the god of shepherds, hunters, and all country exercises. Such he is described by the Greek and Roman poets; but he bore a higher character among the earliest Greeks, as well as among the Egyptians; from whom his worship was borrowed by that people. In Egypt he was known by the name of Mender, which, according to Jablonki *, signifies fecundity.* Pantheos. Hence his symbol was a living he-goat, the most fala-Egyptious of all animals: "Hircum Mendesium colunturam. Aegypti, eo quod virtuti prolificae ac genitiva, consecratus est.—Nam animal hoc coitus valde cupidum est." His principal temple was a magnificent building in a city of Lower Egypt, called after his name. It is well known (see Polytheism) that from dedicating certain animals to certain gods, the Egyptians proceeded to consider the animals themselves as actuated by the divinities to whom they were sacred. Hence the origin of brute worship. In the temple of Mendes was kept a he-goat, to whom sacrifices of a very monstrous kind were offered. Herodotus, speaking of the prefecture of Mendes, says †, Εγκειλο δ' εν τω μητρι τουτω Λιβυι, εν γαιω τουτω το τηρεις γουναικι ταχινω εμπροσθι αποφοιτων. ch. 26. Ταυτο εν επιδιδικαι αποφοιτων αποφοι. Our readers, learned and unlearned, will forgive us for not translating this passage, which contains, however, nothing that is not confirmed by the testimony of other writers; particularly of Plutarch, and Pindar as he is quoted by Strabo. The most wonderful circumstance of this monstrous sacrifice is, that it was made publicly in the presence of a great concourse of men! But to what divinity was it made? To a mere goat, or to some superior principle animating the goat? Doubtless to the latter; for it is said that the fair worshippers were of the first rank, and of unfettered fame; and that if they had borne a different character, the deity would not have accepted of their devotions.

The deity whom the Egyptians adored by the name of Mender, was no other than the Soul of the Universe; for he was their most ancient god: and we are told by Plutarch ‡, "That they took the first God De Ida, and the Universe for one and the same thing." Hence et Opr. his name Παν among the Greeks: not that either the Greeks or their masters in theology worshipped, as the first god, mere brute matter, but that spirit which they conceived to be coeternal with matter, and to animate all things, making them one. Thus Orpheus, who imported the Egyptian doctrine into Greece, declares that all things are one: and after him Parmenides, and other philosophers, taught ειναι το ναον, that "one is the universe;" and that "the universe is immovable." That the ancient Grecian Pan, or the Egyptian Mender, was not the corporeal world, as senefets and inanimate, but the whole system of things, animated and eternal, appears further from the following testimony of Macrobius. "Hunc deum Arcades colunt, appellantes τον της ωλης κυριον, non sylvarum dominum, sed universae substantiae materialis dominatorem;—The Arcadians worship this god, calling him the lord lord of Hyle; i.e. not the lord of the woods, but the lord of all material substance." In the same manner, Pharnactus * describes the Pan of the other Greeks, not as the mere corporeal world, but as the intellectual principle actuating it and presiding over it: and he adds, that "Pan was feigned to be laicivious, because of the multitude of spermatic revolts in the world, and the continual mixtures and generation of things."

The Egyptians, as we learn from Jablonksi, had nearly the same notion with the Greeks of the spirit which they worshipped as the Soul of the Universe; only they gave to it both sexes. As the maker, governor, and bountiful father of universal nature, they considered it as a male, whose symbol was the he-goat of Mendes; and as a female it was adored by the name of Isis, to whom the he-goat was consecrated, though not held in such veneration as the male. From this view of the Egyptian creed, the sacrifice which we have mentioned appears no longer unaccountable. It was made to a god, believed to be the universal source of fecundity, and to whom, from the well-known character of the animal whom he was supposed to actuate, they had reason to believe it would be most acceptable.

The Greeks never worshipped their Pan by the emblem of a living goat; but they painted him with the lower parts of a goat, for a reason which shall be afterwards mentioned. How he came to degenerate among that people, from one of the Dii majorum gentium, or rather from the first principle of all things, to the rank of a daemon or demi-god, we cannot pretend to say; but that such was his fate, is certain; for under this last character mention is made both of his birth and his death.

Whole son he was, is not agreed among them. Homer makes him the son of Mercury, and says he was called Pan from πάν, omne, because he charmed all the gods with his flute; others say that he was the son of Dicmogorgon, and first invented the organ, of seven unequal reeds, joined together in a particular manner: Having on a time fought with Cupid, that god in spite made him fall in love with the coy nymph Syrinx, who, flying from him to the banks of Ladon, a river of Arcadia, at the instant prayers of the Nymphs was turned into a reed, as her name in Greek signifies, which the god, grating instead of her, made a pipe of it, and for his music was adored by the Arcadians. The most common opinion was, that he was the son of Mercury and Penelope. But Nat. Comest, out of Duris Simumis, makes his birth scandalous, by saying he was called πάν, because begot by all Penelope's suitors. He was painted half-man half-goat, having large goats horns, a chaplet of pine on his red face, a pleasant laughter, with the feet and tail of a goat; a motley skin covering his body, with a crooked stick in one hand and his pipe in the other. See him nicely described by Sil. Ital. 13. 326. et seq. a fight enough to fright women and children, yea, armed men too; for when Brennus the Gaul was about to pillage the temple of Apollo at Delphos, he by night struck such terror into his army, that he quitted his sacrilegious design: hence Panici terrors. Yet, as homely as he was, he pleased the goddess Luna, turning himself easily into a white ram, Virgil, Georg. iii. 392. et deinceps; and the nymph Dryope also, almost putting off his divinity, and turning shepherd for her sake. Neither was he displeasing to other nymphs, who are generally made dancing round about him to hear the charms of his pipe. The usual offerings made him were milk and honey, in the shepherds wooden bowls; also they sacrificed to him a dog, the wolf's enemy; whence his usual epithet is λοχαῖος; and whence all his priests were called Luperci.

