T G G P

H M &R

M M. L
 186
The Great God Pan by Mark M. Lowenthal © 2012
 © Text copyright Mark M. Lowenthal, 2012

Cover Painting: Nymphs and Satyrs (1873) by William-

Adolphe Bourguereau (1825-1905). The painting is
currently at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown,
Massachusetts.
Dedication

For my Father and Grandfather,

who never knew

And for Cynthia,

who has always believed

 Invocation

“Happy is he who knows the country divinities

“Pan and old Silvanus and the sister Nymphs.”

-- Virgil, Georgics

“The immortal

“Gods alone have neither age nor death!”

-- Sophocles,
Oedipus at Colonus
 Prologue
The end of the classical age is said to date from an
event that occurred during the reign of the Emperor
Tiberius, who ruled in the years 14-37. There arrived in
Rome an Egyptian sailor named Thamuz. He recounted how
his ship had been becalmed off the coast of Greece, where a
voice from the shore called out to him three times,
instructing him to pass on the message, “Great Pan is
dead.” This he did.
This story is recounted by Plutarch. Of all the Graeco-
Roman gods and goddesses, only Pan’s death was
announced, thus marking the transition from the classical to
the modern era.
 1.
I feel restless this morning, achy and cranky. The
morning’s mantle of mist, which used to have a refreshing
effect after an arduous evening of ardor, no longer works its
magic. It only chills me. The World grows old – and
suddenly so do I.
It seems so strange, after having been cloaked so
long in immortality, suddenly to prepare for the end, even
to look forward to it in some ways. There are preparations
that still have to be made. I will not pass away quietly as
have all the others, yielding to new deities in the old sacred
places. I will not! I am Pan!
How very strange though, to have outlived one’s
time. And how funny, how wickedly funny that I am the
one who is left. I am! Not wise Athene, or strong Ares, or
my enemy Apollo. Not even Great Zeus. No, none of them
is left. Olympos now is as barren and empty as this cave I
dwell in, here in Epiros, so far from my home. And only I
am left. Only me, the god half-man and half-goat, only me.
Curses on this damp cave. Curses on my fate,
dooming me to live out my days so far from my native
Arkadia. Ah, but I must, I must live here, on the cliffs, at
the edge of the forest, here where I can see the narrow
channel between my cave and the island of Paxos.
I’m hungry. At least my appetite has not failed me
yet. That – and one other pleasure at least! Did I finish the
last of the bread and honey? Hmph! These jars are
empty. And pine nuts? Only a few. I hope the boy comes
today. And I hope he remembers to bring some food – my
devotions. No, he will not forget. He always remembers
the duties owed a god, even a fading one. A roast shank of
lamb might be nice, or a fresh killed chicken. And honey.
And more wine!
 Oh, the irony! I, who had a wealth of offerings and
passed them out with abandon at revels. Even now I resent
the bacchanal, as the new masters of the world call it.
Bacchanal indeed! Bacchus, Dionysos – what difference?
That fat tub Dionysos never led a revel in his life. Two cups
of his own wine and he was reeling. Worse yet, one woman
and he was spent for the night. I could drink oceans and
love dozens, and just be starting.
But look at me now, dependent on the meager
devotion of one boy for my sustenance – no, my
subsistence. Hah! But his name alone makes it
worthwhile. Apollodorus – “the gift of Apollo!” Hah!
When he first told me his name I cringed.
Apollodorus! A namesake of my worst enemy. And then I
laughed. I laughed that deep, hard, bellowing laugh of
mine that makes my sides ache. I laughed in wicked, final
triumph.
“Why do you laugh?” the boy asked.
“Because you are Apollodorus – the gift of Apollo.”
How incredibly delicious. The first few times the boy
came, before I knew his name, I thanked the gods for his
existence. “The gods?” I suddenly asked, catching myself.
“Which gods? Who are left but me?” But now I know. My
benefactor is handsome Apollo. How his gorgeous features
would fall into a disdainful scowl – as if he had put his
divine feet in some still-warm droppings from one of his
own sacred cattle – if he knew that his “gift” now serves
me.
Hah! Apollo serves me, serves Pan. The Great God
Pan, the All-powerful Pan, the Almighty Pan.
The lonely Pan.
The boy has come – and gone. His faithfulness
warms me, as do his gifts. Honey, wine, some cheese, and
figs, lovely figs. He sat here all day, nibbling at the food.
He is polite, this boy. He eats just enough to make me feel
the generous host, yet no so much as to deplete my stores.
I do not mind his eating. It is the only chance I have to sup
with someone.
It is evening, no – nightfall. I must have dozed after
the boy left in the late afternoon. Strange, how in this time
preparing for death I so often doze unwittingly, as if death
was already stealing over me, bit by bit.
A strong breeze is coming in off the sea, chasing the
thin clouds before it. I can see the stars now, clearly
overhead. Ah, there is the Archer, my son Crotus by
Eupheme, the nurse of the Muses. Only they do not call
him Crotus now. The new Masters of the World call him
Sagittarius. And now he is gone. How very sad to outlive a
child. And I have outlived all of mine.
And there is the moon, the beauteous full moon, as
pretty as Selene herself when we were lovers. Selene – the
moon incarnate, drawn to me by a fine fleece behind which
I hid. Tricked? Perhaps, but an enthusiastic lover
nonetheless. Why her tonight? Why now? So many nights
has the moon shone on me since I realized that only I was
left. Why is the memory of Selene the one that tortures me
tonight?
Quickly, I must see that my food is safely put away.
Ah, the boy did that before he left. The moonlight is bright
tonight before the entry to my cave. My pulse quickens as I
step into the light, bathe myself in it, allow Selene to wrap
her limbs about me once more.
I move up the rocky slopes of the hill in which my
cave lies. Small stones dislodge and fall away from my
hooves as I climb. Aside from these comforting noises, all
is quiet. Even the wind has died away, like a willing
conspirator who has revealed this woman to me and then
tastefully departs.
 The moonlight throws deep shadows on the rocky
flank, but I scamper and clamber up assuredly. I am at the
summit now, my hairy chest heaving with exertion and
anticipation. Sweat runs down my flanks, cold in the night
air. Only a huge boulder stands higher than me on this hill.
I lean against it, resting, my damp skin against the cold
stone.
But the moonglow pours down on me, white and pure,
light without warmth. The curly hair on my chest becomes
a web of shadows as the moonlight entangles in it, just as
Selene once ran her fingers through it, her skin pure white
and a bit cool, tingling cold against my warmth.
“Selene!” My voice brays out across the hills, the
forests, the glens. A thousand unseen birds and animals
stir in fright at the sound. And how many mortals jump as
well, recognizing the voice of the Great Cavorter? Or do
they recognize it at all? Am I already forgotten? Is my
voice merely heard as just another one of those nameless
forest terrors of the night? Is that what I have become?
“Selene!” Selene, I am lonely. My every gesture
evokes a world that is gone. Everything. All that remains
are cruel reminders of what once was. Even you are gone.
The moon shines bright tonight and yet you are not there.
Would any fleece entice you to me tonight? Even my own
warm wooliness? No. For you, too, are gone.
What do mortals see when they look up at the moon
now? What do they think of? Do they see how cold, how
empty and barren the moon is now that you are gone? Do
they realize what they have lost?
I do, Selene. Without you the moonlight is as empty
as my arms. I am alone and lonely, a fleeting shadow in
the moonlight.
I sit in the bitter light for a while longer, quietly now,
my love song to beautiful Selene ended. I can bear no
more. Slowly, I retrace my steps down to my cave, all of
the eagerness that led me up to this moon-drenched
summit now dissipated, like a lover at a missed
rendezvous. Back to my cave, back to my refuge from this
sadness in dark and in sleep.
 2.
It’s been several days since the boy has come to see
me. Not that my supplies are low, just my spirits. I asked
him, time before last, how he found me, how he knew
about me.
“My mother,” he says. “She told me that she saw you
moving through the woods one night, and that I must find
you and do the honors owed to a god.”
“Your mother?” I ask back. “And did she not fear me
when she saw me?”
“Oh, no,” the boy protests. “She only said that she
was surprised to see you here in Epiros, rather than in
Arkadia. She grew up there. She remembered you from
her maiden days.”
Ha! Her maiden days! Did she know me then? Was
she one of those free-spirited Arkadians who joined me
willingly in the woods on those nights, chasing and being
chased but not chaste, fleeing only to be caught? If so, her
days as a maiden ended there and then. Did we revel in
the deep Arkadian woods, she and I? Were we lovers?
“What is your mother’s name?” I ask.
“Hermione.”
I smile politely, fighting down a shrug. It strikes no
chord of memory, but should it? After so many lovers, how
many can I remember individually? All of them! Each and
every one of them! Perhaps not all by name, yet each one
remains indelibly engraved in my memory. The varied scent
of each one’s flesh, the texture of each one’s skin, their
hair. Perhaps we were lovers, this Hermione and I. Perhaps
not. No matter. She is an Arkadian, and it is her son,
Apollodorus, who looks after me now.
The boy must be back soon. Soon a ship will be
loaded in the city that Alexandros built in Egypt. The boy
must be ready then to do me one last devotion. Will he do
it? Yes – he will. He must! Ah, but how do I know? How
can I be sure that he will leave Epiros as I command? I
know – no – I have faith that he will perform this last
devotion – faith in the gift of Apollo. Ha! the irony again. I,
in whom so few still have faith, have faith myself in the boy.
He must not fail me.
And we must talk about this soon – for the ship will
be sailing. . .
How very satisfactory to have foreknowledge, even in
just the little things. Not that we had much – or even used
what little we had. Had we done so, would we have
perceived our own end? I doubt it. We had no reason to
suspect it. Even now, as I consciously ponder it, await it, it
remains unclear to me. It is like looking across a landscape
where the features dull and grow hazy as they recede, and
are ultimately lost in the impenetrable light grey fog at the
end.
Ah, fog. How I loved passionate revelry on a cool
foggy night. The marvelous feeling of damp skin slippery
against your own, cool against your own dual passion and
warmth. Like a soft grey blanket, yet exuding damp,
making every motion a writhing, roiling pleasure, increasing
the tempo, the ease, and yet holding back with its slight
chill that dazzling heat that will consume you both. Ah, –
How easily I distract myself with my memories of
pleasures. Look at me. I look like Priapos – all phallos. Yet
not like that son of Dionysos at all. Where he was
misshapen, saved for that prized member, I am splendid.
Look how my horns curve up above my wonderful shaggy
head. Look how my thick curly brown hair rolls down the
back of my neck, ending in soft waves across my
shoulders. Look at my face, these dark, narrow eyes,
always on the verge of crinkling into gleeful laughter; my
nose, a bit long, and hooked, but mine. And my mouth,
thin-lipped and smiling, my pointy ears, my fine pointed
beard. My naked chest, blanketed in its own woolly fleece.
