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156-397: In ancient Greek religion and mythology , Pan ( / p æ n / ; Ancient Greek : Πάν , romanized :  Pán ) is the god of the wild, shepherds and flocks, rustic music and impromptus , and companion of the nymphs . 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 also recognized as

312-404: A symposium . One rite of passage was the amphidromia , celebrated on the fifth or seventh day after the birth of a child. Childbirth was extremely significant to Athenians, especially if the baby was a boy. One ceremony was pharmakos , a ritual involving expelling a symbolic scapegoat such as a slave or an animal, from a city or village in a time of hardship. It was hoped that by casting out

468-627: A Message. The cry "The Great Pan is dead" has appealed to poets, such as John Milton , in his ecstatic celebration of Christian peace, On the Morning of Christ's Nativity line 89, Elizabeth Barrett Browning , and Louisa May Alcott . Representations of Pan have influenced conventional popular depictions of the Devil . In the late-eighteenth century, interest in Pan revived among liberal scholars. Richard Payne Knight discussed Pan in his Discourse on

624-519: A Mithraic mystery cult in Tarsus , even though no mystery cult existed there nor did a Mithraic mystery cult exist before the end of the 1st century. The attitudes of scholars began to change as Egyptology continued emerging as a discipline and a seminal article published by Arthur Nock in 1952 that noted the near absence of mystery terminology in the New Testament . While some have tried to tie

780-486: A certain city. Athena was associated with Athens , Apollo with Delphi and Delos , Zeus with Olympia and Aphrodite with Corinth . But other gods were also worshipped in these cities. Other deities were associated with nations outside of Greece; Poseidon was associated with Ethiopia and Troy , and Ares with Thrace . Identity of names was not a guarantee of a similar cultus ; the Greeks themselves were well aware that

936-552: A disembodied soul. Some Greeks, such as the philosophers Pythagoras and Plato , also embraced the idea of reincarnation , though this was only accepted by a few. Epicurus taught that the soul was simply atoms which were dissolved at death, so one ceased to exist on dying. Greek religion had an extensive mythology . It consisted largely of stories of the gods and how they interacted with humans. Myths often revolved around heroes and their actions, such as Heracles and his twelve labors , Odysseus and his voyage home, Jason and

1092-422: A few gods, and supported a statue of the particular deity. Votive deposits were left at the altar, such as food, drinks, as well as precious objects. Sometimes animal sacrifices were performed here, with most of the flesh taken for eating and the offal burnt as an offering to the gods. Libations , often of wine, would be offered to the gods as well, not only at shrines, but also in everyday life, such as during

1248-459: A good deal about cult but very little about creed, in no small measure because the Greeks in general considered what one believed to be much less importance than what one did. The Greeks believed in an underworld inhabited by the spirits of the dead. One of the most widespread areas of this underworld was ruled by Hades, a brother of Zeus, and was also known as Hades (originally called 'the place of Hades'). Other well-known realms are Tartarus ,

1404-588: A major role in forming the relationship between humans and the divine. It has been suggested that the Chthonic deities, distinguished from Olympic deities by typically being offered the holocaust mode of sacrifice, where the offering is wholly burnt, may be remnants of the native Pre-Hellenic religion, and that many of the Olympian deities may come from the Proto-Greeks who overran the southern part of

1560-423: A male-dominated Indo-European hierarchy, has been proposed for Greece as for Minoan Crete and other regions, but has not been in favor with specialists for some decades, though the question remains too poorly evidenced for a clear conclusion; at the least the evidence from Minoan art shows more goddesses than gods. The Twelve Olympians , with Zeus as sky father , certainly have a strong Indo-European flavor; by

1716-695: A map to the afterlife , a communal worship, and a band of spiritual fellowship. Some of these mysteries, like the mysteries of Eleusis and Samothrace , were ancient and local. Others were spread from place to place, like the mysteries of Dionysus . During the Hellenistic period and the Roman Empire , exotic mystery religions became widespread, not only in Greece, but all across the empire. Some of these were new creations, such as Mithras , while others had been practiced for hundreds of years before, like

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1872-553: A myth concerning the kidnapping of Persephone , daughter of Demeter , the goddess of agriculture, by Hades , the god of the underworld, as told in the Homeric Hymns . Anguished by this event and wishing to persuade Zeus , the king of the gods, to allow the return of her daughter, Demeter caused famine and drought across the land, killing many and depriving the gods of proper sacrifice and worship. Eventually, Zeus permitted Persephone to rejoin her mother, prompting Demeter to end

2028-489: A nation or state, and the philosophic religions such as Neoplatonism . This is also reflected in the tripartite division of " theology "—by Varro —into civil theology (concerning the state religion and its stabilizing effect on society), natural theology (philosophical speculation about the nature of the divine), and mythical theology (concerning myth and ritual ). Mysteries thus supplement rather than compete with civil religion . An individual could easily observe

2184-412: A niche for the preservation of ancient religious ritual, which was especially in demand by the time of the late Roman Empire, as cultic practices supported the established social and political orders instead of working against them; numerous early strands of Judaism and Christianity, for instance, appeared in opposition to such conditions, whereas the mystery cults, by their very nature, served to strengthen

2340-421: A nymph named Pitys , who was turned into a pine tree to escape him. In another version, Pan and the north wind god Boreas clashed over the lovely Pitys. Boreas uprooted all the trees to impress her, but Pan laughed and Pitys chose him. Boreas then chased her and threw her off a cliff resulting in her death. Gaia pitied Pitys and turned her into a pine tree. According to some traditions, Pan taught Daphnis ,

2496-563: A nymph named Hybris for his parents, and was the mentor of Apollo. Pausanias 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. This myth reflects the folk etymology that equates Pan's name (Πάν) with

2652-403: A perceived whim of the deity. In some places visitors were asked to show they spoke Greek; elsewhere Dorians were not allowed entry. Some temples could only be viewed from the threshold. Some temples are said never to be opened at all. But generally Greeks, including slaves, had a reasonable expectation of being allowed into the cella . Once inside the cella it was possible to pray to or before

2808-471: A place of torment for the damned, and Elysium , a place of pleasures for the virtuous. In the early Mycenaean religion all the dead went to Hades, but the rise of mystery cults in the Archaic age led to the development of places such as Tartarus and Elysium. A few Greeks, like Achilles , Alcmene , Amphiaraus , Ganymede , Ino , Melicertes , Menelaus , Peleus , and a great number of those who fought in

2964-424: A reed. When the air blew through the reeds, it produced a plaintive melody. The god, still infatuated, took some of the reeds, because he could not identify which reed she became, and cut seven pieces (or according to some versions, nine), joined them side by side in gradually decreasing lengths, and formed the musical instrument bearing the name of his beloved Syrinx. Henceforth, Pan was seldom seen without it. Echo

3120-669: A reward the king of the gods placed him amongst the stars as the Constellation Capricorn. The mother of Aegipan, Aix (the goat), was perhaps associated with the constellation Capra. Sybarios was an Italian Pan who was worshipped in the Greek colony of Sybaris in Italy . The Sybarite Pan was conceived when a Sybarite shepherd boy named Krathis copulated with a pretty she-goat amongst his herds. In Pseudo-Plutarch 's De defectu oraculorum ("The Obsolescence of Oracles"), Pan

