Greek religion and mythology Essay Example for Free

Grecian religion and mythology EssayIn classical religion and mythology, Pan (Ancient Greek , Pn) is the god of the wild, shepherds and flocks, spirit of mountain wilds, pursuit and rustic music, and companion of the nymphs.1 His name originates within the Ancient Greek language, from the word paein (), core to pasture.2 He has the hindquarters, legs, and horns of a goat, in the same manner as a faun or satyr.With his homeland in rustic Arcadia, he is recognized as the god of fields, groves, and wooded glens because of this, Pan is connected to fertility and the mollify of spring. The ancient Greeks also considered Pan to be the god of theatrical criticism.3 In Roman religion and myth, Pans copy was Faunus, a nature god who was the father of Bona Dea, sometimes identified as Fauna. In the 18th and nineteenth centuries, Pan became a significant figure in the Romantic movement of western Europe, and also in the 20th-century Neopagan movement.4OriginsIn his earliest appeara nce in literature, Pindars Pythian Ode iii. 78, Pan is associated with a mother goddess, perhaps Rhea or Cybele Pindar refers to virgins worshipping Cybele and Pan near the poets house in Boeotia.5 The parentage of Pan is unclear6 in some myths he is the son of Zeus, though generally he is the son of Hermes or Dionysus, with whom his mother is said to be a nymph, sometimes Dryope or, in Nonnus, Dionysiaca (14.92), genus Penelope of Mantineia in Arcadia. This nymph at some point in the usage became conflated with Penelope, the wife of Odysseus. Pausanias 8.12.5 records the story that Penelope had in fact been unfaithful to her husband, who banished her to Mantineia upon his return.Other sources (Duris of Samos the Vergilian commentator Servius) report that Penelope slept with all 108 suitors in Odysseus absence, and gave birth to Pan as a result.7 This myth reflects the folk etymology that equates Pans name () with the Greek word for all ().8 It is more likely to be cognate with pae in, to pasture, and to share an origin with the modern side word pasture. In 1924, Hermann Collitz suggested that Greek Pan and Indic Pushan might have a common Indo-European origin.9 In the Mystery cults of the highly syncretic Hellenistic era10 Pan is made cognate with Phanes/Protogonos, Zeus, Dionysus and Eros.11 The Roman Faunus, a god of Indo-European origin, was equated with Pan.However, accounts of Pans genealogy are so varied that it must lie buried deep in mythic time. Like other nature spirits, Pan appears to be older than the Olympians, if it is true that he gave Artemis her hunting dogs and taught the secret of prophecy to Apollo. Pan might be multiplied as the Panes (Burkert 1985, III.3.2 Ruck and Staples 1994 p 13212) or the Paniskoi. Kerenyi (p. 174) notes from scholia that Aeschylus in Rhesus distinguished between two Pans, bingle the son of Zeus and twin of Arcas, and one a son of Cronus. In the retinue of Dionysos, or in depictions of wild landscapes, there appear ed not hardly a great Pan, but also little Pans, Paniskoi, who played the same part as the Satyrs.