Greek Gods and Heroes

Pan was so ugly at birth that his mother, one of these nymphs, ran away from him in terror—he had little horns, a little beard, the legs, hooves, and tail of a goat. Hermes, his father, took him up to Olympus for Zeus and the other gods to laugh at.

Much the same thing happened when he fell in love with the nymph Syrinx: she escaped from him by changing into a reed. Unable to tell which she was among all the thousands of other reeds growing beside the river, he took a stick and angrily hit at them. Then, feeling ashamed of himself, he collected the broken reeds, cut them in different lengths with a flint knife, bored holes in their sides, and tied them in a neat row—to form a new musical instrument, called the Pan Pipe.

Pan loved to sleep every afternoon in a cave or forest grove and, if a passing stranger woke him by mistake, let out such a horrible yell that the stranger’s hair bristled, like a hedgehog, in what is still called ‘Panic’ fear

thunderbolts, finally hurling an enormous rock on top of him. The rock is now Mount Etna in Sicily. From time to time, Typhon’s fiery breath rushes