3276-454: A rustic son of Hermes, how to play the pan-pipes, and also fell in love with him. Women who had had sexual relations with several men were referred to as "Pan girls." Disturbed in his secluded afternoon naps, Pan's angry shout inspired panic ( panikon deima ) in lonely places. Following the Titans' assault on Olympus , Pan claimed credit for the victory of the gods because he had frightened

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3432-463: A sheep's fleece. One of the famous myths of Pan involves the origin of his pan flute , fashioned from lengths of hollow reed. Syrinx was a lovely wood- nymph of Arcadia, daughter of Ladon , the river-god. As she was returning from the hunt one day, Pan met her. To escape from his importunities, the fair nymph ran away and didn't stop to hear his compliments. He pursued from Mount Lycaeum until she came to her sisters who immediately changed her into

3588-595: A simile about the whole world being revealed as it really is: "seeing the Great God Pan". The novella is considered by many (including Stephen King ) as being one of the greatest horror-stories ever written. In an article in Hellebore magazine, Melissa Edmundson argues that women writers from the nineteenth century used the figure of Pan "to reclaim agency in texts that explored female empowerment and sexual liberation". In Eleanor Farjeon 's poem "Pan-Worship",

3744-555: A single transcendent deity . The worship of these deities, and several others, was found across the Greek world, though they often have different epithets that distinguished aspects of the deity, and often reflect the absorption of other local deities into the pan-Hellenic scheme. The religious practices of the Greeks extended beyond mainland Greece, to the islands and coasts of Ionia in Asia Minor , to Magna Graecia ( Sicily and southern Italy), and to scattered Greek colonies in

3900-458: A temple was ever built there. The tenemos might include many subsidiary buildings, sacred groves or springs, animals dedicated to the deity, and sometimes people who had taken sanctuary from the law, which some temples offered, for example to runaway slaves. The earliest Greek sanctuaries probably lacked temple buildings, though our knowledge of these is limited, and the subject is controversial. A typical early sanctuary seems to have consisted of

4056-468: A tenemos, often around a sacred grove, cave, rock ( baetyl ) or spring, and perhaps defined only by marker stones at intervals, with an altar for offerings. Many rural sanctuaries probably stayed in this style, but the more popular were gradually able to afford a building to house a cult image, especially in cities. This process was certainly under way by the 9th century, and probably started earlier. The temple interiors did not serve as meeting places, since

4212-436: A term for lesser attendants. As priestesses, they gained social recognition and access to more luxuries than other Greek women who worked or stayed in the home. They were mostly from local elite families; some roles required virgins, who typically only served for a year or so before marriage, while other roles went to married women. Women who voluntarily chose to become priestesses received an increase in social and legal status to

4368-543: A type of museum. Some sanctuaries offered oracles , people who were believed to receive divine inspiration in answering questions put by pilgrims. The most famous of these by far was the female priestess called the Pythia at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi , and that of Zeus at Dodona , but there were many others. Some dealt only with medical, agricultural or other specialized matters, and not all represented gods, like that of

4524-577: A typical human. They interacted with humans, sometimes even spawning children—called demigods —with them. At times, certain gods would be opposed to others, and they would try to outdo each other. In the Iliad , Aphrodite , Ares , and Apollo support the Trojan side in the Trojan War, while Hera , Athena , and Poseidon support the Greeks (see theomachy ). Some gods were specifically associated with

4680-540: A vague understanding. A system of grades or levels was present in the hierarchical structure of Mithraic religion, the first of these being the rank of Corax (raven), followed by Nymphus or Gryphus (bridegroom), Miles (soldier), Leo (lion), Perses (Persian), Heliodromus (sun-runner), and finally Pater (father) as the highest. Though precise details are difficult to determine and certainly varied between locations, one general depiction of an initiation ritual at Capua has it that men were blindfolded and walked into

4836-502: A vaguely-defined deity also sometimes identified with Faunus. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Pan became a significant figure in the Romantic movement of western Europe and also in the twentieth-century Neopagan movement . Many modern scholars consider Pan to be derived from the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European god *Péh₂usōn , whom they believe to have been an important pastoral deity ( *Péh₂usōn shares an origin with

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4992-417: A visual reminder of his eastern origins. The cultic acts of adherents were new and distinct, involving underground initiation rituals reserved exclusively for soldiers and complex, allegorical rites only vaguely understood today due to an absence of written sources. Feasting was the primary religious experience of initiated members, along with reenactments of core Mithraic imagery, such as the meal shared between

5148-524: Is a powerful but secretive nature-god, protector of animals, who casts a spell of forgetfulness on all those he helps. He makes a brief appearance to help Rat and Mole recover the Otter's lost son Portly. The goat-footed god entices villagers to listen to his pipes as if in a trance in Lord Dunsany 's novel The Blessing of Pan (1927). Although the god does not appear within the story, his energy invokes

5304-468: Is both charming and selfish - emphasizing our cultural confusion about whether human instincts are natural and good, or uncivilised and bad. J. M. Barrie describes Peter as 'a betwixt and between', part animal and part human, and uses this device to explore many issues of human and animal psychology within the Peter Pan stories. Arthur Machen 's 1894 novella The Great God Pan uses the god's name in

5460-460: Is identified with Phanes/Protogonos , Zeus , Dionysus and Eros . Numerous different parentages are given for Pan by different authors. According to the Homeric Hymn to Pan , he is the child of Hermes and an (unnamed) daughter of Dryops. Several authors state that Pan is the son of Hermes and " Penelope ", apparently Penelope , the wife of Odysseus : according to Herodotus , this was

5616-666: Is reflected by the disciplina arcani . The English word 'mystery' originally appeared as the Ancient Greek plural Mustḗria 'the Mysteries', and developed into the Latin mysterium , where the English term originates. The etymology of the Greek mustḗrion 'revealed secret' is not entirely clear, though scholars have traditionally thought it to have derived from the Greek múō 'to close, shut; to be shut (especially of

5772-633: Is revealed to be in a state of half-death. Pan inspired pieces of classical music by Claude Debussy . Syrinx , written as part of incidental music to the play Psyché by Gabriel Mourey , was originally called "Flûte de Pan". Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune was based on a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé . The story of Pan is the inspiration for the first movement in Benjamin Britten 's work for solo oboe, Six Metamorphoses after Ovid first performed in 1951. Inspired by characters from Ovid 's fifteen-volume work Metamorphoses , Britten titled

5928-522: Is served, in times of danger or before some important endeavor to gain the gods' favor. For example, in the Odyssey Eumaeus sacrifices a pig with prayer for his unrecognizable master Odysseus. But in the Iliad , which partly reflects very early Greek civilization, not every banquet of the princes begins with a sacrifice. These sacrificial practices share much with recorded forms of sacrificial rituals known from later. Furthermore, throughout

6084-530: Is the only Greek god who actually dies. During the reign of Tiberius (AD 14–37), the news of Pan's death came to one Thamus, a sailor on his way to Italy by way of the Greek island of Paxi . A divine voice hailed him across the salt water, "Thamus, are you there? When you reach Palodes , take care to proclaim that the great god Pan is dead." Which Thamus did, and the news was greeted from shore with groans and laments. Christian apologists , including Eusebius of Caesarea , have long made much of Plutarch's story of

