The Survival of Pan

PLUTARCH de Defectu Oraculorum contains a strange story, attributed to one Epitherses, a teacher of grammar. As the ship on which he was sailing for Italy came into the shadow of Paxos, a small island in the Ionian Sea, a voice called out three times for the pilot, Thamus, an Egyptian. It commanded him to sail to Palodes, an? other island not far distant and there to proclaim that the Great God Pan is dead. The pilot was dubious, and finally determined that only if the sea were calm near Palodes would he obey the command. A little short of landfall the wind suddenly ceased, and all was quiet. Accordingly, driving the ship in close, Thamus mounted the stern and shouted: 11 d? 6 /i?7as Tkdvrjicev. Immedi? ately there arose from the forested darkness a great lamentation which resounded through the peaceful evening sky. But the shore itself was empty; no wailing devotees could be seen. The story, Plutarch further relates, spread abroad and, reaching Rome, excited the curiosity of Tiberius Caesar. The emperor summoned Thamus for an interview and, having heard his account, set his scholars to investigating Pan. They came up with the meager intelligence that Pan was the son of Hermes and Penelope, Odysseus* queen, a conjecture found in Herodotus, but only one of several alleged parentages. When did this event occur? Presumably be? tween 14 and 37 A.D., though one later tradition makes it coincide with the birth of Christ. Others say that it was on the day of the beginning of Christ's earthly ministry or at the time of His agony on the cross. There is no reason for preferring one of these traditions over the others; any one is appropriate and none authoritative. The story was not allowed to die, and its interpretation was much discussed. Many, of course, took it at face value as a spectacular event in the rout of paganism. Eusebius Pamphili, fourth century bishop of Caesarea, how? ever, suggested that by Pan one should under? stand Christ, the only true all-god. This view became more or less the accepted one and was strongly reinforced, centuries later, by Rabelais, whose Pantagruel retells Plutarch's tale with embellishments and urges the understanding which Eusebius had proposed. The tradition was still alive in the twentieth century. In 1907 Salomon Reinach published an article in which he argues that, though the event itself is doubtless authentic, previous interpretations had been erroneous. Actually, he contended, what Thamus and his passengers heard from Paxos was a ritual lament from members of an Adonis cult, who were bewailing their dead god under his Syrian name Thammuz. The Egyptian pilot, naturally enough, mistook the apostrophe of their lament for an address to him? self, and the words Ild^ 6 ueyas, applied to Thammuz, for a naming of the Arcadian deity. I do not propose to restate Reinach's elaborate and not completely satisfying case, which may be found in Volume xxxi of the Bulletin de correspondance helUnique. The subject was further examined in Der Tod des grossen Pan, by Gustav A. Gerhard, a Heidelberg monograph published in 1915. As late as 1958 Hermann Haakh carefully reexamined Plutarch's story, with precise sugges? tions concerning the topographical aspects of the occasion. Although he could not reach a conclusive overall interpretation, Dr. Haakh empha? sized the credibility of the event and its undying interest: "Seitdem haben durch die Jahrhunderte hindurch die Versuche nicht aufgehort, eine