Look at these arms, strong enough to subdue the most
resistant maiden, yet ending in hands delicate enough to
play my beloved pipes. Look! Look at these wonderful
legs, covered in hair from my belly to the long fringes over
my hooves. I sometimes think some mortals pitied me for
my goat’s legs. I love them. How warm this shaggy hair
has kept me; how fleet and sure-footed have these hooves
made me. Could I have run down so many companions in
the woods on legs like the other gods had, like those of
mortals? No! I love my legs, my horns, my ears, my short
tail – they are what sets me apart, what makes me Pan!
And one other feature, my phallos, Pan’s phallos, even now
proudly erect amidst woolly thighs. Compare myself to
Priapos – indeed! That daemon of fertility was all phallos
and little else, and that twisted and ugly. I am unique and
beautiful, from horn tip to hoof tip to phallos foreskin in
between. I am Pan . . .
But I wonder, had we really had foreknowledge would
we have behaved any differently if we had truly suspected
our end? Would Hera have been less jealous, more tolerant
of Zeus’ constant infidelities? Would Apollo and I have
made peace? Had we suspected that our eternity was really
only millennia, would it have mattered? Somehow, I do not
think so. And it was good, for we had no concept of time,
no need to rush. Life was pleasurable because of that, an
existenceof endless opportunities. And now, even with the
end approaching, I can still appreciate the utter freedom we
enjoyed. What good would we have been as gods had we
suspected otherwise?
The boy says his mother’s name is Hermione. I
wonder if she knows my parents’ names. For some reason
my parentage was obscure to most mortals, even among
my most devout followers. But unlike those of uncertain
origins who at least know their mothers, in my case it was
my father that everyone agreed upon. Hermes was the
popular choice, and indeed it was he who sired me. Ah, but
the rumors of my mother! Penelope – Odysseus’ wife –
some said, with all the suitors in Ithaca as the father! Ha!
as if that symbol of marital virtue might ever spawn anyone
like me. Or Amalthea – the goat who nursed infant Zeus on
Mount Ida – this always amused me, as if to account for my
wonderful horns and hooves and legs and tail. The choices
were always vast and varied; Rhea, they said, or Ge. But, if
truth be known, it was none of these. My mother was
Kallisto, the daughter of King Lykaon of Arkadia, she who
bore Arkas to Great Zeus – even now the proper forms of
respect linger – thus accounting for the kindness always
shown me by the Arkadians. Kallisto was my mother, she
who was transformed into the Great Bear perennially in the
sky, after Artemis punished her for loving Zeus.
Poor Artemis, the virgin huntress. She punished my
mother for being unchaste with Zeus, never knowing that
Hermes had preceded his father as Kallisto’s lover. What
revenge I have wreaked against Artemis with my most
potent weapon! Even now my phallos stands ready to
relieve yet another maiden of the burden of her
maidenhood. Poor Artemis. I always thought that she
harped too much on her virginity. It made her mean
spirited. Then again, I never had much luck with her, or her
brother Apollo.
 3.
I feel I die in exile, lost in time and in place. Only I
am left, only me. Which other of the Olympian gods
survives me? None. It is a certainty. Everything around
me tells me this – the sun, the stars, the winds. They are
all different now that we are gone. They have lost meaning,
lost their connection to the World. And I am lost in my
place. I will die here in Epiros. Not in Arkadia, where I was
born and raised, where I lived out most of my span. Not
near Marathon or Parnassos where I joined the Hellenes in
battle against their enemies. No, here in unfamiliar Epiros;
here above the narrow channel that separates the mainland
from the island of Paxos; here where I know the Egyptian’s
boat must come, must be becalmed, must be to hear the
news of my death. What choice do I have? To die,
unnoticed, like the others? Or to live out my days here in
Epiros so that the Egyptian can hear my message?
Moirai! you three sister Fates; you daughters of Nyx,
the night; herself the daughter of Chaos! Where are you
three now? Klotho! Lachesis! Atropos! You are gone too,
are you not? Who then can I blame for my final days here
in Epiros? Gone you dread sisters, with your shrouds like
colorless wrinkled, flabby skin; only your claw-like talons
extending beyond the folds as you apportioned each
mortal’s fate. Ah, but who apportioned yours? Who spun
the thread of your life, Klotho? And who, Lachesis,
measured your share? Atropos, did you wince when your
thread was severed?
Even you three are gone, fled back to your mother
Night, back to Chaos. And I am condemned to live out my
days in this cave in Epiros. Better to die in some cool, leafy
glen in Arkadia. Better to drown in a sylvan pool, perhaps
Syrinx’s. Ah, to join her at last.
 Oh, but Thamuz. No, I must be here, here when the
Egyptian becalms off Paxos. I must.
Where is my lynx-skin cape? It is cold again in this
cursed cave,
Ah, my lynx-skin. A twofold trophy. Both for the
patron god of hunters and for the goat god.
And yet, I almost flayed a poor Arkadian goatherd
instead.
I can still feel how deeply I slept that afternoon,
amidst the thickly mossed roots of an oak tree. Somewhere
in its branches slept its dryad, both of us satiated, our
passions spent. I suppose it was the lynx’s sharp screech
that I heard first, but it entered my dreams and became
part of them, the jealous shrieking of Hera as she chased
Great Zeus about his frigid Olympian palace, having now
heard about his latest pregnant lover. And then I heard
scared bleatings. Ah, Great Zeus somehow pleading his
innocence one more time.
It was only the screams of the goatherds that jarred
me from my midday slumber, the noise not fitting into my
dreams. I awoke grumpy and snarling, eager to fulfill my
nasty reputation for those who awaken me. Hmm, in those
days I punished the disturbers of my rest. Now I sleep too
much and would honor the mortal who wakes me. And
none does, except the boy.
Again I heard the screams. What mortal is so
impetuous in Arkadia? I moved quickly amidst the trees
until I reached the forest’s edge. There were the
goatherds, three of them, all jumping and ranting and
heaving rocks at something I could not see. Their goats ran
everywhere, bleating in terror as they scattered. “Am I too
late?” I thought. “Has some other god already made them
mad?” And then I heard the screech again. This was not
betrayed and jealous Hera now, despite the similarity.
 Unseen, I came out of the woods and at last saw the
long-limbed lynx crouching over the dead goat, the victim’s
neck broken and bleeding. But the lynx did not retreat with
its kill. It dared not turn its back on the goatherds.
Instead, it crouched and faced them, eager to pounce on
any of them, ready to kill yet again. The goatherds
prevented the lynx from taking its prey unmolested, even
as the lynx held the goatherds at bay.
So here was the disturber of my peace. Not the
mortals, but the sharp-eared, short-tailed lynx. The grey-
white cat advanced, placing itself between its kill and its
attackers. Slowly it moved this way and that, seemingly
indifferent to the rocks heaved by the terrified goatherds,
hissing and screeching its contempt. Again and again the
lynx feinted one way and then another, always pushing back
the frightened mortals.
It would be too easy for me simply to kill this
predator. A god must demonstrate his prowess. Now I
allowed myself to be seen, only to send the goatherds
screaming in even greater terror.
But not the lynx. It merely reared a little and then
resumed its advance, each hiss baring its red-stained
fangs. But neither did I retreat like the goatherds, and this
enraged the hunter cat. It screeched again and again, but
remained in place now. I could see the powerful muscles in
those long legs tighten, tensing like the thick cords on a
catapult.
The lynx sprang. At my hooves were two lagobolons
dropped by one of the goatherds, the hunting sticks they
throw to kill hares. I grabbed them and threw them in
quick succession. I could hear the sharp crack as the cat’s
skull split from above its black nose to between those ears
as sharp as my own. The blow killed the lynx at once, and
yet it still completed its graceful arc, landing on the grass
before me. Trickles of its blood stained the corner of its
mouth and its right ear, the only sign of its wound.
“Evoe!” I brayed in triumph. “Evoe!”
Then, as I stared at the dead lynx, I suddenly realized
that it meant to attack me, god or not. I shuddered. Why?
Why? Perhaps that was the first intimation I had of what
was to befall me, us. And yet that was so very long ago.
“Come out!” I yelled at the cowering goatherds.
“Come out!” As timidly as their goats the three emerged,
wide-eyed at my presence. Two of them kept trying to hide
the brown stains that their fear had loosed upon their
chitons. “I make you the gift of your own dead goat. You
may keep it and eat of its flesh. Sacrifice it to me, and
leave the lynx skin hanging for me in these woods.”
Awestruck, they silently obeyed, their crude knives
appearing as they gingerly approached the lynx.
I returned to the oak tree. The dryad stirred in her
boughs. “I heard noise, Pan.”
“You heard triumph. I will tell you all tonight as we
lay upon a lynx skin.”
And we did, huddled beneath the lynx skin that night,
using it to retain the heat of our spent passion.
The lynx-skin is old now, and worn. It affords me
little warmth tonight. And no dryad lies close. It is cold in
this cursed cave. Cold.
 4.
I have spent the entire day sitting before this cave,
kicking stones with my hooves. Sometimes, for
amusement, I would try to pick up the stone in the cleft of
my right hoof and toss it into the air. Once or twice I tried
to catch a successful fling with my other hoof. Great Zeus,
am I bored!
Strange, but time seems to have reversed for me.
When my life seemed measureless I never lacked for things
to do, or at least I was never bored. But now, now that my
time draws to a close, when I have so little of it left, now I
am bored. Why? Why is that? Could I possibly be looking
forward to the end? Perhaps I am. And why not? I am
alone and lonely, a god vanishing amidst those who no
longer believe.
How terribly sad to outlive one’s time, how sad and
very lonely. To be the last of one’s generations and breed
makes me aware of the passing of my entire age. Better to
be next to last, to believe falsely that this age will somehow
go on beyond me. But to be the last, to know the crushing
finality.
I would settle even for gentle, quiet Hebe having
survived me. And yet – there is a delicious humor in my
being the last. Me – the least godly of the gods, the most
earthy of the deities.
And it will not go on. I know that now. That is why I
have been left, to mark our passing, to signal the very end.
And for that I need the boy.
“Can you swim?” I asked him one day. And even as I
asked the question I said a silent prayer to Poseidon.
“Oh, yes,” Apollodorus nodded eagerly as he
answered.
 Thank you, long gone Poseidon, thank you in
whatever deep watery abyss you lay, amidst the shipwrecks
you caused, amidst the mountains of your kingdom below
the sea that no mortal will ever scale.
There was more I wanted to ask the boy, but this was
enough for the moment. He can swim. He will swim far
enough when the time comes, when the winds play tricks
on the Egyptian.
I think this all with a certainty that I do not feel. As if
by reciting it often enough I can make it so. But it must
happen! It must. That is why I am left. Someone must tell
of our passing, and who is left but me?