6240-527: Is traditionally depicted as a sea-goat , a goat with a fish's tail (see "Goatlike" Aigaion called Briareos, one of the Hecatonchires ). A myth reported as "Egyptian" in Hyginus 's Poetic Astronomy (which would seem to be invented to justify a connection of Pan with Capricorn) says that when Aegipan —that is Pan in his goat-god aspect—was attacked by the monster Typhon, he dived into the river Nile ;

6396-520: The Balkan Peninsula in the late third millennium BCE. Various religious festivals were held in ancient Greece. Many were specific only to a particular deity or city-state. For example, the festival of Lykaia was celebrated in Arcadia in Greece, which was dedicated to the pastoral god Pan . Like the other Panhellenic Games , the ancient Olympic Games were a religious festival, held at

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6552-656: The Epic Cycle and supposedly ending up in Rome, was one of these. The sacred boulder or baetyl is another very primitive type, found around the Mediterranean and Ancient Near East . Many of the Greek statues well known from Roman marble copies were originally temple cult images, which in some cases, such as the Apollo Barberini , can be credibly identified. A very few actual originals survive, for example,

6708-589: The Gerarai or the venerable ones. There were segregated religious festivals in Ancient Greece; the Thesmophoria , Plerosia, Kalamaia, Adonia , and Skira were festivals that were only for women. The Thesmophoria festival and many others represented agricultural fertility, which was considered to be closely connected to women. It gave women a religious identity and purpose in Greek religion, in which

6864-904: The Homeric hymns (regarded as later productions today), Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days , and Pindar 's Odes were regarded as authoritative and perhaps inspired; they usually begin with an invocation to the Muses for inspiration. Plato even wanted to exclude the myths from his ideal state described in the Republic because of their low moral tone. While some traditions, such as Mystery cults, upheld certain texts as canonic within their praxis, such texts were respected but not necessarily accepted as canonic outside their circle. In this field, of particular importance are certain texts referring to Orphic cults : multiple copies, ranging from between 450 BCE and 250 CE, have been found in various parts of

7020-622: The Mithraic Mysteries , Thracian/Phrygian Sabazius , and Phrygian Cybele . The Eleusinian Mysteries were the earliest and most famous of the mystery cults and lasted for over a millennium. Whenever they first originated, by the end of the 5th century BCE, they had been heavily influenced by Orphism , and in Late Antiquity, they had become allegorized. The basis for the Eleusinian Mysteries can be found in

7176-603: The Mycenaean civilization . Both the literary settings of some important myths and many important sanctuaries relate to locations that were important Helladic centers that had become otherwise unimportant by Greek times. The Mycenaeans perhaps treated Poseidon, to them a god of earthquakes as well as the sea, as their chief deity, and forms of his name along with several other Olympians are recognizable in records in Linear B , while Apollo and Aphrodite are absent. Only about half of

7332-567: The Pans (Burkert 1985, III.3.2; Ruck and Staples, 1994, p. 132) or the Paniskoi . Kerenyi (p. 174) notes from scholia that Aeschylus in Rhesus distinguished between two Pans, one 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 appeared not only a great Pan, but also little Pans, Paniskoi, who played

7488-418: The hecatomb (meaning 100 bulls) might in practice only involve a dozen or so, at large festivals the number of cattle sacrificed could run into the hundreds, and the numbers feasting on them well into the thousands. The evidence of the existence of such practices is clear in some ancient Greek literature, especially Homer 's epics. Throughout the poems, the use of the ritual is apparent at banquets where meat

7644-412: The sacrifices and rituals dedicated to the respective deity took place outside them, at altars within the wider precinct of the sanctuary, which might be large. As the centuries passed both the inside of popular temples and the area surrounding them accumulated statues and small shrines or other buildings as gifts, and military trophies, paintings and items in precious metals, effectively turning them into

7800-658: The stoa of the sanctuary. The initiation of the second night was also concluded by a banquet. Worship of the god Mithras was extremely popular among men of the Roman army for several centuries, originating in the 1st century BCE and ending with the persecution of non-Christian faiths within the Empire in the 4th century CE. Imported from Persia and adapted for Roman purposes like many other previously foreign deities, Mithras bears little relation to his Zoroastrian precursor, Mithra, retaining his Phrygian cap and garments, for instance, as

7956-513: The year in Athens included some 140 days that were religious festivals of some sort, though they varied greatly in importance. The main Greek temple building sat within a larger precinct or temenos , usually surrounded by a peribolos fence or wall; the whole is usually called a "sanctuary". The Acropolis of Athens is the most famous example, though this was apparently walled as a citadel before

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8112-523: The "Samothracian gods" or the "Great Gods". This makes it difficult to reconstruct who they were, though comparisons between the "gods of Samothrace" and the Cabeiri, chthonic deities of an indeterminate amount (sometimes twins, or multiple distinct beings) from comparable, pre-Greek or entirely non-Greek cultures such as Thrace or Phrygia have been made. The similarities in regards to what each deity or set of deities were purported to offer—protection on

8268-416: The "death" of Pan came the advent of theology. To this effect, Chesterton claimed, "It is said truly in a sense that Pan died because Christ was born. It is almost as true in another sense that men knew that Christ was born because Pan was already dead. A void was made by the vanishing world of the whole mythology of mankind, which would have asphyxiated like a vacuum if it had not been filled with theology." It

8424-405: The "first fruits" were harvested. The libation , a ritual pouring of fluid, was part of everyday life, and libations with a prayer were often made at home whenever wine was drunk, with just a part of the cup's contents, the rest being drunk. More formal ones might be made onto altars at temples, and other fluids such as olive oil and honey might be used. Although the grand form of sacrifice called

8580-461: The 5th century BCE, traced many Greek religious practices to Egypt . Robert G. Boling argues that Greek and Ugaritic / Canaanite mythology share many parallel relationships and that historical trends in Canaanite religion can help date works such as Homer 's Iliad and Odyssey . The Great Goddess hypothesis , that a Stone Age religion dominated by a female Great Goddess was displaced by

8736-480: The Artemis worshipped at Sparta , the virgin huntress, was a very different deity from the Artemis who was a many-breasted fertility goddess at Ephesus . Though worship of the major deities spread from one locality to another, and though most larger cities had temples to several major gods, the identification of different gods with different places remained strong to the end. Ancient sources for Greek religion tell

8892-620: The Cave of Pan. The only exceptions are the Temple of Pan on the Neda River gorge in the southwestern Peloponnese – the ruins of which survive to this day – and the Temple of Pan at Apollonopolis Magna in ancient Egypt . In the fourth century BC Pan was depicted on the coinage of Pantikapaion . Archaeologists, while excavating a Byzantine church of around 400 AD in Banyas , discovered in

9048-623: The Egyptian mysteries of Osiris . Mainstream Greek religion appears to have developed out of Proto-Indo-European religion and although very little is known about the earliest periods there are suggestive hints that some local elements go back even further than the Bronze Age or Helladic period to the farmers of Neolithic Greece . There was also clearly cultural evolution from the Late Helladic Mycenaean religion of

9204-488: The Elizabethan poets. Douglas Bush notes, "The goat-god, the tutelary divinity of shepherds, had long been allegorized on various levels, from Christ to 'Universall Nature' (Sandys) ; here he becomes the symbol of the romantic imagination, of supra-mortal knowledge. ' " In the late-nineteenth century Pan became an increasingly common figure in literature and art. Patricia Merivale states that between 1890 and 1926 there

