Panes

Somewhere in the rock-shadowed highlands of Arcadia, a goat bell clangs against stone, and something answers from higher up the slope. Not a shepherd. Not a bird. Something with hooves that move too quickly over terrain no man would attempt at a walk, let alone a run. The Panes lived in the space between the tame and the wild, the ridge where the pasture ended and the cliff face began. They were spirits of that border country, and they did not keep still.

The Panes were rustic nature spirits of the Greek mountains, goat-legged daimones who haunted highland pastures and the rocky crags above them. They took their name and their nature from Pan, the great god of shepherds, flocks, and the untamed wilds of Arcadia. Whether they were his sons, his echoes, or simply pieces of him scattered across every hillside where goats grazed and wind moved through scrub pine is a question the ancient sources never quite settle. The geographer Strabo listed them alongside Satyrs, Corybantes, and Cabeiri as members of the rowdy family of rustic spirits that populated Greek wild places. Walter Burkert noted they appeared in depictions of wild landscapes and in the retinue of Dionysos, sometimes as a great Pan alongside smaller Panes, sometimes simply as a multiplied swarm. The playwright Aeschylus reportedly distinguished between at least two Pans of different parentage. The concept was fluid. Pan could be one, or Pan could be many.

Their bodies were a rough splice of man and animal. Human torsos sat above the shaggy legs and cloven hooves of goats. Their heads, in some accounts, were fully goat: horned, bearded, snub-nosed, with pointed ears that swivelled toward sound like an animal’s. The late poet Nonnus of Panopolis, writing in the fifth century AD, described them in his sprawling epic the Dionysiaca as having human form with shaggy goat heads and horns. He named twelve of them, each sired by the elder Pan, each with a name that told something about him: Kelaineus was dark-skinned, Argennos was pale, Aigikoros guzzled goat’s milk straight from the udder, and Eugeneios had a beard so thick Nonnus compared it to a meadow. Others bore names like Phobos (Fear), Daphoineus (Blood-Red), Omester (Raw-Eater), and Xanthos (Blond). They were not interchangeable decorations. Each one carried a name that smelled like the animal it came from.

Beyond this core twelve, two additional Panes stood apart. Agreus and Nomios were sons not of Pan but of Hermes, each by a different nymph. Agreus, whose name meant “Hunter,” was born of the highland prophetess Sose and inherited her gift for divination alongside his skill in the chase. Nomios, “the Shepherd,” was son of an Arcadian nymph named Penelope (not the wife of Odysseus, though later writers happily confused them), and he was the one who played the shepherd’s pipes and chased nymphs through the undergrowth. The stories most people associate with Pan, the lechery and the music, may actually belong to Nomios. These two represented something like the split personality of the god himself: the wise seer and the lustful beast, prophecy and appetite housed under the same set of horns.

A flock moves across a stony highland meadow at midday, the air thick with the smell of thyme and warm dung. One of the Panes sits on a boulder above, legs folded beneath him, watching. The sheep do not startle. They know the sound of his hooves on the rock, the low grunt he makes when a ewe strays too close to the drop. He is part of the furniture of their world, as natural as the wind that carries the thin cry of his reed pipe down the valley.

But the Panes were not only herdsmen. When Rheia summoned the rustic spirits to fill out the army of Dionysos for his legendary war against the Indians, the twelve came down from their self-vaulted caves armed and ready. Nonnus gave them a battlefield that reads like a fever dream. One Pan gripped an enemy by the throat and tore through his armour with his hooves. Another impaled a man on the curved points of his horns and flung him spinning through the air like a tumbler. A third swung a sickle and reaped soldiers the way a farmer reaps wheat, then poured a blood-libation to Dionysos from the curved blade. They danced on the dust of untrodden precipices and roamed craggy ravines where even birds would not fly. When Dionysos was driven into the sea by the hostile king Lycurgus, the Panes wandered the mountains searching for him, restless and grieving. They were loyal in the way animals are loyal, which is to say entirely.

The power of the Panes flowed from their connection to the wild itself. They could induce panic, that sudden, causeless terror that overtakes a person alone in a remote place. The word comes directly from Pan, and the Panes carried the same charge. They moved through terrain that would break a human ankle, nimble and silent on hooves designed for rock. They fought with horns, hooves, and whatever crude weapons came to hand. They had the endurance of goats and the ferocity of things that live far from law.

Their limitations were the limitations of their nature. They were bound to the highland, to the pasture and the cave. They did not belong in cities or temples. They had no great sanctuaries, only rock shelters and wild shrines shared with nymphs. In Philostratus’s account, when Dionysos ordered the Panes to storm a hill held by sages in India, they were thunderstruck and fell from the rock face, leaving the impressions of cloven hooves, beards, and tumbling bodies pressed into the stone. Their strength was ferocious but not inexhaustible. Against wisdom or divine power beyond their own rough magic, they could be knocked flat. They were fighters, not strategists. They were the shock troops of a drunken god’s war, and they fought like it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the Panes in Greek mythology?

The Panes are rustic nature spirits of the Greek mountains, goat-legged daimones who served as multiplied aspects or offspring of the god Pan. They haunted the highland pastures and rocky crags of Arcadia, guarding shepherds and their flocks. They also fought as fierce warriors in the army of Dionysos.

Who is the father of the Panes?

The elder god Pan is the father of the twelve named Panes described by the poet Nonnus of Panopolis in his epic the Dionysiaca. Two additional Panes, Agreus and Nomios, are sons of Hermes rather than Pan, each born of a different nymph. Whether the Panes are Pan’s literal sons, his echoes, or scattered pieces of him across every Arcadian hillside is a question the ancient sources never quite settle.

What did the Panes look like?

The Panes had human torsos set above the shaggy legs and cloven hooves of goats. In some accounts their heads were fully goat-like: horned, bearded, snub-nosed, with pointed ears that swivelled toward sound. Nonnus described them as having human form with shaggy goat heads and horns.

What role did the Panes play in the war of Dionysos against the Indians?

The Panes joined Dionysos as fierce warriors during his mythic campaign against the Indians, summoned by Rheia to fill out his army. According to Nonnus, they fought with horns, hooves, and crude weapons, tearing through armour, impaling enemies on their horns, and reaping soldiers with sickles. When Dionysos was driven into the sea by the hostile king Lycurgus, the Panes wandered the mountains searching for him.

What powers and weaknesses did the Panes have?

The Panes could induce panic, the sudden causeless terror that overtakes a person alone in a remote place, and the word itself derives from Pan. They moved nimbly and silently over rock that would break a human ankle, fought with the ferocity of wild animals, and had the endurance of goats. Their weaknesses were the limits of their nature: they were bound to the highland and the cave, had no great sanctuaries, and could be knocked flat by wisdom or divine power beyond their own rough magic, as when they were thunderstruck and fell from a rock face in India.

Related Entries

Pan, Aegipan, Satyr, Satyrus, Silenus, Sileni, Dionysus, Maenad, Hermes, Rhea, Cabeiri, Oread, Centaur, Faun, Faunus