As I think of my approaching death, I wonder. If

Thanatos is no longer here either, what shall my passing be
like? How amusing – that Death has predeceased me. And
what of Charon? Who will ferry me across the River Styx?
Shall I even get to that shore? And if Hades, too, is gone
where shall I go? Death was a definite passage before we
gods began to disappear. How shall mortals now cope with
this inevitable uncertainty? To know that they will die but
not know what it will be like. And I, having outlived
Thanatos, Hades and all the others, must venture that way
too. There are terrors in being the last.
It is a strange thing, this approaching mortality. I
have not grown perceptibly more infirm, as do mortals.
Rather, I seem to be more tired and suddenly bored. The
endless days of the past were all so similar, and yet each
one was new, refreshing, entertaining. The drinking,
lusting, playing were all the same and yet never dull. But
now I find my interest waning, my attention fleeting. My
mortality suddenly looms as a welcome change, a needed
rest.
 All day and no sight of the boy. Where are my pipes?
I will accompany yet another dusk with my music. Perhaps
I am inspired by my dear, sweet Euterpe, the Muse of
music. But, no, even the Muses are gone in all but name.
Ah, the Muses. Welcome guests at any frolic, except of
course for Melpomene, who was always gloomy and full of
tears. Corner her beneath some leafy bough for some
ardent coupling and off she’d go, weeping over the fate of
the House of Atreus, bemoaning poor Oedipus or some
other tragedy.
Of course, Clio sometimes was no better. Too much
wine and she’d recite history starting with Chaos, and Great
Zeus protect anyone who interrupted. I always enjoyed
being with Thalia – always lighthearted, ready with a funny
comedy of some sort. But, for passion, Erato was best.
Her poetry would get us all worked up – especially the
erotic poems. In my time I enjoyed them all, singly and
together. And their nurse Eupheme, mother of my son,
Crotus. How I miss them all now! I grow more and more
sentimental as my time draws near. Is the change only in
me, or is this another sign of advancing age, an
indiscriminate wistfulness for the past?
What is it that the aging miss? The strength and
vigor of their youth, or the time they once had spread out
before them? Or is it both, both?