9360-458: The Geometric style (900–750 BCE), but are very rarely mentioned in literature; they were relatively late introductions to Greece, and it has been suggested that Greek preferences in this matter were established earlier. The Greeks liked to believe that the animal was glad to be sacrificed, and interpreted various behaviors as showing this. Divination by examining parts of the sacrificed animal

9516-472: The Greek word for "all" (πᾶν). According to Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology , Apollodorus has his parents as Hermes and Oeneis, while scholia on Theocritus have Aether and Oeneis. 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

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9672-543: The Greek world. Even the words of the oracles never became a sacred text. Other texts were specially composed for religious events, and some have survived within the lyric tradition; although they had a cult function, they were bound to performance and never developed into a common, standard prayer form comparable to the Christian Pater Noster . An exception to this rule were the already named Orphic and Mystery rituals, which, in this, set themselves aside from

9828-603: The Mycenaean pantheon seems to survive the Greek Dark Ages . The archaeological evidence for continuity in religion is far clearer for Crete and Cyprus than the Greek mainland. Greek religious concepts may also have absorbed the beliefs and practices of earlier, nearby cultures, such as Minoan religion , and other influences came from the Near East, especially via Cyprus and Phoenicia . Herodotus , writing in

9984-529: The Theatral Circle. Livy records that here, the initiates would listen to a proclamation concerning the absence of crime and bloodshed. Near the beginning of the rituals, like at Eleusis, sacrifices and libations were likely made, where the prospective animal for the sacrifice would have been a ram. The initiates would have moved to a building where the actual initiation took place at night with torches, though archaeologists are unsure of which building it

10140-492: The Thesmophorion, where women could perform their rites and worship. Those who were not satisfied by the public cult of the gods could turn to various mystery religions that operated as cults into which members had to be initiated in order to learn their secrets. Here, they could find religious consolations that traditional religion could not provide: a chance at mystical awakening, a systematic religious doctrine,

10296-733: The Titans, who then gave birth to the first Olympians. The mythology largely survived and was expanded to form the later Roman mythology . The Greeks and Romans were literate societies, and much mythology, although initially shared orally, was written down in the forms of epic poetry (such as the Iliad , the Odyssey and the Argonautica ) and plays (such as Euripides ' The Bacchae and Aristophanes ' The Frogs ). The mythology became popular in Christian post- Renaissance Europe, where it

10452-558: The Trojan and Theban wars, were considered to have been physically immortalized and brought to live forever in either Elysium, the Islands of the Blessed, heaven, the ocean, or beneath the ground. Such beliefs are found in the most ancient Greek sources, such as Homer and Hesiod . This belief remained strong even into the Christian era. For most people at the moment of death there was, however, no hope of anything but continued existence as

10608-579: The Western Mediterranean, such as Massalia (Marseille). Early Italian religions such as the Etruscan religion were influenced by Greek religion and subsequently influenced much of the ancient Roman religion . "There was no centralization of authority over Greek religious practices and beliefs; change was regulated only at the civic level. Thus, the phenomenon we are studying is not in fact an organized "religion". Instead we might think of

10764-457: The Worship of Priapus (1786) as a symbol of creation expressed through sexuality. "Pan is represented pouring water upon the organ of generation; that is, invigorating the active creative power by the prolific element." John Keats 's "Endymion" (1818) opens with a festival dedicated to Pan where a stanzaic hymn is sung in praise of him. Keats drew most of his account of Pan's activities from

10920-552: The age of puberty . Some priestly functions, like the care for a particular local festival, could be given by tradition to a certain family. To a large extent, in the absence of "scriptural" sacred texts, religious practices derived their authority from tradition, and "every omission or deviation arouses deep anxiety and calls forth sanctions". Greek ceremonies and rituals were mainly performed at altars , which were never inside temples, but often just outside, or standing by themselves somewhere. These were typically devoted to one or

11076-453: The agora of Athens , the gathering limited to those that spoke Greek and had never killed (as the emphasis on purity grew, this ban would include those who had "impure" souls). Like other large festivals such as the Diasia and Thesmophoria , the prospective initiates would bring their own sacrificial animals and hear the festivals proclamation as it began. The next day, they would have gone to

11232-427: The aptness of the name: "for he may lawfully be said in the Greek tongue to be Pan, since he is our all. For all that we are, all that we live, all that we have, all that we hope, is him, by him, from him, and in him." In this interpretation, Rabelais was following Guillaume Postel in his De orbis terrae concordia . The nineteenth-century visionary Anne Catherine Emmerich , in a twist echoed nowhere else, claims that

11388-610: The attackers. In the Battle of Marathon (490 BC), it is said that Pan favored the Athenians and so inspired panic in the hearts of their enemies, the Persians. In two late Roman sources, Hyginus and Ovid , Pan is substituted for the satyr Marsyas in the theme of a musical competition ( agon ), and the punishment by flaying is omitted. Pan once had the audacity to compare his music with that of Apollo , and to challenge Apollo,

11544-421: The audience by the skilled Eleusinian clergy, and the climax of the event which must have included displaying a statue of Demeter and showing of an ear of wheat and a "birth" of agricultural wealth. Hence, these mysteries had associations with fertility and agriculture. In an attempt to solve the mystery of how so many people over the span of two millennia could have consistently experienced revelatory states during

11700-408: The beliefs and practices of Greeks in relation to the gods as a group of closely related "religious dialects" that resembled each other far more than they did those of non-Greeks." Ancient Greek theology was polytheistic , based on the assumption that there were many gods and goddesses, as well as a range of lesser supernatural beings of various types. There was a hierarchy of deities, with Zeus ,

11856-441: The bronze Piraeus Athena (2.35 m (7.7 ft) high, including a helmet). The image stood on a base, from the 5th century often carved with reliefs. It used to be thought that access to the cella of a Greek temple was limited to the priests, and it was entered only rarely by other visitors, except perhaps during important festivals or other special occasions. In recent decades this picture has changed, and scholars now stress

12012-507: The city on an hours-long 15-mile journey constantly interrupted by celebration, dances, etc, to the city of Eleusis . The initiates would carry torches on the way to the city. Once the city was reached, the pilgrims would dance into the sanctuary. The next day would begin with sacrifices, and at sunset, the initiates would go to a building called the telestêrion where the actual initiations would commence. The initiates washed themselves to be pure and everyone sat together in silence surrounded by

12168-401: The concealed knife led the way. After various rituals, the animal was slaughtered over the altar. As it fell, all the women present "[cried] out in high, shrill tones". Its blood was collected and poured over the altar. It was butchered on the spot and various internal organs, bones and other inedible parts burnt as the deity's portion of the offering, while the meat was removed to be prepared for

12324-487: The culminating ceremony of the Eleusinian Mysteries, numerous scholars have proposed that the power of the Eleusinian Mysteries came from the kykeon 's functioning as an entheogen . The day of the completion of the initiation was called the Plemochoai (after a type of vessel used to conclude a libation), and the new members could now wear a myrtle wreath like the priests. Eventually, the initiates would leave and utter

