Origin of the creature
Half man, half goat, god of wild groves, shepherds and flocks. Born in Arcadia by Hermes and the Dryad, Pan was a precocious child whose goat legs and horned head delighted the gods but frightened mortals. The nymphs weren't too happy with his appearance either, and as much as Pan loved them, they almost never loved him back. One of them, Syrinx, chose to turn into a swamp reed in order to escape the harassment of Pan. Pan cut the reeds and connected them side by side in descending order, creating the very first set of pipes. Since then, he has rarely been seen without a tool.
Pan's origins are ambiguous, but according to most sources, he was the son of Hermes and Dryad, be it Dryopa (daughter of the Arcadian hero Dryops) or Penelope of Mantinea. Perhaps due to a mistake in the confusion of names, even early writers sometimes make him the son of Odysseus's wife, usually keeping Hermes as father, but sometimes changing him to Apollo. According to the strangest of these stories, Pan did not have a divine parent at all, and that he was the product of Penelope's romance with all of her 108 fans!
Role in mythology
Pan was born as a mature child in Arcadia; his distinct appearance (half goat, half human) delighted the hearts of all gods, so they named him “Pan” (meaning “all”). In addition, Pan's name is the stem from which the word panic ultimately derives.
Like his father Hermes, Pan appears to have been a precocious child. "From birth," sings the poet from the "Homeric hymn to Pan", "he was" marvelous in appearance, with goat legs and two horns, a noisy, laughing child. However, this feeling was not shared by his nanny, who ran away and left Pan to that the very moment I saw his rough goat face and thick beard.
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Pan was the inventor of the panpipe or syrinx musical instrument, which he learned to play so well that he even challenged Apollo himself to a musical competition; no wonder he lost.
He became a great musician and everyone admired his playing. However, he could not compete with Apollo, once he decided to challenge the Olympian, he almost unanimously lost the music competition. Midas, king of Phrygia, was the only one who gave victory to Pan. Apollo thought this vote required a suitable gift, so he rewarded Midas with a pair of donkey ears.
Pan and his nymphs
Pan was a depraved God, so Syrinx was not the only nymph he tried to pursue. However, while he was not picky about women, he was just too weird and unattractive to be loved.
Peetis was another nymph who preferred to transform into a plant (in her case, a pine) rather than be the object of Pan's desire. And Echo was too carried away by the narcissist to notice the approach of the shepherd's God.
However, he managed to win the heart of one nymph: Selena, the moon goddess, whom he tricked into wrapping himself in sheep's clothing and luring her into the forest as she rode her silver chariot through the night.
Death of Pan
When the Egyptian sailor Tamus sailed along the west coast of Greece in the early years of the Christian era, he heard a divine voice claiming that "the great god Pan is dead." If this is true, then Pan will become one of the few Greek gods, if not the only one, who actually died.