PAN (Iláz). — In Arcadia, where his cult was prominent, he originated as a deity depicted in tradition as the son of Hermes and the nymph Dryope; bearded, with goat’s legs and horns.
The name Iláz is a contracted form of Iláz-ō, as in the Arcadian inscription from Melpeia dating to the 6th century B.C.: *toi Ilázow* (Inscriptiones Graecae, V, 2, 556; cf. E. Schwyzer, *Dialectorum Graecarum exempla*, Leipzig 1923, p. 327, no. 676). The ancients, through false etymology, also associated his name with the idea of the whole (Homeric Hymn to Pan, 47; Orphic Hymns, 11, 1), and so did Neoplatonic mysticism: *τὸ ξυν καὶ τὸ πᾶν*. Art sometimes made him the central figure in representations of the zodiac (v.).
After the Persian Wars, Pan, along with various local deities such as Lycaeus, Menalius, etc., was officially worshipped throughout Greece (Herodotus, VI, 105), and, together with local deities and legends, had long been venerated in various cities of Egypt (ibid., II, 145). A cave dedicated to him stood on the northwest slope of the Acropolis (Lucian, *Dialogi deorum*, XXII, 3; W. Judeich, *Topographie von Athen*, 2nd ed., Munich 1931, p. 302), and in the Hellenistic age, Antigonus, victor over the Celts, dedicated some *Ilázov* at Delos.
The Homeric Hymn to Pan, possibly dating from the Alexandrian period, extensively highlights his pastoral and sylvan character. The god dwells in the woods in the company of nymphs (v.), satyrs, and lesser spirits, the Panes, joining their dances to the sound of his syrinx. When disturbed, he can cause terror, especially at midday. Pan, along with Priapus and the satyrs, becomes a representation of sensual and unbridled love (Lucian, *Dialogi deorum*, XXII, 4), invoked by Pindar (e.g., *Pythian Odes*, III, 78) and frequent in bucolic poetry (Theocritus, VII, 103 ff.). Socrates at the end of Plato’s *Phaedrus* prays to him as the god of inner beauty (279 b–c). Plutarch, in *De defectu oraculorum*, 17, speaks of the death of the great Pan, and a dialogue by Lucian (XXII) ridicules his attributes.
In Roman religion, he was soon conflated with the indigenous deities Faunus and Silvanus, and in Christian tradition, popular imagination curiously associated his misshapen figure with the traditional image of the devil.
In art, Pan is frequently depicted as hairy and goat-legged, although a statue from the Polyclitan school renders him in a youthful pose.
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