12480-402: The cult at Samothrace. The bowls used for the libation were also left behind, revealed by the thousands of discovered libation bowls at the cult sites. The participants occasionally left behind other materials, such as lamps. In addition to the purple fillet, they also left with a 'Samothracian ring' (magnetic iron ring coated in gold) and some initiates would set up a record of their initiation in

12636-503: The cult image, and sometimes to touch it; Cicero saw a bronze image of Heracles with its foot largely worn away by the touch of devotees. Famous cult images such as the Statue of Zeus at Olympia functioned as significant visitor attractions. In addition to the role that women performed in sacrifices, the only public roles that Greek women could perform were priestesses ; either hiereiai , meaning "sacred women", or amphipolis ,

12792-552: The daughter of Jupiter , and instigated the people to set up an image of her under the name of Kore" ( First Apology ). Through the 1st to 4th century, Christianity stood in direct competition for adherents with the mystery schools, insofar as the "mystery schools too were an intrinsic element of the non-Jewish horizon of the reception of the Christian message". Beginning in the third century, and especially after Constantine became emperor, components of mystery religions began to be incorporated into mainstream Christian thinking, such as

12948-489: The death of Pan. Due to the word "all" in Greek also being "pan," a pun was made that "all demons" had perished. In Rabelais ' Fourth Book of Pantagruel (sixteenth century), the Giant Pantagruel , after recollecting the tale as told by Plutarch, opines that the announcement was actually about the death of Jesus Christ , which did take place at about the same time (towards the end of Tiberius ' reign), noting

13104-590: The detailed illustrated depictions of Pan included in the volume are by the artists Giorgio Ghisi , Sir James Thornhill , Bernard Picart , Agostino Veneziano , Vincenzo Cartari , and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo . In the Percy Jackson novels , author Rick Riordan uses "The Great God Pan is dead" quote as a plot point in the novel The Sea of Monsters , and in The Battle of the Labyrinth Pan

13260-492: The earth for the months that Persephone is gone, only doing so when she returns, until the process repeats again. These episodic periods became the winter and spring seasons, with the "death" and "rebirth" of Persephone being allegorical for the cycle of life and the experience of all beings. In the 15th of the month of Boedromion (September/October) in the Attic calendar , as many as 3,000 potential initiates would have gathered in

13416-469: The eyes)' (chiefly referring to shutting the eyes, hence one who shuts their eyes and is initiated into the mysteries). Hittite scholar Jaan Puhvel suggests that the Greek term derives from the Hittite verb munnae 'to conceal, to hide, to shut out of sight'. Mystery religions formed one of three types of Hellenistic religion , the others being the imperial cult , or the ethnic religion particular to

13572-531: The god Sol Invictus and Mithras, or the bearing of torches by men representing the twins of the rising and setting sun, Cautes and Cautopates . Traditionally, scholarship surrounding Mithras' mythological beginnings purport that followers believed the common image of the god emerging from a rock, already a young man, with a dagger in one hand and a torch in the other, was representative of his birth and nativity. New perspectives have appeared in light of continuous study which suppose that this scene instead displays

13728-413: The god of fields, groves, wooded glens, and often affiliated with sex; because of this, Pan is connected to fertility and the season of spring. In Roman religion and myth , Pan was frequently identified with Faunus , a nature god who was the father of Bona Dea , sometimes identified as Fauna ; he was also closely associated with Silvanus , due to their similar relationships with woodlands, and Inuus ,

13884-408: The god of the lyre , to a trial of skill. Tmolus , the mountain-god, was chosen to judge. Pan blew on his pipes and gave great satisfaction with his rustic melody to himself and to his faithful follower, Midas , who happened to be present. Then Apollo struck the strings of his lyre. Tmolus at once awarded the victory to Apollo, and all but Midas agreed with the judgment. Midas dissented and questioned

14040-561: The gods were certainly not all-good or even all-powerful . They had to obey fate , known to Greek mythology as the Moirai , which overrode any of their divine powers or wills. For instance, in mythology, it was Odysseus ' fate to return home to Ithaca after the Trojan War , and the gods could only lengthen his journey and make it harder for him, not stop him. The gods had human vices and many behaved with arguably less morality than

14196-496: The handshake". Little is known about the cult's practices subsequent to initiation, as the highly secretive nature of the religion as well as a substantial absence of written texts makes it difficult to determine what precisely took place in regular meetings, beyond the payment of a membership fee.   Towards the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, it was becoming more popular in German scholarship to connect

14352-409: The hero Trophonius at Livadeia . The temple was the house of the deity it was dedicated to, who in some sense resided in the cult image in the cella or main room inside, normally facing the only door. The cult image normally took the form of a statue of the deity, typically roughly life-size, but in some cases many times life-size. In early days these were in wood, marble or terracotta , or in

14508-490: The initiates were given a purple fillet . There was also a second night of initiation, the epopteia where the "usual preliminary lustration rites and sacrifices" took place though not much else can be known besides that it may have been similar to the epopteia at Eleusis and would have climaxed with the showing of a great light. The initiation of the first night was concluded by banqueting together and many dining rooms have been uncovered by archaeologists in association with

14664-640: The justice of the award. Apollo would not suffer such a depraved pair of ears any longer and turned Midas' ears into those of a donkey . Pan could be multiplied into a swarm of Pans, and even be given individual names, as in Nonnus ' Dionysiaca , where the god Pan had twelve sons that helped Dionysus in his war against the Indians. Their names were Kelaineus, Argennon, Aigikoros, Eugeneios, Omester, Daphoenus, Phobos, Philamnos, Xanthos, Glaukos, Argos, and Phorbas. Two other Pans were Agreus and Nomios . Both were

14820-707: The king of the gods, having a level of control over all the others, although he was not almighty. Some deities had dominion over certain aspects of nature . For instance, Zeus was the sky-god, sending thunder and lightning, Poseidon ruled over the sea and earthquakes , Hades projected his remarkable power throughout the realms of death and the Underworld , and Helios controlled the sun. Other deities ruled over abstract concepts; for instance Aphrodite controlled love. All significant deities were visualized as "human" in form, although often able to transform themselves into animals or natural phenomena. While being immortal,

14976-413: The love of any man but was enraptured by Narcissus . As Echo was cursed by Hera to only be able to repeat words that had been said by someone else, she could not speak for herself. She followed Narcissus to a pool, where he fell in love with his own reflection and changed into a narcissus flower. Echo wasted away, but her voice could still be heard in caves and other such similar places. Pan also loved

15132-442: The modern English word "pasture"). The Rigvedic psychopomp god Pushan (from PIE zero grade *Ph₂usōn ) is believed to be a cognate of Pan. The connection between Pan and Pushan, both of whom are associated with goats, was first identified in 1924 by the German scholar Hermann Collitz . The familiar form of the name Pan is contracted from earlier Πάων , derived from the root * peh₂- (guard, watch over). According to Edwin L. Brown,

15288-667: The modern sense. Likewise, no Greek writer known to us classifies either the gods or the cult practices into separate 'religions'. Instead, for example, Herodotus speaks of the Hellenes as having "common shrines of the gods and sacrifices, and the same kinds of customs." Most ancient Greeks recognized the twelve major Olympian gods and goddesses — Zeus , Hera , Poseidon , Demeter , Athena , Ares , Aphrodite , Apollo , Artemis , Hephaestus , Hermes , and either Hestia or Dionysus —although philosophies such as Stoicism and some forms of Platonism used language that seems to assume

