The gate of the year

Bronze statuette of the Roman age (II century A.D.) representing the god Pan, now in the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, USA. The deity is represented with a bearded face and with ears and horns of a goat. The lower limbs are in the shape of goat legs. Pan was a god associated with pasturage and worshiped by shepherds, and his name derives, according to some scholars, from an Indo-European root signifying “shepherd” (Borgeaud 2005). The statuette shows Pan with his two typical attributes: a crooked staff, utilized by the shepherds, and the flute or syringe, which takes his name from the god (Pan flute). Pan has his origins in Arcadia, a remote and mountainous region, covered with woodlands and pastures, where he was a major deity. His relationship with the Underworld, characteristic of many divine figures, is expressed by his linkage with Hermes, the god who guided the spirits of the dead, who in some traditions is regarded as Pan’s father. The space inhabited by Pan is that of the wilderness, which is the background to the activities of sheep farming and hunting, and is contrasted with the space occupied by settlements and cultivation. The pastoral space has the characteristics of being on the border between the cultivated fields and the woodlands and mountains, a region into which the wild animals enter in contact with the domesticated ones. The shepherds were regarded as crude and uneducated people, not only in opposition to the inhabitants of the cities, but also in relation with the farmers. Nevertheless, they were not qualified as “wild” (agrioi), but rather they acted as transition figures between the “civilized” world and the bewildering and threatening realm of nature (Georgoudi 1981). The god “with his goat’s feet and two horns, a lover of merry noise” (Homeric Hymn to Pan, v. 2), wanders among woods and valleys, dancing with the Nymphs and delighting with music and chants. God who could also be turbulent and capricious, Pan was regarded as the primary cause of the panic fear, a form of collective dread that could seize the enemy warriors (Borgeaud 1981). Death, sensuality and folly seems to intertwine in this figure, who seems to concentrate in himself a series of opposing couples: the human and the animal, the domestic (association with herding and animal breeding) and the wild (association with the forest animals), harmony (relationship with fertility and reproduction) and disorder (licentiousness and relentless vital energy).

[Source: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~yaleart/objects/figurine-of-pan/]




Human-Animal Transformation

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Bronze statuette of the Roman age (II century A.D.) representing the god Pan, now in the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, USA. The deity is represented with a bearded face and with ears and horns of a goat. The lower limbs are in the shape of goat legs. Pan was a god associated with pasturage and worshiped by shepherds, and his name derives, according to some scholars, from an Indo-European root signifying “shepherd” (Borgeaud 2005). The statuette shows Pan with his two typical attributes: a crooked staff, utilized by the shepherds, and the flute or syringe, which takes his name from the god (Pan flute). Pan has his origins in Arcadia, a remote and mountainous region, covered with woodlands and pastures, where he was a major deity. His relationship with the Underworld, characteristic of many divine figures, is expressed by his linkage with Hermes, the god who guided the spirits of the dead, who in some traditions is regarded as Pan’s father. The space inhabited by Pan is that of the wilderness, which is the background to the activities of sheep farming and hunting, and is contrasted with the space occupied by settlements and cultivation. The pastoral space has the characteristics of being on the border between the cultivated fields and the woodlands and mountains, a region into which the wild animals enter in contact with the domesticated ones. The shepherds were regarded as crude and uneducated people, not only in opposition to the inhabitants of the cities, but also in relation with the farmers. Nevertheless, they were not qualified as “wild” (agrioi), but rather they acted as transition figures between the “civilized” world and the bewildering and threatening realm of nature (Georgoudi 1981). The god “with his goat’s feet and two horns, a lover of merry noise” (Homeric Hymn to Pan, v. 2), wanders among woods and valleys, dancing with the Nymphs and delighting with music and chants. God who could also be turbulent and capricious, Pan was regarded as the primary cause of the panic fear, a form of collective dread that could seize the enemy warriors (Borgeaud 1981). Death, sensuality and folly seems to intertwine in this figure, who seems to concentrate in himself a series of opposing couples: the human and the animal, the domestic (association with herding and animal breeding) and the wild (association with the forest animals), harmony (relationship with fertility and reproduction) and disorder (licentiousness and relentless vital energy). [Source: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~yaleart/objects/figurine-of-pan/]