personage under different names.
The wood-nymphs, Pan's partners in the dance, were but one class
of nymphs. There were beside them the Naiads, who presided over
brooks and fountains, the Oreads, nymphs of mountains and grottos,
and the Nereids, sea-nymphs. The three last named were immortal,
but the wood-nymphs, called Dryads or Hamadryads, were believed to
perish with the trees which had been their abode and with which
they had come into existence. It was therefore an impious act
wantonly to destroy a tree, and in some aggravated cases were
severely punished, as in the instance of Erisichthon, which we are
about to record.
Milton in his glowing description of the early creation, thus
alludes to Pan as the personification of Nature:
"... Universal Pan,
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
Led on the eternal spring."
And describing Eve's abode:
"... In shadier bower,
More sacred or sequestered, though but feigned,
Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor nymph
Nor Faunus haunted."
--Paradise Lost, B. IV.
It was a pleasing trait in the old Paganism that it loved to trace
in every operation of nature the agency of deity. The imagination
of the Greeks peopled all the regions of earth and sea with
divinities, to whose agency it attributed those phenomena which
our philosophy ascribes to the operation of the laws of nature.
Sometimes in our poetical moods we feel disposed to regret the
change, and to think that the heart has lost as much as the head
has gained by the substitution. The poet Wordsworth thus strongly
expresses this sentiment:
"... Great God, I'd rather be
A Pagan, suckled in a creed outworn,
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
And hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn."
Schiller, in his poem "Die Gotter Griechenlands," expresses his
regret for the overthrow of the beautiful mythology of ancient
times in a way which has called forth an answer from a Christian
poet, Mrs. E. Barrett Browning, in her poem called "The Dead Pan."
The two following verses are a specimen:
"By your beauty which confesses
Some chief Beauty conquering you,
By our grand heroic guesses
Through your falsehood at the True,
We will weep NOT! earth shall roll
Heir to each god's aureole,
And Pan is dead.
"Earth outgrows the mythic fancies
Sung beside her in her youth;
And those debonaire romances
Sound but dull beside the truth.
Phoebus' chariot course is run!
Look up, poets, to the sun!
These lines are founded on an early Christian tradition that when
the heavenly host told the shepherds at Bethlehem of the birth of
Christ, a deep groan, heard through all the isles of Greece, told
that the great Pan was dead, and that all the royalty of Olympus
was dethroned and the several deities were sent wandering in cold
and darkness. So Milton in his "Hymn on the Nativity":
"The lonely mountains o'er,
And the resounding shore,
A voice of weeping heard and loud lament;
From haunted spring and dale,
Edged with poplar pale,
The parting Genius is with sighing sent;
With flower-enwoven tresses torn,
The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn."
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