15444-563: The movement, "Pan: who played upon the reed pipe which was Syrinx, his beloved." The British rock band Pink Floyd named its first album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn in reference to Pan as he appears in The Wind in the Willows . Andrew King, Pink Floyd's manager, said Syd Barrett "thought Pan had given him an understanding into the way nature works. It formed into his holistic view of

15600-404: The mysteries of Eleusis and Samothrace) had no content but rather limited themselves to showing objects in initiation. Later interaction between Christianity and mystery religions did take place. Christianity has its own initiation ritual, baptism , and beginning in the fourth century, Christians began to refer to their sacraments , such as baptism, with the word mysterion , the Greek term that

15756-533: The mysteries of the deities of Cabeiri . Philip II of Macedon and his later wife Olympias were said to have met during the initiation ceremony at Samothrace. Heracles , Jason , Cadmus , Orpheus and the Dioscuri were all said to have been initiated here. Little is known about any core foundational myths for the entities worshipped by cult initiates at Samothrace; even their identities are unknown, as they tended to be discussed anonymously, being referred to as

15912-529: The mystery cults resembled each other. Reacting to these claims by outsiders, early Christian apologists , such as Justin Martyr , denied that these cults had influenced their religion. The seventeenth-century Protestant scholar Isaac Casaubon brought up the issue again by accusing the Catholic Church of deriving its sacraments from the rituals of the mystery cults. Charles-François Dupuis , in

16068-470: The name Pan is probably a cognate with the Greek word ὀπάων "companion". In his earliest appearance in literature, Pindar 's Pythian Ode iii. 78, Pan is associated with a mother goddess , perhaps Rhea or Cybele ; Pindar refers to maidens worshipping Cybele and Pan near the poet's house in Boeotia . The worship of Pan began in Arcadia which was always the principal seat of his worship. Arcadia

16224-627: The neighboring regions. While the information here is even more scarce than that available with the Eleusinian Mysteries (and more late, dating to the Hellenistic and Roman periods), it's known that the Samothracian Mysteries significantly borrowed from the ones at Eleusis (including the word 'Mysteries'), furthermore, archaeological and linguistic data continues elucidating more of what happened at Samothrace. These rituals were also associated with others on neighboring island such as

16380-570: The one-eyed giant Cyclopes , the sea beast Scylla , whirlpool Charybdis , Gorgons, and the half-man, half-bull Minotaur . There was no set Greek cosmogony , or creation myth. Different religious groups believed that the world had been created in different ways. One Greek creation myth was told in Hesiod's Theogony . It stated that at first there was only a primordial deity called Chaos , after which came various other primordial gods, such as Gaia, Tartarus and Eros, who then gave birth to more gods,

16536-487: The origins of Christianity with heavy influence from the mystery cults, if not labeling Christianity itself as a mystery cult. This trend was partly the result of the increasing growth of critical historical analysis of Christianity's history, as exemplified by David Strauss 's Das Leben Jesu (1835–36) and the secularizing trend among scholars that sought to derive Christianity from its pagan surroundings. Scholars, for example, began attempting to derive Paul's theology from

16692-615: The origins of rites in Christianity such as baptism and the Eucharist to mystery religions, it has been demonstrated that the origins of baptism rather lie in Jewish purificatory ritual and that cult meals were so widespread in the ancient world that attempting to demonstrate their origins from any one source is arbitrary. Searches for Christianity deriving content from mystery religions has also been unsuccessful; many of them (such as

16848-511: The participants to eat; the leading figures tasted it on the spot. The temple usually kept the skin to sell to tanners. That humans got more use from the sacrifice than the deity did not escape the Greeks, and was often the subject of humor in Greek comedy . The animals used were, in order of preference, bulls or oxen, cows, sheep (the most common sacrifice), goats, pigs (with piglets being the cheapest mammal), and poultry (but rarely other birds or fish). Horses and asses are seen on some vases in

17004-406: The parts above the water remained a goat, but those under the water transformed into a fish. Pan is famous for his sexual prowess and is often depicted with a phallus . Diogenes of Sinope , speaking in jest, related a myth of Pan learning masturbation from his father, Hermes , and teaching the habit to shepherds. There was a legend that Pan seduced the moon goddess Selene , deceiving her with

17160-484: The pestilences which deprived the world of its prosperity. However, because the Fates decreed that whoever ate or drank in the underworld was doomed to spend eternity there, Persephone was still forced to remain in the realm for either four or six months of the year (depending on the telling), as she was tricked by Hades into eating pomegranate seeds of a corresponding amount. Thus, Demeter, in her sadness, neglects to nourish

17316-493: The phrase "the Great Pan" was actually a demonic epithet for Jesus Christ , and that "Thamus, or Tramus" was a watchman in the port of Nicaea , who, at the time of the other spectacular events surrounding Christ's death, was then commissioned to spread this message, which was later garbled "in repetition." In modern times, G. K. Chesterton has repeated and amplified the significance of the "death" of Pan, suggesting that with

17472-424: The phrases paks or konks , which referenced the proclamation of a conclusion of an event. The clothing worn by the new members during their journey were used as lucky blankets for children or perhaps were given to their sanctuary. The second most famous Mysteries were those on the island of Samothrace and promised safety to sailors from the perils of the sea, and most participants would come to be initiated from

17628-473: The poem, special banquets are held whenever gods indicated their presence by some sign or success in war. Before setting out for Troy, this type of animal sacrifice is offered. Odysseus offers Zeus a sacrificial ram in vain. The occasions of sacrifice in Homer's epic poems may shed some light onto the view of gods as members of society, rather than external entities, indicating social ties. Sacrificial rituals played

17784-525: The popular Roman religio-philosophical theme of ascent, whereby the god's emergence from the stone serves to depict his divinity and power over "earthly mundaneness". The visual and metaphorical components to the core cult image of Mithras slaying a bull, known as the tauroctony , have also been greatly debated. Propositions that the scene depicts nothing more than the act of sacrifice, well known to Romans through their civil religions and obligatory state festivals, have been accepted for some time, but belief that

17940-491: The prime Pan, reflecting his dual nature as both a wise prophet and a lustful beast. Aegipan , literally "goat-Pan," was a Pan who was fully goatlike, rather than half-goat and half-man. When the Olympians fled from the monstrous giant Typhoeus and hid themselves in animal form, Aegipan assumed the form of a fish-tailed goat. Later he came to the aid of Zeus in his battle with Typhoeus, by stealing back Zeus' stolen sinews. As

18096-588: The public, and after death, they received a public burial site. Greek priestesses had to be healthy and of a sound mind, the reasoning being that the ones serving the gods had to be as high-quality as their offerings. This was also true of male Greek priests. It is contested whether there were gendered divisions when it came to serving a particular god or goddess, who was devoted to what god, gods and/or goddesses could have both priests and priestesses to serve them. Gender specifics did come into play when it came to who would perform certain acts of sacrifice or worship. Per

18252-710: The quest for the Golden Fleece and Theseus and the Minotaur . Many species existed in Greek mythology. Chief among these were the gods and humans, though the Titans (who predated the Olympian gods) also frequently appeared in Greek myths. Lesser species included the half-man-half-horse centaurs , the nature-based nymphs (tree nymphs were dryads , sea nymphs were Nereids ) and the half-man, half-goat satyrs . Some creatures in Greek mythology were monstrous, such as