I cannot sleep tonight. No, the usual longing keeps

me awake. I chuckle to my self; a quick romp in the
bushes with some maiden would not be amiss – but that is
not what I truly want tonight. Oh no, Pan! Now here’s an
awesome change.
No, tonight something else calls me from my cave, as
if the sounds of my pipes have set something astir in the
forest below. I move about softly as I enter the woods, my
hooves causing no more noise than the rustling of the grass
itself. Why the sudden stealth? Time was when I would run
through the woods, leading a joyous, drunken band or
chasing my next lover. My hooves would seemingly bounce
off the ground, or send up sparks against the rocks. But
now I move quietly, cautiously, slinking amidst shadows and
away from the beautiful silver moonlight falling through the
branches.
A noise! Off to my right. I slip from tree trunk to
tree trunk, a moving shadow around the edge of this placid
glade. The noise has stopped. No, there it is again.
I move forward again, slowly. There is a thick laurel
tree between me and the source of the noise. I push down
one low branch.
Ah, there is a lad sitting on the thick grass in this
circle of trees. Apollodorus? No, someone else. He is
naked, his tunic hangs on a bough of one of the trees. He
stares at something to the left, smiling warmly,
expectantly. I cannot see. I shift a little and push down
another branch. Now I can see her. She stands before the
lad. Her chiton is not woolen, like the one the boy has
doffed. No, it must be linen, for it is alluring and
diaphanous beneath Selene’s moonlight, my own beloved
Selene. The girl has unloosed her hair, the color of soft
straw, and she shakes it free about hr head. There is a
curious smile on her face – part pride, part self-conscious.
The purple cord about her waist is loosed. She lets it fall.
Now she reaches up and undoes one pin at the shoulder,
then the other, carefully hugging the chiton to her. She
smiles that special smile again at the waiting lad. She lets
the tunic fall softly to her ankles.
Oh! I find her just-ripe beauty almost painful as she
stands there, letting us both admire her, one knowingly, one
unseen. She takes a long step forward, away from the
fallen tunic and then stands very still in the moonlight. No,
not wholly still, for her breasts move up and down with
anticipation, the nipples growing taut. Her entire body is so
smooth, so purely colored white under the moon. I think of
fresh milk from a she-goat, white and still warm with the
heat of the goat. The girl’s body speaks to me of warmth
and firmness, soft curves just before the brink of fullest
maturity. The lad stretches out his arm and she moves
forward again, taking his hand and then lying beside him.
I move away, having no desire to watch them. Time
was when I would have jumped into their glade, roaring,
chased off the lad and grabbed the girl, ready as she was.
But now I move away, leaving the lovers to their new
pleasures. Instead of lust I suddenly feel envious
melancholy, as if these physical pleasures are all somehow
beyond me now. Yet, I look down and I can see plainly that
they are not, that my phallos stands ready, that I am still
drawn to her koleos beneath that triangle of soft curls. Ah,
her koleos. Or the temple of Aphrodite, or the cave of
Eros. Or koleos, as the Hellenes call it, the sheath. I
unsheathe my phallos to sheath it yet again.
And yet I feel that even to stay and watch would be to
intrude. Now, more than ever, do I feel that I no longer
belong here, not in this glade, not in this World.
 5.
“Look beyond the lighthouse, Thamuz. Look beyond.
Look to the greatness that calls you.”
Hunh? Where . . . oh, my cave. My cave in Epiros.
Pan’s last sanctuary, high on the cliffs over the sea. I have
been dreaming again. I saw the Egyptian who will carry my
message to Rome. Or rather, my dreams entered his as he
searched for the omens all sailors look for before they sail.
A superstitious lot, these sailors, far worse than any other
travelers, by land or sea.
I could see Thamuz, sprawled naked on his bed in
some pierside tavern in Alexandria, too warm in the late
summer heat for even a light coverlet of Egyptian cotton.
Even asleep, his mind searched for omens, omens. And so
I came to him.
Thamuz dreamt of going to the dockside shrine of
Poseidon, the one between the forum and Alexandria’s
Great Harbor. He went more out of ritual than conviction.
How would this sailor feel if he knew that Poseidon no
longer can aid his passage? Maybe he would feel better. Or
not care at all. Even a past god may be worth invoking,
especially for sailors. So Thamuz, dreaming, carried a
haunch of meat for sacrifice, to satiate the sea god’s
appetite for bulls. I watched the Egyptian’s dark brow
furrow when he placed the meat on the altar, as he recited
the now meaningless words. I even tickled his nose so that
he would sneeze, to the right, during the sacrifice. In his
sleep his superstitious face smiled at this good sign.
And then, gently, I led him in his sleep through the
streets of Alexandria. He went willingly as I led him to my
temple, the Paneion, high on its hill shaped like a fir cone.
But I did not take him up the long spiraling walk. Now I
appeared to him, smiling as benignly as ever I have when
seducing some virgin, and held out my hand. What sailor
would refuse any god in the days before he sails, even a
god who has nothing to do with the sea? Thamuz took my
hand and we floated, on our backs, another good omen, to
the very top of my temple.
From the Paneion you can see all of Alexandria, from
the Temple of Isis and the famous lighthouse of Pharos in
the north to the southern city wall; from Eunostos Harbor to
the Eleusinian Sea.
“Look, Thamuz, look at the city below. Look at the
lighthouse. Look beyond. Hellas, even Rome. You will sail
safely, Thamuz, you will.” The Egyptian smiled again, and
in his dreams I left him there, floating above my temple in
Alexandria.
I give Thamuz the sweetest of dreams and so he
sleeps, yet I lie here awake, fretting over his voyage. It is
past mid-summer and the winds blow long and hard out of
the north, against the course the Egyptian must sail. It can
take him forty days before he appears off Epiros. And
longer still to get to Rome. Summer will be dying then, as
am I.
The wind, the wind. I hear a gentle breeze blowing in
from the sea. I hear it as it rustles the leaves. But that is
all I hear. Zephyr no longer speaks to me in the wind –
teasing, laughing, joking, running with me as I scamper
over the hills. A mortal would see this as yet another sign
of age, as the ears grow brittle and fail. But no, not my
ears, my pointed, lovely ears. No, Zephyr is no longer here
to speak, his disembodied voice from the west now still.
I always enjoyed the company of the winds. Notos,
always warm, languorous, sultry, a perfect companion as
the evening first drew over the woods. And Euros, sullen
and insistent, so very proud that he came out of the east
whence the dawn, his mother Eos, came each morning.
And even chilly Boreas, who now thwarts the ship that will
leave Alexandria.
But best of all was Zephyr, always ready to refresh
with a welcome shower or mist. Zephyr, huddling above the
trees while my lover and I rolled and grappled below; then
Zephyr would spring upon us as we sprawled in exhaustion;
cooling us, but never chilling our ardor, allowing us to renew
and expend our passion yet again.
There are nights – this night – when I hate being the
only one left, when the loneliness and melancholy
overwhelm the survivor’s satisfaction. At times like this I
miss them all.
But you sleep, Thamuz. Sleep and dream good
dreams. Dream, and then sail. Sail to the waters east of
the island of Paxos, past my cave here in Epiros, and hear
from the last of the gods of Hellas.
 6.
The boy has been to see me again, bringing me food
and more wine. I smiled as I listened to his complaints
about the chores his mother sets him.
“I am not one of these chores,” I said at last, probing.
“Oh, no! No!” I enjoy watching him struggle for
something to call me. All the effusive words mortals hurl at
us seem so silly when the god sits before you. “Not you,”
he continues.” “I like coming to see you. It is better than
tending goats.” Apollodorus flushed deep red, trying not to
stare at my horns, my legs. “Not that goats aren’t . . .
aren’t . . .”
Enough. Even one so malicious as I can torture him
only so long. Especially when he is my last devotee.
Poor Apollodorus. He yearns to be older, to be free,
he thinks. “A man can do what he wants,” he tells me. If
he only knew that now is his freest time, that never again
will his life be so much his own.
At least we gods were spared that.
The youth of gods is short, not those long years that
mortals spend, foolishly wishing they were older. We all
passed through that period quickly, at least in terms of our
lives’ spans. And why not? A near-eternity of adulthood is
much like a long and joyful youth.
There was little to remark on my youth. Not like my
father Hermes, stealing oxen on the day he was born, or
infant Herakles strangling Hera’s killer serpents in his
cradle. No, all of my exploits came later.
Strange, but in some way I can recall the night
Hermes seduced my mother Kallisto. I can see her walking
in the garden of her father’s palace in Arkadia, alone on a
summer’s evening. She wore only her gauzy nightshift
against the evening air, her light brown hair loose about her
shoulders. My mother enjoyed those nighttime walks in the
moonlit garden; she enjoyed the solitude, the quiet, the
exciting, forbidden feeling of walking near-naked in the
night. Familiar surroundings become newly mysterious at
night, new shadows, new dark alcoves, new sounds.
I can see the dark places by the oleander bushes rich
in bloom, and by the gnarled and twisted terebinth trees. I
can hear the soothing sound of the fountain my grandfather
Lykaon had built there. And my mother – she saw and
heard these as well. Or rather, she did not, not consciously,
for she had been in the garden at night many times before.
Now all these sights and sounds were familiar to her, and so
they faded into a comfortable background. And that is how
my father Hermes came upon her. He saw her walking in
the garden, a pretty maiden, her form tantalizing under her
moonlit shift. Hermes transformed himself into an Arkadian
youth and hid behind the fragrant oleander.
The shadows, the barest sigh of a breeze, the splash
of the fountain all masked his presence. He waited until she
came around the oleander and then stepped out into the
moonlight, smiling silently. Hermes smiled that special
smile of his, the one that hinted of warmth, of sincerity, of
sly pleasures, of acceptable wickedness. I never had such a
smile. Even at my best it always came off too much as a
leer. My smile told my would-be lovers too much about my
ready desires, too much about lust without the charm and
mystery that Hermes could suggest. Not that I was any
less successful. I simply lacked the veneer of allure that my
father could create. With me, lovers knew what I was after
and what to expect. With Hermes they could deny it until
too late. I traded in lust; he dealt in seduction.
Kallisto was in her sixteenth year when my father
came upon her in the garden, an age at which many
maidens were already married. The youth Hermes
appeared as was only a few years older, his body still
hinting of the man he might be, attractive without
threatening. He smiled that smile as he stepped out of the
shadows. His smile disarmed my mother completely. She
did not jump, or start, or cry out. That smile transfixed
her. She smiled back.
Hermes appeared slender and athletic, wearing only a
chiton that hung off one shoulder. His head that night was
a mass of thick blond curls, a harbinger of my own fleecy
hair. He smiled and held out his hand. Kallisto smiled back
and extended her own. They touched. She trembled; he
feigned trembling as well. This youth embodied all that she
had sought in the garden on all those nights – the mystery
of some hitherto unknown sensation. The dark, the warm
night air, her near-nakedness, and now the warm, firm
touch of this handsome youth, smiling so alluringly. He
began to lead her towards the edge of the garden. She
held back for a moment. He smiled again, tugging at her
hand, caressing her bare arm with his other hand. Kallisto
began to move with him, towards the garden wall, where
the bushes grew denser, where the closely growing trees
threw deep, impenetrable shadows.
As they moved, still silent, still having exchanged no
word, my mother cast a fleeting glance back at the palace,
up towards the room of her father, the king. Tapers still
burnt there, but no figure appeared at the window to watch
his daughter willingly go off in the night with this young
stranger. Wish gave form to thought, and my mother
interpreted this as a sign of the benediction of the gods.
Well, at least one god approved.
Now deep in the furthest recess of the palace garden,
well-hidden from all light and all sight, my father and my
mother kissed for the first time, and embraced and
caressed. The seduction was complete; she was his now, as
he smiled at her again, holding her close against him.
 “Let us go beyond these walls,” he whispered. “Let us
go to the woods just beyond the city.”
She wanted to protest. All that she had sought in
that garden was now here. She was ready to give her body
to this young stranger right there, in her father’s garden.
Surely someone would see them as they made for the
woods.
“No one will see us,” Hermes assured her. He tugged
at her small hand again. “No one.” She followed.
And no one saw them as they passed through the
small gate hidden in the garden wall. The lone guard did
not see them, and they passed unnoticed in the night
streets. Hermes cloaked their movements in a cloud of
mist, even as he clouded my mother’s mind with desire.
They moved freely through the streets and past the city
gates, and out into the woods. There, in the woods,
beneath a wild apple tree sacred to Aphrodite, they were
lovers. There was I conceived.
Did my mother realize that her lover was actually a
disguised god? I think so. In her moments of rapture she
must have sensed, have known that this lover was no
mortal. I have watched mortal women as they cavort in
lust-crazed blindness, and even in the midst of their frenzy
they always know the mortal lovers and the gods. I am
sure Kallisto knew, but was smart enough not to say
anything. Not like Semele, Dionysos’ mother. That fat
drunkard did not come by his stupidity by accident. Oh,
no. Semele insisted on seeing her lover Zeus in all his
glory, spurred on by a jealous and disguised Hera. When
Zeus agreed, his divine majesty consumed her.
No, Kallisto knew. She knew it there in the woods,
beneath that wild apple tree, she knew it as this remarkable
youth took her several times over. Kallisto knew her lover
was a disguised god as he led her back through the city,
back to the palace garden, back into the palace itself, back
to her very room, all unseen in that misty cloud. She knew
it as they embraced one last time, as he kissed her good-
bye and left her on her no-longer maidenly bed. She knew
it as she dropped into a deepest sleep and her lover
disappeared from the palace without raising an alarm. She
knew it the next morning when she awoke and remembered
the events of the past night, just as she knew that this
divine lover had fathered a child.
It was not until winter that I began to distort my
mother’s belly, and she hid me from sight beneath woolen
tunics and cloaks. But as winter waned Kallisto could not
contrive to keep me as hidden. How she managed to slip
away from Lykaon’s palace even I do not know. Perhaps
Hermes helped her. Perhaps. And so she returned to the
Arkadian wood where I was conceived, and waited for my
birth.
The nymphs of trees and waters, dryads and naiads,
attended my birth, just as they attended Kallisto during her
secret confinement. Even as a newborn baby I uttered that
wondrous cry of mine, shattering the early morning. I cried
loudly, fiercely, proclaiming to all my arrival, so that my
grandfather could hear it in his palace, so that my father
could hear it wherever he was. “Pan is born,” my cry
announced, until my mother silenced me with her milk-
laden breast.
She suckled me, running her hands over my strange
fleecy legs, flicking my curled tail through her fingers,
toying with the nubs of my horns. Did my mother find my
shape strange? Did I repel her? No. Kallisto knew she had
lain with a god, that I was his offspring. It made no
difference to her. That was the source of her downfall, her
acceptance of the love of gods and the consequences of
that love. Later, when she left me in the woods to be raised
by more kindred spirits, when she returned to her father’s
palace, she pledged her future chastity to cold Artemis. Ah,
if only my mother had made clear to the eternal Virgin what
this pledge entailed. Kallisto pledged that she would lay
with no man. How she could promise more, having already
cavorted with a god? She did not even think that Apollo’s
madly jealous sister demanded total devotion. How could
my mother know this? No, when Kallisto pledged her
chastity to Artemis she meant of mortal men. Of course
she did! What mortal would accept another mortal as a
lover after having loved a god?
Ah, mother, if only you had made this clear. At worst,
cruel Artemis would have rejected your incomplete
devotions. Instead, Artemis felt betrayed by you when you
lay with Zeus and bore him my half-brother Arkas. As if
you could have resisted Zeus, as if you wanted to. Even
when he came to you disguised as Artemis, you knew. Just
as you knew when you lay with my father, so you knew this
new lover was a god. That is why you accepted his
advances. But the great bitch Artemis made no exceptions,
not even for her lustful father. No, she and Hera saw to
your fate, Hera transforming you into a she-bear, Artemis
contriving to have dear Arkas kill you in a hunt. Only then
did Zeus save you both, making you constellations amidst
the heavens.
I hate them all – Zeus, Hera, Artemis – for what befell
you. You loved the gods too well, dear Kallisto, too well
indeed.
Kallisto stayed with me in the woods as long as she
dared to be absent from Lykaon’s palace, and then she left
me to be raised by the dryads and naiads, and the oreads,
the mountain nymphs. Just like any other prince, raised by
the courtiers. The nymphs who could took turns suckling
me, and fed me honey, and greatly watered wine, and soft
cheeses. They watched over me. And sometimes, on
moonlit nights, Kallisto would come to the woods to be with
me, to spend the night. And she would talk to me, and
bring me sweetmeats from her father’s palace. And as the
night waned she would lay down on a soft bed of pine
needles and curl her warm body about mine, and softy hum
songs that shepherds in Arkadia sing at night to their flocks,
until we both fell asleep, first me, then my mother.
 7.
Nymphs attended me, fed me, played with me. The
dryads taught me about the woods, chased me about their
trees, and let me chase them in return. We would pelt each
other playfully with pine cones. I remember the first time I
tried to throw a pine cone. I stood unsteadily on my still
wobbly legs, teetering like a new-born kid-goat. I lifted my
arm to hurl a pine cone at Antiope, a nettle tree
hamadryad, but the change in balance was too sudden.
Back I went, and down. Antiope laughed at me, her whole
body shaking.
The oreads took me up into the mountains and
showed me their secret places, their snug caves with entries
invisible to the uninitiated. The naiads taught me the songs
hidden in the sounds made by moving water, and used
these like a lullaby to make me sleep . . .
Hmph! Memories are enough to make me sleep now.
Remembering the naiads’ sweet, lilting songs, just
remembering them, lulls me to sleep. I probably sleep
more now than when I was a baby. I did not sleep much
then. I stopped napping quickly and soon was staying
awake long into the night. I remember some oreads trying
to slow me down by reducing the water they put in their
excellent mountain wine. But their little plan backfired. For
the first time I was aware of the wondrous feeling of wine
coursing through me. I tore around the cave, running,
dancing, braying out my youthful cry. I screamed with
delight at this new energy, this odd sense of euphoria. I
yelled and yelled again, my cries echoing off the walls of the
oreads’ cave. They ran about the cave as well, some trying
to catch me, others with their hands over their ears to
escape the din I created.
We ran round and round, me screaming with delight,
the beautiful naked oreads chasing me, yelling to one
another to go here, go there, corner me, grab me. I ran
this way and that, dodging them, slipping under their
outstretched arms, until two or three converged on me.
With my nimble hooves I tried to escape again, giggling
madly now. But as I eluded Arsinoe, the two others both
grabbed at me. Helena, with her thick, wild black hair and
bright eyes, her cheeks flushed with her chasing me, got
her hands on my flailing arms. She plucked me up and
drew me to her, smothering my writhings against her warm,
bare breasts. She breathed heavily. So did I. She held me
tight against her breasts. I felt the rapid beating of her
heart, beating as rapidly as did my own. The scent of her
sweat filled my flaring nostrils, replacing the sensation of
the wine. I had been held against many breasts – my
mother’s, the suckling nymphs’. But Helena’s holding me
now seemed different to me, very different. My writhing
stopped. Instead, I tried to snuggle closer to her.
At last Helena put me down, smiling a very strange
smile. She seemed embarrassed. The other mountain
nymphs all stood about giggling. That feeling, whatever it
was, was even better than unwatered wine. I heard more
giggling, thought I saw a sly finger or two pointing, at me.
Only then did I notice that my phallos was standing straight
up, rising away from its fleecy bed. Well, it had never done
that before. I had never even paid it any attention before.
It was just something I used to pass water. Ah, but what
did this mean? I touched my phallos. The oreads goggled
more. I stopped. They giggled again.
That mad chase around the cave and its delicious
aftermath seemed wonderful. I wanted to recapture the
alluring feeling it had aroused in me. I wanted to do it
again. I wanted more. In mortal’s terms I was four years
old at the time – but the gods matured quickly and were to
live forever.
 Now I created opportunities to be chased by the
nymphs. Not just the oreads in their mountain caves but
the dryads too, running around and around their trees; and
the naiads, skipping along the shores of their lakes and
ponds, in and out of their streams. Only now, now I let
myself be caught. I would run and run and run, screaming,
braying, laughing; waiting for the right moment, waiting for
that peak moment when my cheeks were flush, the ichor in
my veins racing, my heart pounding, my body giving off the
slightest scent. Then I would allow myself to be caught, to
be grabbed by one of the nymphs and drawn up to her
waiting, soft breasts. There I would snuggle rhythmically,
slyly rubbing my stiff phallos against the soft flesh, while all
the other nymphs gathered round, giggling, saying things to
one another that made them all laugh and that I did not
understand. Sometimes they would pass me about, from
one set of breasts to another. Ah, what innocent joy and
pleasure that was!

