Note 274 — ARRIAN ON COURSING.
William Dansey translation
De Augment. Scient. L. ii.
Virg. Eclog. L. ii. 33.
Πανός. “Officium Panis nullâ alia re,” says Lord Bacon, “tam ad vivum proponi atque explicari potuerit, quàm quòd Deus Venatorum est,” &c. He was the god of the shepherds as well as hunters, the leader of the Nymphs as Apollo was of the Muses, the patron of rural life, and president of the mountains. Happy the man, exclaims the poet of the Georgics in his eulogy of country life, who numbers the rustic deities, and Pan amongst the rest, in the catalogue of his acquaintance:
Virg. Georg. L. ii. 494.
deos qui novit agrestes, Panaque, Sylvanumque senem, Nymphasque sorores!
The most graphic description of the goatish god I have any where seen is in the 13th book of Silius Italicus:
pendenti similis Pan semper, et uno Vix ulla inscribens terræ vestigia cornu, &c. &c.
But as this has been cited at length by Spence in his Polymetis, a book of easy reference, I decline introducing it here—wishing, as much as possible, to present my readers with passages omitted by this celebrated scholar. Let Lucian’s more brief delineation be substituted: Deorum Concilium.ὁ μὲν κέρατα ἔχων, καὶ ὅσον ἐξ ἡμισείας ἐς τὸ κάτω αἰγὶ ἐοικὼς, καὶ γένειον βαθὺ καθειμένος, ὀλίγον τράγου διαφέρων ἐστίν.