18408-446: The rest of the Greek religious system. Finally, some texts called ieri logi ( Greek : ιεροί λόγοι ) (sacred texts) by the ancient sources, originated from outside the Greek world, or were supposedly adopted in remote times, representing yet more different traditions within the Greek belief system. The lack of a unified priestly class meant that a unified, canonic form of the religious texts or practices never existed; just as there

18564-411: The rites of the state religion, be an initiate in one or more mysteries, and at the same time adhere to a certain philosophical school. Many of the aspects of public religion such as sacrifices, ritual meals, and ritual purification were repeated within the mystery, but with the additional requirement that they take place in secrecy and be confined to a closed set of initiates. The mystery schools offered

18720-427: The ritual scapegoat, the hardship would go with it. Worship in Greece typically consisted of sacrificing domestic animals at the altar with hymn and prayer. The altar was outside any temple building, and might not be associated with a temple at all. The animal, which should be perfect of its kind, was decorated with garlands and the like, and led in procession to the altar; a girl with a basket on her head containing

18876-460: The role of women in worshipping goddesses Demeter and her daughter Persephone reinforced traditional lifestyles. The festivals relating to agricultural fertility were valued by the polis because this is what they traditionally worked for; women-centered festivals that involved private matters were less important. In Athens the festivals honoring Demeter were included in the calendar and promoted by Athens. They constructed temples and shrines like

19032-416: The sailors actually heard the excited shouts of the worshipers of Tammuz , Θαμούς πανμέγας τέθνηκε ( Thamoús panmégas téthnēke , "All-great Tammuz is dead!"), and misinterpreted them as a message directed to an Egyptian sailor named 'Thamus': "Great Pan is Dead!" Van Teslaar explains, "[i]n its true form the phrase would have probably carried no meaning to those on board who must have been unfamiliar with

19188-453: The same part as the Satyrs ". Herodotus wrote that according to Egyptian chronology, Pan was the most ancient of the gods; but according to the version in which Pan was the son of Hermes and Penelope, he was born only eight hundred years before Herodotus, and thus after the Trojan war. Herodotus concluded that that would be when the Greeks first learnt the name of Pan. The goat-god Aegipan

19344-477: The sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia . Other festivals centered on Greek theatre , of which the Dionysia in Athens was the most important. More typical festivals featured a procession, large sacrifices and a feast to eat the offerings, and many included entertainments and customs such as visiting friends, wearing fancy dress and unusual behavior in the streets, sometimes risky for bystanders in various ways. Altogether

19500-412: The scene displays a star-map of major constellations in addition to the usual action of sacrifice has appeared in recent years. As is the case with most other mystery religions, almost no written sources pertaining to the practices, much less the beliefs of adherents, survive. Thus, conjecture and assumption based almost exclusively on archaeological finds and modern interpretations provide only somewhat of

19656-408: The sea and purified themselves and the animals. Three days of rest would pass until the 19th, the agora was once more filled with the initiates at the procession at the sanctuary of Demeter and her daughter Persephone . Two Eleusinian priestesses were at the front of the procession followed by many Greeks holding special items in preparation for the rest of the ceremony, and the procession would leave

19812-522: The seas and help in difficult times—display a definite connection, though to what extent is impossible to conclude. It is therefore likely that if the Samothracian gods are not the Cabeiri themselves, elements from this comparative religion, along with Thracian elements of worship present on the island before an established Greek presence, heavily influenced the ideas and practices central to the mystery cult. Unlike at Eleusis, initiation at Samothrace

19968-433: The significance of the male or female role to a particular god or goddess, a priest would lead the priestess or the reverse. In some Greek cults priestesses served both gods and goddesses; Pythia , or female Oracle of Apollo at Delphi , and that at Didyma were priestesses, but both were overseen by male priests. The festival of Dionosyus was practiced by both and the god was served by women and female priestesses known as

20124-470: The smell of extinguished torches. The initiation may have taken place over two nights. If so, the first night may have concerned the kidnapping of Persephone by Hades and ended with the goddess's return, whereas the second night concerned the epopteia (the higher degree of the Mysteries) which was a performance that included singing, dancing, potentially the showing of a phallus, a terrifying experience for

20280-415: The song’s sequel, “The Return of Pan". Ancient Greek religion Religious practices in ancient Greece encompassed a collection of beliefs, rituals , and mythology , in the form of both popular public religion and cult practices . The application of the modern concept of "religion" to ancient cultures has been questioned as anachronistic . The ancient Greeks did not have a word for 'religion' in

20436-458: The sons of Hermes, Agreus' mother being the nymph Sose, a prophetess: he inherited his mother's gift of prophecy, and was also a skilled hunter. Nomios' mother was Penelope (not the same as the wife of Odysseus). He was an excellent shepherd, seducer of nymphs, and musician upon the shepherd's pipes. Most of the mythological stories about Pan are actually about Nomios, not the god Pan. Although, Agreus and Nomios could have been two different aspects of

20592-530: The speaker tries to summon Pan to life after feeling "a craving in me", wishing for a "spring-tide" that will replace the stagnant "autumn" of the soul. A dark version of Pan's seductiveness appears in Margery Lawrence 's Robin's Rath , both giving and taking life and vitality. Pan is the eponymous "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" in the seventh chapter of Kenneth Grahame 's The Wind in the Willows (1908). Grahame's Pan, unnamed but clearly recognisable,

20748-729: The specially prestigious form of a chryselephantine statue using ivory plaques for the visible parts of the body and gold for the clothes, around a wooden framework. The most famous Greek cult images were of this type, including the Statue of Zeus at Olympia , and Phidias 's Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon in Athens, both colossal statues, now completely lost. Fragments of two chryselephantine statues from Delphi have been excavated. Bronze cult images were less frequent, at least until Hellenistic times. Early images seem often to have been dressed in real clothes, and at all periods images might wear real jewelry donated by devotees. The acrolith

20904-408: The statue of Hermes at Kyllene. The aforesaid statues are images of the primal man and of the regenerated, spiritual man who is in every respect consubstantial with that man. The scarcity of information precludes understanding what went on during the initiation, though there may have been dancing such as at Eleusis associated with the mythology of the search for Harmonia . At the end of the initiation,

21060-857: The status quo. For this reason, what evidence remains of the older Greek mysteries has been understood as reflecting certain archaic aspects of common Indo-European religion , with parallels in Indo-Iranian religion . The mystery schools of Greco-Roman antiquity include the Eleusinian Mysteries , the Dionysian Mysteries , and the Orphic Mysteries . Some of the many divinities that the Romans nominally adopted from other cultures also came to be worshipped in Mysteries; for instance, Egyptian Isis , Persian Mithras from

21216-433: The subterranean chamber known as a Mithraeum where the rites and practices of the cult would be performed. Initiates were naked, bound with their arms behind them, and knelt before a priest, whereupon they would be released from their bondage, crowned, but not permitted to rise until a particular moment. The initiation was confirmed by a handshake, as members would henceforth be referred to as syndexioi , or those "united by

21372-401: The time of the epic works of Homer all are well-established, except for Dionysus , but several of the Homeric Hymns , probably composed slightly later, are dedicated to him. Mystery cult Justin Martyr in the 2nd century explicitly noted and identified them as "demonic imitations" of the true faith; "the devils, in imitation of what was said by Moses , asserted that Proserpine was

