Bird Gods in Ancient Europe 



own melancholy by music, is also intent on 

 improving his people by what he sings. 



We only know Pan as the god of shepherds 

 and rustic Arcadians rebellious to the military 

 tyranny of the Laconians, a deity of the earlier 

 folk of Greece who retired before the Dorian 

 Greeks, conquerors of the Peloponnesus, into 

 their forests and hills. There is no reason to 

 believe that Pan, if he was portrayed by them, 

 was made to look like the shaggy goat god 

 we find him in classic art. That is but a Greek 

 way of expressing the rudeness of his effigies 

 and the clumsy barbarism of his devotees. 

 The Greek exercised his wit on the older 

 populace by lampooning their god. It was 

 not till after Marathon was fought that the 

 Athenians admitted Pan to a place among the 

 minor deities and dedicated a temple to him 

 on the acropolis. Yet he is a god who has 

 given his name, as just remarked, to several 

 great peoples of the past — the Phoenicians, 

 Paiones and Pannonians, the Venedae of the 

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