Source Verification: Pan
Every claim below is either what a named ancient source attests, in its own line or section, or a point where the sources themselves disagree.
What the Sources Attest
Who are Pan's parents?
The Homeric Hymn to Pan names Hermes as his father and the daughter of Dryops as his mother, a nymph who fled in fear the moment she saw her own strange, goat-footed child, leaving Hermes to raise him with delight instead of fear.
Source: Homeric Hymn to Pan 1-30
Why is Pan's name explained as meaning "all"?
The Homeric Hymn says every one of the immortals who saw the newborn Pan was glad in heart, Dionysus especially, and gives that universal delight as the reason he was named Pan - because he had pleased all of them, not because of any connection to the natural world as a whole.
Source: Homeric Hymn to Pan 34-47
Is there disagreement about who Pan's mother was?
Yes. Where the Homeric Hymn names an unnamed daughter of Dryops, Herodotus records a separate Greek tradition naming Penelope, Odysseus's own wife, as Pan's mother - a version that would place his birth much later, after the Trojan War, rather than in the older generation the Hymn implies.
Source: Herodotus, Histories 2.145-2.146
What did Pan ask of the Athenians before the Battle of Marathon?
According to Herodotus, Pan appeared to the runner Philippides in the mountains above Tegea and asked why the Athenians paid him so little attention, despite his goodwill toward them and the help he had given and would give again - a complaint Athens answered afterward with a shrine and annual sacrifices below the Acropolis.
Source: Herodotus, Histories 6.105-6.106
Did Pan ever appear in Roman myth in a similar role?
Yes, though under his own separate identity as much as through direct equation with the Roman god Faunus - Virgil's Georgics tells a story of Pan deceiving the moon goddess Luna with a gift of white wool, showing the same Pan operating within a Roman literary tradition rather than only a Greek one.
Source: Virgil, Georgics 3.391-393
Where Accounts Differ
- who was Pan's mother
- Pan's mother is named differently across sources: an unnamed daughter of Dryops in the Homeric Hymn, versus Penelope in the tradition Herodotus records.
Sources
- Homeric Hymn to Pan 1-30
- Homeric Hymn to Pan 34-47
- Herodotus, Histories 2.145-2.146
- Herodotus, Histories 6.105-6.106
- Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth (1993)