The nymphs taught me – slyly – about the pleasures

awaiting me amidst their soft and plaint flesh. The Seilenoi,
the older satyrs, looked to the rest of my education. They
were always about with us in the woods and forests of
Arkadia. I thought the Seilenoi were there to play with me,
who resembled them so closely in shape, their horns, their
curly hair, their woolly legs, their sharp hooves, their small
curled tails. Only later did I realize that the abundance of
nymphs attending me provided perhaps an even greater
lure for the Seilenoi. The Seilenoi taught me to hunt; to
forage; to play the games of chance as beloved by the gods
as by mortals; to run nimbly down heavily wooded tracks,
hooves barely flicking over fallen leaves; to drink. They
taught me all I needed to know to live my life, all except the
pleasures of the flesh. For that I had the sweet and lively
nymphs.
 I loved when the satyrs came, when they drank late
into the night, singing loud songs, bawdy songs whose
meaning I could not yet understand. They drank hard and
long, and then they would slip away with some dryad or
naiad, away from the campfire and starlight into the dark,
away from the sharp eyes of their precious charge – me!
I sat huddled amidst the fleecy legs of the Seilenos
who was my favorite. His name was Daschylos, but I
always called him Papposeilenos, “Daddy” Seilenos. “Where
do they go when they go off in the dark, the naiads and the
satyrs?” I asked.
Papposeilenos snorted. “Off in the dark, as you said.”
I wrinkled my long, sharp nose. “But sometimes they
do not come back until the morning. And when they do,
they are covered with bits of grass and leaves and smears
of earth, like if they were wrestling.”
“Then maybe they are wrestling,” he laughed.
I sprang to my hooves. “Can we watch?”
Papposeilenos’ brawny hands closed about my thin
body. “They wrestle for fun, strictly for their own pleasure,
not as in the games the mortals conduct. They need no one
to watch them.”
I settled into his fleecy lap, watching fireflies call to
one another with their light. “Do you ever wrestle?”
He laughed deep and hard, his round belly bouncing
up and down against me. “Do you think it is only the young
one, the satyrs, who enjoy this sport? Are we Seilenoi too
old? Yes, I wrestle. I wrestle in the dark, sometimes with
two dryads at a time, or even three!”
My eyes widened at this. “Is it fun, Papposeilenos?”
Again he laughed. “Pan, it is at least as much fun as
the chasing game you play with the nymphs. It is as much
fun as Great Zeus himself has ever wanted to enjoy, over
and over again!”
At night, when the cold and damp now penetrate my
woolly legs as they never did before, I imagine once again
the warmth of Daschylos’ crossed legs forming a soft,
warm, hairy nest for me. I can feel his protruding belly
nudging me in my back, the coil of hair snaking up this
fleshy mound, tickling my still downy skin. I can hear the
wonderful rumbling sound of his voice, a voice erupting
from deep within him like the sound of Hephaistos’ hammer
and forge from deep within Mount Etna. My nose still
remembers Daschylos’ scent, the slightly oily smell of his
white hair, the heavy smell of his breath when laden with
wine. Ah, my Papposeilenos! Sometimes I think I miss you
more than any of those who have gone before me. You,
more than anyone else, taught me the things that truly
mattered.
It never seemed odd that all the satyrs and Seilenoi
should defer to me. Why should it? What child ever
doubted that he was the true omphalos, the center of the
universe? It was Papposeilenos who told me why I was
treated so special; it was he who introduced me to Hermes.
Hermes came to the forest one night, alighting in the
glade we played in, alighting as silently as a moonbeam.
He stood in the shadows and watched as I engaged several
dryads in my chasing game, this time selecting Cyanea, a
tawny carob tree nymph, as my favored winner, letting her
scoop me up and then rubbing myself against her over and
over, while all the other nymphs giggled in their customary
amusement.
Hermes watched with all the others while Cyanea and
I enjoyed the pleasures of innocent arousal. He smiled with
the others, poking a nearby satyr in the ribs, joining in the
merriment, sharing the wine. At last, he stepped forward
into the light of our fire and all activity ceased. Seilenoi,
satyrs and nymphs all stopped and bowed low. Cyanea put
me down, blushing, and bowed as well.
I had seen this god before, I knew his name and who
his father was, and I knew what duties were due a son of
Great Zeus. I bowed, most perfunctorily, peeved at having
my pleasures interrupted. Hermes held his caduceus lightly
in his hand, gently bouncing the staff as if to test its
balance. “I see that I am not the only one sporting a heavy
rod tonight,” he said, looking down at me, at my phallos.
There was laughter all around.
Old Papposeilenos lumbered up beside Hermes then,
red veins crisscrossing the old satyr’s face and nose, their
presence proclaiming the heavy valley wine he had been
drinking. He looked up at the taller god, whose gray eyes
seemed to return some agreed signal. All satyrs drink, but
as they grow older, as they become Seilenoi, their capacity
diminishes. I could see that Papposeilenos struggled as he
drew up his rotund form on unsteady hooves. “Young Pan,”
he harrumphed gravely, his body swaying a bit, “may I
present to you the Lord Hermes, your father.”
I had already begun bowing again as Papposeilenos
made his formal introduction, but I suddenly bobbed up as
the old satyr said these last words. Now I bowed again,
most deeply, and Hermes bowed back.
We sat up all night, talking, Hermes and me. “Your
mother did not tell you, did she?” he asked.
“No.” I scuffed a hoof along the ground, feeling
embarrassed.
“Did you ever ask?”
“Once. Kallisto said my father would tell me when he
was ready.”
Hermes smiled with satisfaction, appreciating my
mother’s loyalty. Only a fool, like Chione – who loved
Hermes and Apollo on the same day – would boast of
having a god as a lover. And Chione was foolish enough to
boast to Artemis of her two god-lovers, to tell the Virgin
Bitch that it was her looks that forced Artemis to keep her
prized chastity. Hah! Served Chione right to have Artemis
shoot an arrow through her tongue. No, Kallisto knew
better than that. To love a god or a goddess was a gift. I
always tried to convince my mortal lovers of that.
I told Hermes that I had thought that one of the
satyrs was my father, probably Daschylos. Hermes laughed
hard at this, slapping me on the back. “And so, in a way,
they are. You are my gift to them. And in return they will
teach you all they know, and you will rule the forests in the
night, and love as even I have not loved. You are my son,
Pan, and more. Even the gods cannot control what their
children must be.”
Hermes, like Kallisto, came to visit me from time to
time, but never both of them on the same evening. A
mortal can love a god once, or twice, or even thrice, but
never can they expect more than that. That is why I
romped so wildly with my mortal lovers the very first time,
to make up for all they would never enjoy again.
But, mostly my parents left me in the care of
Daschylos and the other satyrs and the nymphs, teaching
me the life I would lead in the woods and wild places.

