Panes

Pan had children, or copies, or both. The Panes were a multiplied version of the goat-god — an entire race of goat-legged, horned, shaggy nature spirits who populated the wild places of Greece. Where Pan was singular and specific, the Panes were generic and everywhere.

They lived in mountain caves, forest clearings, and rocky gorges where goats grazed. They chased nymphs, played reed pipes badly, frightened travellers, and caused the sudden, inexplicable terror that seized people in lonely places — panic, named directly after their progenitor. A hiker who felt sudden dread on an empty hillside was experiencing the presence of Panes.

Nonnus of Panopolis, in his Dionysiaca, gave the Panes significant roles in Dionysus's campaign against India. They served as irregular troops — wild, undisciplined, but fierce in close combat. Their appearance alone caused enemy soldiers to break ranks. An army of goat-men charging from a treeline was psychologically devastating regardless of tactical competence.

In art, Panes were indistinguishable from satyrs by the Roman period. The originally distinct Greek traditions — Pan-types with goat legs and satyrs with horse tails — merged into a single category of rustic nature spirit. Pan himself became merely the largest and oldest of the Panes rather than a unique god.

They represented the wildness that civilization could never fully displace. Fields could be ploughed and cities built, but the mountains remained theirs, and the feeling of being watched in empty country never went away.