21528-588: The variety of local access rules. Pausanias was a gentlemanly traveller of the 2nd-century CE who declares that the special intention of his travels around Greece was to see cult images, and usually managed to do so. It was typically necessary to make a sacrifice or gift, and some temples restricted access either to certain days of the year, or by class, race, gender (with either men or women forbidden), or even more tightly. Garlic-eaters were forbidden in one temple, in another women unless they were virgins; restrictions typically arose from local ideas of ritual purity or

21684-412: The version which was believed by the Greeks, and later sources such as Cicero and Hyginus call Pan the son of Mercury and Penelope. In some early sources such as Pindar (c. 518 – c. 438 BC) and Hecataeus (c. 550 – c. 476 BC), he is called the child of Penelope by Apollo . Apollodorus records two distinct divinities named Pan; one who was the son of Hermes and Penelope, and the other who had Zeus and

21840-409: The walls of the church an altar of the god Pan with a Greek inscription, dating back to the second or third century AD. The inscription reads, " Atheneon son of Sosipatros of Antioch is dedicating the altar to the god Pan Heliopolitanus. He built the altar using his own personal money in fulfillment of a vow he made. " In the mystery cults of the highly syncretic Hellenistic era, Pan

21996-531: The world." Brian Jones , a founding member of The Rolling Stones , strongly identified with Pan. He produced the live album Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka , about a Moroccan festival that evoked the ancient Roman rites of Pan. Musician Mike Scott of the Waterboys refers to Pan as an archetypal force within us all, and talks about his search for “The Pan Within", a theme also reflected in

22152-443: The worship of Tammuz which was a transplanted, and for those parts, therefore, an exotic custom." Certainly, when Pausanias toured Greece about a century after Plutarch, he found Pan's shrines, sacred caves and sacred mountains still very much frequented. However, a naturalistic explanation might not be needed. For example, William Hansen has shown that the story is quite similar to a class of widely known tales known as Fairies Send

22308-660: The younger folk of the village to revel in the summer twilight, while the vicar of the village is the only person worried about the revival of worship of the old pagan god. Pan features as a prominent character in Tom Robbins ' Jitterbug Perfume (1984). The British writer and editor Mark Beech of Egaeus Press published in 2015 the limited-edition anthology Soliloquy for Pan which includes essays and poems such as "The Rebirthing of Pan" by Adrian Eckersley, "Pan's Pipes" by Robert Louis Stevenson , "Pan with Us" by Robert Frost , and "The Death of Pan" by Lord Dunsany . Some of

22464-465: Was a district of mountain people , culturally separated from other Greeks. Arcadian hunters used to scourge the statue of the god if they had been disappointed in the chase. Being a rustic god, Pan was not worshipped in temples or other built edifices, but in natural settings, usually caves or grottoes such as the one on the north slope of the Acropolis of Athens . These are often referred to as

22620-520: Was a nymph who was a great singer and dancer and scorned the love of any man. This angered Pan, a lecherous god, and he instructed his followers to kill her. Echo was torn to pieces and spread all over Earth. The goddess of the Earth, Gaia , received the pieces of Echo, whose voice remains repeating the last words of others. In some versions, Echo and Pan had two children: Iambe and Iynx . In other versions, Pan had fallen in love with Echo, but she scorned

22776-518: Was also used for a mystery rite. In this case, the word meant that Christians did not discuss their most important rites with non-Christians who might misunderstand or disrespect them. Their rites thus acquired some of the aura of secrecy that surrounded the mystery cults. Even in ancient times these similarities were controversial. Non-Christians in the Roman Empire in the early centuries CE, such as Lucian and Celsus , thought Christianity and

22932-468: Was an "astonishing resurgence of interest in the Pan motif". He appears in poetry, in novels and children's books, and is referenced in the name of the character Peter Pan . In the Peter Pan stories, Peter represents a golden age of pre-civilisation in both the minds of very young children (before enculturation and education), and in the natural world outside the influence of humans. Peter Pan's character

23088-463: Was another composite form, this time a cost-saving one with a wooden body. A xoanon was a primitive and symbolic wooden image, perhaps comparable to the Hindu lingam ; many of these were retained and revered for their antiquity, even when a new statue was the main cult image. Xoana had the advantage that they were easy to carry in processions at festivals. The Trojan Palladium , famous from the myths of

23244-732: Was considering the abundance of possibilities including the Hall of Choral Dancers, the Hieron, the Anaktoron and the Rotunda of Arsinoe II. In the 3rd century, Hippolytus of Rome in his Refutation of All Heresies quotes a Gnostic author who provides a summary of some of the images here; There stand two statues of naked men in the Anaktoron of the Samothracians, with both hands stretched up toward heaven and their pudenda turned up, just as

23400-441: Was interpreted with concurrent meanings in all four modes of medieval exegesis : literally as historical fact, and allegorically as the death of the ancient order at the coming of the new. In more modern times, some have suggested a possible naturalistic explanation for the myth. For example, Robert Graves ( The Greek Myths ) reported a suggestion that had been made by Salomon Reinach and expanded by James S. Van Teslaar that

23556-479: Was much less important than in Roman or Etruscan religion , or Near Eastern religions , but was practiced , especially of the liver, and as part of the cult of Apollo . Generally, the Greeks put more faith in observing the behavior of birds . For a smaller and simpler offering, a grain of incense could be thrown on the sacred fire, and outside the cities farmers made simple sacrificial gifts of plant produce as

23712-412: Was no unified, common sacred text for the Greek belief system, there was no standardization of practices. Instead, religious practices were organized on local levels, with priests normally being magistrates for the city or village, or gaining authority from one of the many sanctuaries. Pausanias notes that the priest of the temple of Athena Alea at Tegea was a boy, who held office only until reaching

23868-530: Was not restricted to a narrow few days of the year and lasted from April to November (the sailing season) with a large event likely taking place in June but may have taken place over two nights. Like in Samothrace, the future initiates would enter the sanctuary of Samothrace from the east where they would have entered into a 9-meter in diameter circular space with flagstones and a grandstand of five steps now called

24024-546: Was nurtured by Amalthea with the infant Zeus in Crete. In Zeus' battle with Typhon , Aegipan and Hermes stole back Zeus' "sinews" that Typhon had hidden away in the Corycian Cave . Pan aided his foster-brother in the battle with the Titans by letting out a horrible screech and scattering them in terror. According to some traditions, Aegipan was the son of Pan, rather than his father. The constellation Capricornus

24180-457: Was often used as a basis for the works of artists like Botticelli , Michelangelo and Rubens . One of the most important moral concepts to the Greeks was aversion to hubris . Hubris constituted many things, from rape to desecration of a corpse, and was a crime in Athens. Although pride and vanity were not considered sins themselves, the Greeks emphasized moderation. Pride only became hubris when it went to extremes, like any other vice. The same

24336-455: Was thought of eating and drinking. Anything done to excess was not considered proper. Ancient Greeks placed, for example, importance on athletics and intellect equally. In fact many of their competitions included both. Pride was not evil until it became all-consuming or hurtful to others. The Greeks had no religious texts they regarded as "revealed" scriptures of sacred origin, but very old texts including Homer 's Iliad and Odyssey , and

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