We sat under a moonlit sky, Papposeilenos and me –

Seilenos and young satyr – nightfishing in a small lake.
Papposeilenos sat with his bulky form propped against a
tree. I lay with my head resting on one of his hairy thighs;
Polyxo, the naiad of that lake, rested with her head on his
other thigh, her golden hair rippling softly like the water of
her lake. Our fishing lines dangled in the cold water.
Several flasks of wine lay about. Papposeilenos had already
emptied one and shared another with Polyxo and me.
 Our lines floated on the water, small stones dragging
down their hooks, as the water lapped gently against the
grassy bank. “I can bring you fish for dinner,” Polyxo
offered.
Papposeilenos stroked her breast. “Hush, my dear.
The youngster must learn to fish on his own. What if he
should find himself in some distant place where no beautiful
water nymphs are there to feed him?” Pappo-seilenos kept
his free hand cupped about her breast, dark skin against
pure white.
Papposeilenos belched eloquently as he reached for
another flask, having now emptied the second one. “Ah,
look there,” he said, pointing off to the right, along the
lakeshore. Polyxo and I sat up and watched as Pindar, a
satyr with exquisite shiny black hair, chased two
hamadryads through the reeds. They giggled and shrieked
in mock horror as they ran, just fast enough to give Pindar
a chase, not so fast as to lose him or tire him. They wove
in and out of the reeds, tormenting him with the possibility
of catching first one, then the other. Pindar roared and
bellowed as he grabbed this way and that, unable to catch
either of them yet, knowing that inevitably he would catch
one – if not both.
Excited by the chase, Papposeilenos sat forward and
yelled encourage-ment across the lake. “No, Pindar, no!
The other way! Yes, get that one! No! Yes, that one!
Watch her! She’s turning!” Papposeilenos was up on his
hooves now, one hand reaching out for the tree, steadying
himself against the effects of the wine. He continued to
shout, his deep voice booming across the lake and into the
nighttime forest.
I stood up, while Polyxo just sat there, idly plaiting
and unplaiting her long hair. I looked up at Daschylos.
“Papposeilenos, can I go help Pindar?”
 The old satyr roared. “What? You? No! By Great
Zeus’ beard, I’ll go! You stay here with Polyxo.” His first
steps were wobbly. I laughed as he almost slipped on the
wet grass on the verge of the lake, one hoof skirting the
water with the smallest ripple. But then the native
nimbleness of the satyr overcame the heavy red wine, and
Daschylos scampered off to join the pursuit, moving with
amazing grace for all of his white haired bulk.
“Run, Papposeilenos, run!” I cried, even as Pindar
finally grabbed the arm of one of the hamadryads and
brought her down in the woods. Now the other tree nymph
stopped, only to start again as Papposeilenos came after
her, chasing her further along the shore until the trees
swallowed them up.
I stood there laughing, feeling some of the
exhilaration of the chase, just as I did when I played with
my nymphs, when I had them chase me.
Polyxo shook her splendid hair about her, looking
bored and peeved. “Pan, do you know where they are
going, what they are doing?”
“To wrestle,” I said brightly, repeating with
Papposeilenos had told me.
She laughed. “Yes, but in a special way, much like
when you have us chase you. Only better.” So Polyxo’s
description mimicked Papposeilenos’. She stood up, shaking
her hair again, her fists planted on her bare hips. “Pan,
would you like to wrestle with me?”
Polyxo and I had played my chasing game together
many times, and I had often chosen her as the lucky nymph
to catch me, to rub up and down against her breasts while
that strange, delightful tension grew within me. I agreed
with a quick nod of my head.
Polyxo held out her hand. I grabbed it, my body
tensing, my legs planted far apart, ready for the first tug of
our wrestling. “No, no,” she laughed, her light eyes
sparkling like the moonlit waters of her lake. “Not here.
There.” She pointed to where a hearty stream splayed out
along a deeply rutted outcrop, falling into her lake in a soft
silver curtain. “There, where the moss is thick and soft.”
Her silvery-white fingers tightened about my hand and
Polyxo led me along the shore, to where the moss was
indeed thick and soft, to where the jolly song of the stream
gave way to a hushed whisper as it rushed over the
outcrop, to join the even quieter hum of Polyxo’s lake.
She took me to that mossy place and brought me face
to face with her. I was older now, taller than when I had
first learned my chasing game with the nymphs. My height
nearly equaled Polyxo’s. Her hands ran up and down my
body, tugging teasingly where the thick fleece formed just
below my belly. Instinctively, I responded in kind, caressing
her breasts, toying with the small, downy patch of hair
below her belly. “This is not wrestling,” I thought at first,
but the feeling of Polyxo’s cool fingers, and of mine on her
flesh – so cool when we began, but now warmer –
overwhelmed the small doubt. No, it was more like my
game of chase and be caught. My phallos swelled and rose.
Polyxo’s fingers closed around it, squeezing it gently,
something neither she nor any other nymph had done
before. I started, but quickly gave in to the sensation. I
tried to clamber up her body, to have her hold me as I
rubbed my phallos between those soft breasts that I was
now squeezing. But Polyxo held me down.
Instead, she sank onto the mossy bed she had
selected, laying back, pulling me down after her. Now she
let me climb onto her, to rub my phallos between her
breasts as I so often did before. And as I did, as the
pleasure seized me, dear Polyxo slowly pushed me at the
shoulders, forcing me down, forcing my phallos to slide
down, down below her breasts, over her belly, down
through her blonde fleece, down until the lips of her koleos
parted and drew my phallos into her. She threw her legs
about my hips and grabbed my hairy buttocks with both
hands, moving me, bucking me, until I caught the rhythm.
I moved with her, thrusting my phallos as I never had
before. The sounds of the stream and the lake died under
Polyxo’s own panting, my grunting, and then her sighs and
my first adult braying cry as we both shuddered with final
pleasure.
My cry carried over the lake, through all the forests.
Just as my cry at birth proclaimed my arrival, so now my
cry announced the loss of my virginity, announced the
discovery of a pleasure that I had to share with other lovers
over and over again. “I am Pan,” my cry proclaimed, “Pan
the great lover, the fornicator, the penetrator, the bucker,
the thruster, the proud impaler, the ravisher, the seducer.”
And then my cry died as Polyxo grabbed at me, and
me at her and we began again, only to scream out the
pleasurable conclusion and begin again, and again.
Late in the morning I knelt beside Polyxo's lake,
having left her asleep amidst the soft moss. I splashed her
cold water on my face, my arms, my chest. Papposeilenos’
heavy form dropped down beside me. He plucked a leaf or
a twig from the wool of his thigh and then several damp
leaves from mine. “So, you have learned to wrestle, young
Pan.”
8.
Ah, Papposeilenos, so much you tried to teach
me. So very much. And how much was I willing to learn?
How much did I have to learn on my own because I would
not first listen to you? And who do I pass these things
along to? Who do I tell about the pleasures to be sought in
the forests on a warm summer night? Who do I warn about
mixing too much wine with too much ardor? Who will listen
to me about lust, about hunting, about the proper respect
owed to the older gods? Who? My children? Crotus, Iynx,
Iambe? No, they are all gone, gone before. Perhaps
Apollodorus. But what can I tell him? What can a god –
especially a fading, dying god – tell a mortal? No, he will be
like all the others, even me – like all the others who have
gone before, and all the others who will come after – he will
have to learn for himself. Oh, Papposeilenos, I never told
you that you taught me well. For when I knew this, you
were already gone.
Oh, Papposeilenos, of all the lessons you tried so
very hard to teach, one still hurts more than all the others.
It is the one I still see at night before I close my eyes, the
one that makes me wince, even now, at my pathetic willing,
evil ignorance.
“She may not be willing at all,” you said, and I
dismissed this. Not then, not even later, not until it was too
late.
I think of all the times a god forced himself on a
lover. Zeus, turning Io into a heifer to protect her from
jealous Hera. What became of Io? Driven mad by Hera’s
gadfly until she reached the far-off banks of the Nile. And
Poseidon, what about him? Did he not have to carry off his
own wife, Amphitrite, when she refused his advances? And
how did dark Hades get his bride? He abducted
Persephone. No, each of the Olympian brothers forced
himself on an unwilling lover when he felt the urge, the
need, the desire.
Was Apollo any different? Oh, no. For all the
children he sired, he too forced himself on unwilling lovers.
Did he not steal the bride Marpessa from Idas, only to have
to fight the mortal for her until Zeus himself intervened?
And Kassandra of Troy, who spurned Apollo, and whom he
punished in return with prophecy that no one would
believe. And Daphne – her, too. A follower of his sister’s,
no less. I never believed that her prized virginity was the
issue with Daphne. No, it was something else. For all your
beauty, Apollo, you were much too cold a god, too little the
impassioned suitor. Even had Daphne willingly and eagerly
lain with every hunter in Arkadia, she still would have
resisted you, resisted a love that would have chilled her
deep within her very being. No, Daphne fled from you,
finding refuge only in her transformation into a laurel tree.
And was it only us, the male gods? Oh, no! What
about Aphrodite and her passion for Anchises, and for
Adonis?
You warned well, Papposeilenos, you warned well.
Now I know that for you, too, there had been an unwilling
lover, one whose refusal you would not accept. What
punishment befell her for your advances? What burden did
you carry as a result? That was the part you could not tell
me, wasn’t it? Yes, those refusing our passion paid, but
their anguish was momentary before their release. No, it
was we who suffered forever afterwards, knowing what we
had caused, what we had done. That was what you tried to
warn me of, dear Papposeilenos, wasn’t it? Unrequited
pleasured bears a high price, an endless price. Or did they
pay, too? Did that laurel tree, that fir – those reeds – feel
nothing at all, or did they still remember the cause of their
transformation? Did they? Did they know, did they
understand? No! I pray not!
 Ah! The awful, painful memory stabs at me still,
making me wince yet again. Why can’t I dismiss this one
small horror? Where are my pipes? What better way to
purge this memory? My pipes.
But tonight my pipes bring me nothing but sour
notes and more pain. It hurts to feel my lips caress the
varied reeds, to be close to kissing my memory as I ever
was in life. I wonder, when Apollo fashioned a wreath of
laurel leaves to commemorate Daphne, did this make him
feel better? Did this ease his pain, his guilt? Just like my
pipes, only they bring me no solace tonight. I must find
another escape. Perhaps sleep.

