Pan

Pan raised his pipe of seven reeds and claimed that he could play more skilfully than Apollo on the lyre. The challenge was accepted, and Tmolus, the mountain god, was appointed judge. He sat on his hill and cleared the trees from his ears so that he could hear the contest. He wore an oak garland, with acorns hanging around his brow.

Pan played his reed pipe and sang in a rough, rustic style. Midas, king of Phrygia, was present and enjoyed the performance. Apollo then played his lyre. The judges declared Apollo the winner. Midas alone objected to the decision. He preferred the uncouth sound of Pan's pipe to the refined music of Apollo's lyre. Apollo was angered by what he regarded as the king's foolish judgement. He changed Midas's human ears into the long, hairy, moving ears of an ass, while leaving the rest of his body unchanged.

Midas was horrified by his disfigurement. He hid the ears beneath a cap, described in one passage as purple, so that his subjects would not see them. His barber discovered the truth. Midas gave him gifts and ordered him never to reveal the secret. The barber could neither speak of it openly nor keep it to himself. He dug a hole in the ground, bent over it, and whispered that his master had ass's ears. He then covered the hole again and left, having hidden the words in the earth.

Dryope gave birth to Pan, the son of Hermes. The child had horns, a beard, a crooked nose, pointed ears, the tail of a goat, and goat legs. His appearance frightened his mother. She fled from him in dismay, leaving Hermes to take charge of the child.

Hermes picked up the strange infant. He wrapped Pan in a hare skin and carried him in his arms to Olympus. There he brought the child before the gods so that they could see him. Pan’s goat-like form amused the immortals. His merry behaviour also pleased them, and they welcomed him with laughter and delight. Dionysus took particular pleasure in the unexpected visitor.

The gods gave the child the name Pan because he had delighted them all. The account then connects him with the wild country of Arcadia, where his worship began. It does not provide a single, consistent account of his age or parentage. Some versions made Pan much older and called him a foster-brother of Zeus. The account of his birth to Dryope instead made him the son of Hermes. These versions differ in their treatment of Pan’s origins, while the account involving Dryope describes his birth and his reception among the gods.

Pan pressed his advances on Echo, but Echo rejected him. She had already become known for repeating the words spoken by others. Her voice did not answer in the manner of an ordinary speaker. It repeated what another person had said, and this remained the way in which she communicated. Pan responded to her refusal with anger. He drove a group of shepherds into a frenzy and sent them against her.

The shepherds attacked Echo and tore her to pieces. Their violence destroyed her living body. They dismembered her until no part of her physical form remained as a whole. The attack ended Echo’s life as a bodily being, and her body then disappeared. The shepherds did not leave her body behind after they had torn it apart.

Only Echo’s voice remained. It continued to repeat the words spoken by other people, as it had done before the attack. Echo no longer possessed a living body, and she no longer spoke for herself, but her voice survived in its former manner of speech. Her fate followed Pan’s anger after she rejected him. The shepherds carried out the attack in their frenzy, and Echo’s voice endured after her dismemberment.

Pan gave a terrifying battle cry as the gods fought the Giants. His voice was frightful and deeply discordant. The sudden sound startled the enemy, who had not expected such a noise from the gods’ forces. The Giants fled from the battlefield, and the Olympians gained the advantage over them.

Pan’s cry belonged to the same group of frightening sounds associated with him elsewhere. Sudden and unaccountable noises in lonely places were attributed to Pan because of his alarming voice. In this battle, that voice became a weapon. Its blast disturbed the Giants and helped the Olympians overcome them.

Other accounts explain the Giants’ defeat through different sounds. One story tells how Zeus summoned the gods to war, and Dionysus, Hephaestus, the Satyrs, and the Sileni arrived riding donkeys. When the animals came near the enemy, they were terrified and brayed. The Giants had never heard such noises. They hastily fled and were defeated. A similar story assigns the deed to Triton. After hollowing out the shell trumpet he had invented, Triton carried it into battle and blew strange sounds through it. The Giants feared that the gods had brought some wild beast against them, so they took flight and fell into the power of their enemies.