His festival was celebrated on February 15th by the Romans, brought into Italy by Evander the Arcadian, and revived afterwards by Romulus, in memory of his procreator. He was also called by the Romans Ianus, ab incundo. Vid. Liv. i. 5. Macrob. Sat. i. 21. and Serv. in Virg. Aen. vi. 775. The ancients, by giving so many adjuncts and attributes to this idol, as we have observed above, seem to have designed him for the symbol of the universe; his upper parts being human, because the upper part of the world is fair, beautiful, smiling, like his face; his horns symbolize the rays of the sun and of the moon; his red face, the splendour of the sky; the spotted skin wherewith he is clothed, the stars which bespangle the firmament; the roughness of his lower parts, beasts and vegetables; his goat's feet, the solidity of the earth; his pipe, compact of seven reeds, the seven planets, which they say make the harmony of the spheres; his crook, bending round at the top, the years circling in one another. Serv. Interpr.

Having said so much of Pan, both as a self-existent god and as a generated daemon, we shall conclude the article with some observations on Plutarch's account of the prodigy which happened at his death; for in the Pagan creed, daemons were not all believed immortal.—"In the reign of Tiberius (says our author *) Lib. de Oracul. Defect. certain persons on a voyage from Asia to Italy, and failing towards the evening by the Echinades, were there becalmed, and heard a loud voice from the shore calling on one Thamus an Egyptian pilot whom they had on board. Thamus, as may be supposed, listened with attention; and the voice, after repeating his name thrice, commanded him when he came to the Pelodes, to declare that the Great Pan was dead. The man, with the advice of his companions, resolved, that if they should have a quick gale off the Pelodes, he would pass by in silence; but that if they should be becalmed, he would perform what the voice had commanded. Adhering to this resolution, they soon arrived off the defined islands, and were immediately becalmed, there being neither breath of wind nor agitation of water. Upon this Thamus looking from the hinder part of the ship towards the land, pronounced with a loud voice Ἀπέκτητος Πάν, The Great Pan is dead! and was instantly answered from the shore by numberless howlings and lamentations."

This story, which has so much the air of imposture, has not only been admitted as truth by men of the first eminence for learning and acuteness, but has been applied to our Saviour, whose death (says Cudworth) the daemons mourned not from love, but from a preface that it would put a period to the tyranny and domination which they had so long exercised over the souls and bodies of men. In support of this opinion, he quotes several passages of Scripture, such as, "Now is the prince of this world judged;" and, "Having spoiled principalities and powers (by his death upon the cros), he triumphed over them in it." He affirms likewise, that "Pan being taken for that rea- son or understanding by which all things were made, and by which they are all governed, or for that divine wisdom which diffuseth itself through all things, is a name which might very well signify God manifested in the flesh."

The authority of Cudworth is great; but a groundless opinion has seldom been propped by weaker reasoning than he makes use of on this occasion. Plutarch indeed says, and seems to believe, that this prodigy fell out during the reign of Tiberius; but as he mentions not the year of that reign, there is no evidence that it was at the crucifixion of our Saviour. The demons who inhabited the Echinades knew what had been transacted at Jerusalem far distant from their islands; they knew the name of the pilot of a strange ship; they knew that the mariners of that ship had resolved to disobey their command, unless becalmed off the Pelodes; they had power over both the winds and waves at the Pelodes, and exerted that power to enforce obedience to their command; and yet these all-knowing and powerful beings were under the necessity of calling in the aid of a man to deliver a message to their companions, inhabiting a place to which the very fame of story assures us that their own power and knowledge reached. Should it be said that the demons were compelled by divine power thus publicly to make known to man Christ's triumph over the kingdom of darkness, we beg leave to ask why they were not likewise compelled to give him another name, since it is certain, that at the era of Tiberius, and long before, illiterate Pagans, such as common seamen must be supposed to have been, knew no other Pan than the fabled son of Penelope and Mercury?—Indeed the other Pan, taken for that reason or understanding by which all things were made, could not possibly be the being here meant; for, erroneous as the Pagan system was, there is nothing in it to completely absurd as the death of the soul of the universe, the maker of all things: nor do we believe that any Pagan ever existed, who dreamed that such a death was possible.

What then, it will be asked, are we to understand by this story? Plutarch was eminent for knowledge and integrity, and he relates it without expressing a doubt of its truth. He does so; but many a man of worth has been credulous; and though that was not his character, this prodigy may be accounted for by natural means. Germanicus was believed to have been poisoned, at least with the knowledge, if not by the command, of Tiberius; and there was nothing which the Romans so deeply deplored as the untimely death of that accomplished prince*. They fancied that his body was animated, not by a human soul, but by a superior demon: and they decreed to him statues, religious ceremonies, and even sacrifices. His widow was highly honoured, as having been nearly related to a divinity, and his children were adored as demi-gods. These facts being admitted, nothing appears to us more probable than the opinion of the learned Motheim†, who thinks that some shrewd statesman, in order to excite the popular fury against Tiberius to the highest pitch, invented this story, and bribed foreign mariners to spread it among the people, who would naturally believe, that by the great Pan was meant their favourite Germanicus. This hypothesis is at least countenanced by what Plutarch tells us of the anxiety of the emperor to discover what personage could be meant by the Pan whose death was announced to the seamen: he consulted the learned men of Rome, who, in order to restore peace to the city, declared that they understood it of none other than the son of Penelope and Mercury.