It is no good. Night still cloaks the world. I feel

haunted tonight, Papposeilenos; you have led me once
again to this painful memory. Curse you, Mnemosyne, you
blasted goddess of memories. Zeus slept with you and
fathered the Muses. Tonight all you bring me is pain.
Everything tonight reminds me of Syrinx. Every
memory – Papposeilenos, Apollo, and of course my pipes.
Syrinx haunts me in my waning days. Why now?
Why not? Perhaps I must make peace with her
before . . . before I am no more. Or perhaps tonight is not
so different. Perhaps she has always haunted me.
Always. Just as her beauty first struck me.
It is strange. I pursued unwilling Pitys and she
was transformed into a fir tree, and yet remembering her I
feel a little remorse, and nothing more. I saw her, I desired
her, I chased her. She refused, she fled, and in her flight
she asked Mother Earth for refuge, and so became a fir.
Oh, perhaps I regret it, just a little. But it is nothing at all
like the pain I feel for Syrinx. Why? Why is she so
different? Why?
Because I loved her.
 In those moments that I saw her I knew that I
loved her. I loved Syrinx as I have loved no other. Except
perhaps you, Selene. And Echo, of course. Are you out
there tonight, Selene, shining down on my cave, listening to
me as I remember? I know you are not jealous. How can
you be jealous of a lover I never possessed? How can you
be, when it was your moonlight that first exposed Syrinx to
me.
I lay dozing along the bank of some pool, a pool
carved deep within the hollow of an ancient boulder, deep
with the forests of Arkadia. Several small streams trickled
down adjacent cliffs, feeding the pool, etching it ever
deeper into the rock. At the far end of the pool the water
had made a small crevasse, allowing it to flow away and
down to a larger pool beyond. I lay there, dozing, my body
at ease, my mind blissfully blank after a mad romp with a
dryad now curled beside me, asleep. I don’t think I would
have seen Syrinx at all had it not been for the way Selene’s
bright moonlight shine about her as Syrinx rose from her
pond – Selene’s light reflecting off the shimmering water
slipping down Syrinx’s white flesh as she emerged and
waded towards the bank. The moonlight gave Syrinx’s wet
blonde hair a glow that seemed to light the very forest,
drops of water beading on the strands like a net of the
purest, finest pearls. My feelings of satiety ebbed. The
familiar throbbing, swelling began anew.
I stirred, moving off my rocky perch, but my
movement awakened my sleeping nymph. She smiled
unashamedly at my renewed vigor as it grew before her.
She grabbed for me, giggling with anticipated pleasure,
drawing me down to her spreading legs. But even as I
moved to kiss her breasts my eyes darted sideways, to
catch one last glimpse of that other nymph, that naiad, her
glowing body moving through the dark woods.
 Did she, that naiad newly-risen form the water,
hear me braying in triumph as my passion exploded once
again with my companion, even as we perched above
Syrinx’s own pool? I hoped so. I fancied she did, that she
recognized that the Great Cavorter was about in the woods,
that she hoped that she too might be favored with a romp
on some soft bed of pine needles.
All this I imagined as I remembered that
shimmering white form emerging from that forest pond. I
had to see her again, to see her face. Night after night I
haunted that pond, waiting for her to emerge, but she did
not. I shared a tree with a dryad, who threw me out
resentfully when I ignored her advances. No, I had lost this
naiad once before because of another eager lover. I was on
sentry duty. The dryad ripped a branch from her own tree,
a pine, and thrashed me with it. Some other time I would
have accepted this as an interesting prelude to a night’s
passion, like the maenads at our orgies arousing one
another with their pine-topped staffs, the thyrsus. But not
tonight. I clambered out on a large, low bough and swung
down.
Yet even now the disappointed dryad would give
me no peace. She would not let me stand beneath her tree
for my vigil. Now she pelted me with pine cones, screaming
at me. “Begone! Go away! I hope Syrinx never returns to
her stinking pond!”
Syrinx! My naiad’s name was Syrinx. Arms up
protecting my head, I left the jealous dryad’s proffered
cones. Syrinx. Syrinx. The name consumed me just as
her form had. I had to fight down the desire to run through
the woods shouting her name, seeking her. Where could
she be? In some other pond, or sharing a stream with
sister naiads? I wandered aimlessly in the woods, my mind
imagining the feel of that white flesh, the feel of her breath
against my ear, our loins joyfully coupled and coupling. I
peered into every stream and pond I passed, my chin
whiskers brushing the surface of the water. Or was she
even now with a lover of her own? My pulse surged angrily
at the thought. No! that could not be! She was mine, she
had to be.
I wandered all that night, lost in a mixture of love
and jealousy. I wandered through the woods, until at last I
found myself on a ridge, the forest sloping away from me
towards beautiful Syrinx’s pool. I moved along the ridge,
still consumed by my love, my passion, my jealousy. I
wove in and out of trees, not really seeing them, not
hearing the dryads above whispering out their names to me
in the rustling of their leaves and branches, or others
sighing as they coupled with other lovers. I saw little, I
heard little. And then I saw that white form again.
My hooves froze to the ground. My heart leapt in
my chest. It was her, Syrinx, moving down below the ridge,
moving in the direction opposite my own, moving towards
her pond. Even in the nightdark I could now see her face,
her body. Her long blonde hair, not wet now, hung silkily
about her face, parting as it cascaded past her fine white
shoulders. The white of her skin, the yellow of her hair
reminded me of the crocuses growing not far from her very
own pond. And her face, her eyes large and dark, her nose
and mouth finely shaped. Her neck, long and white, as
elegant in shape as Hera’s peacock, leading my eyes down
to full breasts, their soft undercurve so perfect, so alluring.
The wonderful lines of her waist, her hips, the soft downy
hair between her legs. A hundred nymphs I had seen, a
thousand, all naked, all alluring. Yet Syrinx seemed
different. I was maddened with passion on the spot.
I ran down the ridge, moving so that my path
would cross hers on the gentle slope leading down to her
pond. She heard me before she saw me, heard the crackle
of dead leaves beneath my sharp hooves. She was farther
down the slope than I. Syrinx looked up. Our eyes met. I
could feel our visions meet, join, couple, confirming in me
all that I felt. “Syrinx!” My voice split the night.
For a moment Syrinx stood very still, like a doe
surprised by a hunter. Then, she ran. She ran away from
me, changing direction so I could not intercept her, not be
between Syrinx and her pond. “Syrinx!” I yelled again,
waving, still running, admiring how that silky yellow hair
streamed out behind her, how her breasts moved up and
down so gracefully, so beckoningly.
I ran after her, calling her name again and again,
as if to assure her that I wanted more than a night’s romp.
I was in love; that is what I wanted my constant pleading,
my calling of her name to say. But Syrinx continued to
run. And I ran after her, gaining on her.
Syrinx kept looking back at me as she wove
gracefully among the dark trees. Even then, even with the
fright in her eyes, she seemed wonderful. “No, Pan! No!”
she finally yelled back. Aha! So she knew my name as
well! Then let it be a chase! But she did not shriek like the
others, that mock sound of terror mingled with giggles of a
anticipation. She yelled out only that one time and
continued to run.
She ran faster than any nymph I have ever
chased, and longer. No coy chases round and round some
thick tree trunk for her. She ran straight and true for her
pond. The slope down from the ridge carried us both
towards the waters of her home. I kept gaining on her,
even as the ground leveled out, even as the dark waters of
the pond seemed but a lunge away.
Her long tresses flew before my face, almost
within reach. But I feared grabbing them, feared bringing
her down from behind like that. My outstretched hands
yearned for that soft white flesh. “Syrinx!” I pleaded again.
 The pond seemed to loom before us, filling the
space before my eyes with its dark surface, except where
the white and yellow form of Syrinx kept moving, still just
out of reach. She panted heavily, as did I. The pond . . .
close . . . too close . . . I had to lunge. As Syrinx’s right
foot made the merest ripple in her eater’s surface she yelled
out, “Ge!” At that same instant my fingertips touched that
wondrous white flesh, only to have it disappear beneath my
fingers. I plunged headlong into Syrinx’s pond.
I came to the surface quickly, sputtering, spitting
water, my chest heaving. “Syrinx! Syrinx!” I called out
again and again. My hands thrashed at the water. Where
was she? She had entered those dark waters before me. I
knew that. Then where? . . . That was when I saw the
reeds in the water, just where Syrinx had stepped and I had
followed. The print of her foot was still visible in the mud.
Syrinx had invoked Ge, the Earth Mother, and had been
transformed. She had become those reeds at the bank of
her own pond.
Hot tears sprang from my eyes, burning my
cheeks before they rolled off to mingle with the waters of
the pond. I stood there, in the pond, staring at the reeds,
weeping. A gentle breeze came up and stirred the reeds.
They seemed to sing a soft and gentle song, no less
beautiful to my ears than Syrinx had been to my sight. I
waded to them and cut them, and bound them together. I
made of them a pipe, my pipe, Pan’s pipe. And for the
remainder of that night I sat on the bank of Syrinx’s pond,
playing my new pipe, blowing a sad song of regret, of loss,
of guilt.

