HYMN TO PAN

Subject and style.The hymn to Pan, with its keen appreciation of Nature and its sympathy with the free open-air life of the field and mountain, has a freshness and charm peculiarly attractive to a modern reader. The poem, though a hymn in form, is an idyll in spirita picture, or rather a series of pictures, with landscapes of snowy peaks and rocky ways, and meadows where the crocus and fragrant hyacinth are intermingled with the grass. In all the scenes Pan is the central figure, alone, or with his attendant nymphs: Pan the hunter, roaming over the snowy hills, or among the thick bushes, or along the gentle streams; Pan the musician, making sweet melody beside the dark fountain in the dusk, or joining in the dance of Oread nymphs. Nowhere, perhaps, in Greek literature has the love of the country found clearer expression than in this hymn, which challenges comparison with the chorus to Pan in the Helena,⁸⁵ or with the seventh idyll of Theocritus. Eur. Itis assuredlyto quote a fine criticthe voice of no small poet which breathes through this lovely hymn.⁸⁶

Date of the hymn.It is to be regretted that so interesting a poem cannot be dated with any certainty. On one point, however, scholars are substantially agreedthat the hymn is one of the latest in the collection, and that it could hardly have been composed before the age of Pindar at the earliest. The evidence of mythology, if not conclusive, strongly supports this consensus of opinion. It is true that Pan is one of the oldest creations of Greek folklore, being (as Mannhardt has shewn) the representative in Greece of the numerous wood-spirits who appear in a semi-caprine form.⁸⁷ But the old Arcadian woodspirit and shepherd-god had no place in the higher mythology of Homer and Hesiod, and scarcely won any recognition in literature before the Persian wars. Until that period he was probably ignored by cultivated Greeks (outside Arcadia), and hence Herodotus was led to infer that Pan was one of the most recent of Hellenic deities (ii. 145). In Pindar he is a mere attendant of the Μεγάλη Μήτηρ ( Pyth.iii. 77, fr. 6. 1 Ματρὸς μεγάλας ὀπαδέ). The first reference to the god is quoted from Epimenides, who called Pan and Arcas the twin-sons of Zeus and Callisto (schol. on Theocr. i. 3, schol. on Rhes. 36). It is difficult to believe that a hymn which shews so developed a conception of Pan's nature and of his place in the Greek mythological system could have been the product of the seventh or early sixth century, in which all other literature passes over the god in silence. Pan is equally neglected in Greek art until the beginning of the fifth century (Roscher Lex. 1407).

On the other hand, the hymn does not appear to be Alexandrine, as various critics have suggested.⁸⁸ Forms such as τίση (2), τόθι (25), Ἑρμείην (28), ὤν (32), χέρα (40) are instanced by Gemoll as late; they are of course foreign to the oldest epic, but there is little or nothing in the language which cannot be paralleled in the genuinely ancient hymns. Usages such as νύμφη for daughter (34), τιθήνη mother (38), are also unknown in Homer; but there is no reason to see in them a mark of Alexandrine affectation. There are a large number of ἅπαξ λεγόμενα (φιλόκροτος 2, χοροήθης 3, ἀγλαέθειρος, ἀνακέκλομαι 5, αὐχμήεις 6, μηλοσκόπος 11, λιγύμολπος 19, τερατωπός 36); all these, however, are simple and straightforward, and may well belong to an early stage of the language. The hymn reads like the product of a good period (perhaps the fifth century), and Ludwich is probably correct in refusing to see any traces of Alexandrine workmanship.

Place of composition.The hymn treats of an Arcadian god, and mentions his birth on Cyllene; but the cult of Pan became the common property of the Greeks from the beginning of the fifth century, or a little earlier, so that there is no internal evidence of locality. Baumeister and Wilamowitz (aus Kydathen p. 224) suggest an Athenian origin; all that can be said in favour of this theory is the fact that Pan became a favourite at Athens after the battle of Marathon, when his cult, if known before to the Athenians, was first officially organised.⁸⁹

The further suggestion of Baumeister, that the hymn served as a proem to Homeric recitations at the Panathenaea, is mere guess-work. It may be sufficient to remark that, if the hymn is Athenian, it could not have been composed at a time when the memory of the Persian defeat was fresh. There is no mention of the familiar part which the god played in the war, or of the panic which he caused at Marathon. His character in the hymn is entirely pacific; he is a hunter, but no warrior.⁹⁰

Integrity of the hymn.The unity of the poem is sufficiently obvious, although the motif does not lie in a single episode, as in the hymns to Demeter, to the Delian and Pythian Apollo, and to Aphrodite (see II. App. p. 311); and there is no question of interpolated lines. An attempt to disintegrate the hymn was made by Groddeck, who divided it into two parts, the first (1-27) relating to Pan and the Nymphs, the second (28-47) describing the birth of the god. Groddeck thought that the narrative languished in the latter half; to this Ilgen rightly replied that the comparative failure of interest is due to the subject, not to a different composer. Further, Groddeck argued that the birth of Pan should have been described at the beginning; he did not realise that the birth was the subject of the nymph's song, and that the Homeric hymns afford two exact parallels to the order of the narrative. In h. Herm. 59 Hermes sings of his own birth, and in h. Art. (xxvii) an account of Artemis at the chase is followed by a mention of the song describing the birth of Apollo and Artemis, while the goddess herself, like Pan, directs the chorus.

Peppmller divides the hymn into nomic parts: ἀρχά (1-7), κατατροπά (8-26), ὀμφαλός (27-47), ἐπίλογος (48-49).

a)mfi/: cf. on vii. 1. *(ermei/ao fi/lon *go/non: the genealogies vary; Roscher (die Sagen etc.) gives a complete list. For Hermes as the father cf. Herod.ii. 145, Lucian dial. deor. 22, Anth. Plan. iv. 229 and elsewhere. Hermes and Pan were both shepherdgods (νόμιοι) in Arcadia, and were both worshipped on Cyllene, so that their connexion, no doubt, originated in Arcadia.