I will play that song again tonight, dear Syrinx. I

will play it as I have on a hundred, hundred nights since
then. I will play it this last time, to tell you that I am sorry,
that I bear a pain I could not ever have imagined, and that
I love you still.
9.
Ah, my dear, luscious Polyxo, my first lover. What
pleasures you revealed to me. What exquisite ecstasies you
first hinted at. Virgins dedicated themselves to cold
Artemis. Who should lovers pray to and give thanks? To
Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty? Perhaps. But
she in her own jealous way was no better than Artemis,
cruel and vindictive. Or maybe Aphrodite’s mischievous
son, Eros. Hah! He didn’t create love with those errant
arrows of his. He brought Chaos!
No, there is only one god to whom lovers should
pray and give thanks for their passion, their longings, the
yearnings that make men stiff and women damp with mere
thoughts. Me! The Great God Pan! Who else showed them
the way, celebrating passion, reveling in it, satisfying it for
its own sake and nothing more? Me! only me. Not for
devotion, or duty or even for love. No! pleasure for the
sake of pleasure, for its surprise, its warmth, its heat, its
tension, its release.
But they did not. No, not to me. To those others
they looked and prayed. To Aphrodite, to Eros, some even
to Dionysos. But to me, to Pan? – no! Except those
mortals lucky enough to lay with me, to spend with me the
wonders of a night of shared and touching flesh, of wild
rapture in some leafy hollow – ah, they knew. And now,
now that the other gods are gone, does anyone turn to
me? No. Even in my solitude I am not revered in this way.
No, there are new gods now, demanding, ascetic gods.
People turn to them and forget the pleasures we offered, as
though they could deny what they feel, all that they want
and will want again and again. Let them, let them try. Let
the new gods rule in our stead, let the people worship them
and pretend that their wants and needs have changed. I
have no place in this World if pleasure and passion are to be
denied. My World has passed away, and so must I. That is
what I regret, that the World I knew is gone. My death is
little but a final passing of all that was before.

Ah, dear Polyxo. My first lover. And who was my

last lover? Last? Why did I think that? Why “last” and not
“latest”? No, I will go out again, tonight, and seize some
young maiden, entice her, seduce her, thrill her until she
cries out, “Enough!” and “More!” all at once.
No, I will not. I know that. I knew that the other
night when I watched those young and innocent lovers. I
am already a shadow moving through the forest, a memory,
a legend. Except for the boy, except for Apollodorus. He
still believes in me, sees me, pays the required devotions.
To the rest I have already passed away, as have all the
other gods. But I have not! No! I will not go quietly. I will
be proclaimed yet again from the mountain tops. My death
will be announced in the west. The boy will see to that.
Again and again my thoughts come back to Polyxo,
to her pretty golden hair spreading out and shimmering
across our mossy bed on that first night of endless
delights. And yet, something was lost that first night as
well – some sense of passing innocence, of playing out my
game of chase without ever realizing its true nature. My
chasing game with the nymphs came to an end forever.
Why settle for arousal when you can have passion? No,
now the game changed, now I chased them – the naiads,
the oreads, the dryads. Hah-hah! Chased them? I
terrorized them! I ran rampant through the forest at
virtually every waking moment, looking for new companions
to explore with me this new found thrill. Some of my old
playmates from my chasing game – Helena, Arsinoe,
Laodike, Rhose – yielded willingly, as though they had been
waiting for me to discover this much spicier sport. Others
played coy, preferring to be chased, seduced, cajoled.
Phoenix and I, and Talaos, and other satyrs would compete,
racing through the dark woods, our hooves digging furrows
as we stopped suddenly, our noses picking up the scent of
some shy dryad hiding in a thickly-leafed branch, some
naiad crouching low amidst the tall reeds. How much the
springtime Earth and an aroused woman smell alike! How
the nymphs would take advantage of this to hide, to mask
their presence. Yet we satyrs, our noses sharp and piercing
as daggers, could always find them, always smell the
headiest perfume of all, the scent of arousal. Then we
would move on our very hoof-tips, barely touching the
ground, becoming stealth itself. Thank Hermes that he was
the patron of thieves, allowing me to move so quietly until I
was close upon my latest conquest, quiet until I was about
to pounce, when I let loose my bray of triumph, and she
would shriek in delight and mock horror, and giggle as I
took hold of her, as she gave in to what these chases were
all about.

Papposeilenos held his large belly and belched,

softly this time, as if by kneading his flesh he could force up
this spasm of relief. I tried to mimic him, but I was still
young, and my belches lacked the deep solemnity of his.
Mine sounded more like bubbles bursting on water. He
snorted derisively. I gulped a huge swig of wine, hoping to
do better. Drops of the sticky redness clung to the first shy
wisps of my beard.
“Ah, Pan, I fear you’ll soon wear out that thing.”
“What thing?”
He belched again, deeper still. I half-imagined
some wine-red cloud emanating from his mouth. “Your
phallos,” he said at last.
Alarmed, I looked down. It seemed no worse for
wear to me. “What do you mean, Daschylos?”
 “I mean, my son, that it is all well and good to
love the nymphs. Not one, or two, or even ten, but as
many as you can. But you are not the first to discover this.
You have more than a lifetime before you to enjoy this
special pleasure. You need not love them all within a
mortal’s year of time.”
“Hmph!” Sheer jealousy, I thought. I was young
and fleet of hoof. “I doubt that any naiad can outrun me!” I
boasted.
“Here,” he offered slyly, “more wine. So that is it,
eh, a challenge. I accept, young Pan, I accept. But first, let
us have another flask of wine. I have more to say to you.
And then we shall indeed see who is the greatest lover this
night.” He pulled the cork form the flask, tugging hard,
sending a small amber arc out of the bottle. “After you,
young lord.”
I took a long, long swallow, pouring down the
sweet white wine until my lungs ached like a swimmer
under water too long. A challenge indeed! I proudly
passed the much lightened flask back to him.
Papposeilenos considered its weight in his dark hand.
Shrugging, he raised it to his lips and emptied it in a gulp.
The old fox tossed the flask aside and reached under a
blackberry bush, producing yet another flask. “Me first,” he
said, taking only a moderate swallow before passing it back
to me.
“As I was saying, you beardless kid: there is no
need to play Priapos. You have the luxury of a god’s
immortal life before you. Even you must learn
moderation.” Ah, poor Papposeilenos. Even you did not
suspect, did you? Like all the others you never knew that
we too would come to an end, that even our supposed
eternity had its limits. Ah, Pappo, you never knew either,
did you? And if you had, could you have told me? Could
you explain to a young god at the very beginning of a
lifetime of cavorting that this must all end? I doubt that I
would have believed you if you tried, no more than I
believed anything else you said that night.
“And another thing,” you intoned, sounding
pompous as you often did when the wine crept deep into
your mind. Hah! I could hardly wait for the wine to bring
you to Morpheus’ sleepy realm, to be free of your lectures
and lessons. “Another thing – some day you will find some
nymph, some other nymph, not one of those here in these
woods and mountains who has watched you grow up, not
one of those who allowed you to tease and arouse yourself
with their warm breasts. And she may not be as willing as
these nymphs here. She may not be willing at all.”
I harrumphed loudly, grabbing the flask, draining
this one, too. I could not believe what Papposeilenos said.
Who would ever refuse to roll with me across a soft bed of
dew-sparkling moss? Already I was confident of my great
prowess as a lover. Who would refuse me, a god, the son of
a god, a lover without equal?
Papposeilenos passed me a fresh flask, this time
not even taking the first draught himself. “Ah, sneer if you
will. Sneer away, you kid! But it will happen. And then
what will you do?”
I gulped more wine. “Why, chase her, of course!”
Surely this wine was making him dense. “Why, chase her,
laughing, yelling, braying, all through her own strange
woods. Chase her, until I catch her, until she knows who I
am, until she resists me no longer!”
The old satyr took a small swallow and belched
immediately, sending out a spray. “And if she still resists
you, even you, Pan? Will you force her? You can.” He
looked at me, the gaze of his bright grey eyes suddenly
appearing less clouded by the wine than they had been.
“You can,” he repeated.
 I shrugged, hiding my uncertainty behind the
upturned flask.
Now Papposeilenos’ dark hand reached out for the
flask. He took a longer swig. “You can, Pan. You can. But
beware the price you may pay for doing so.” He drank
again, and returned the flask.
Oh, if only I had understood what he meant that
night, hinting at the doom beneath a star-filled sky. Oh,
Syrinx! If only I had understood. Then you . . . then I . . .
Oh, if only . . .
Now Papposeilenos grabbed the flask, took a short
swallow, and passed it back. “Here, finish this!” He tossed
the flask back at me and I did as he said, throwing back my
head, opening wide my mouth and raising the flask to it. I
slowly drew back the flask until it was at arm’s length, the
remaining wine pouring out from its open mouth to mine in
a long, graceful arc. Like a juggler under cascading
pomegranates, I reached forward, catching every last drop
on my waiting tongue.
“Well done,” Papposeilenos said with a sweep of
his thick hand. He raised his heavy bulk up from the
ground, running his hands across the broad expanse of his
belly as he reached his full height. “we had a challenge, did
we not?” He motioned for me to rise.
I had been feeling a growing thickness about my
head, a slight pressure against the base of my pointy ears,
a throbbing above and below my eyes, along my teeth, a
thickness on my tongue, too. I had paid no mind while
Daschylos delivered his odd lecture. Now I rose, and the
drumming, throbbing thickness increased. And spread,
spread down my shoulders, grabbing fitfully at my gut,
lurching down my legs. For a moment I felt like Ikaros first
lurching down from the sky as the hot sun melted his waxen
wings. I reached out for the nearest tree trunk.
 “Look, Pan. Look there,” Papposeilenos said quite
close to my ear, never subduing his voice as he drew closer.
His words bounced inside the aching hollow of my head.
“Look there,” he repeated, poking me hard in the gut with
his elbow. I felt my throat clutch. I gagged. Finally, deeply
gasping in long breaths of cool night air, I looked to where
the old bastard pointed. There were two of them, two
dryads. The bright moonlight glanced off the soft curves of
their bodies, allowing the nightblack water of a nearby pond
to repeat the wonderful image. But the softly moving,
rippling effect of their reflection was too much for me. I
looked back at the nymphs, as they walked, as the taller
one, her hair the red of autumnal leaves, fashioned a small
wreath of white dog roses and set it upon her friend’s sweet
head.
“Well, Pan. Shall we?”
I swallowed hard, even as I nodded agreement.
“Come on, then,” Papposeilenos cried, prancing
forward a few steps with that uncanny grace of his. “But
there is one more lesson I must teach tonight, dear Pan.
Too much wine betrays the lover not only in the chase but
in the catching. Hah-ha!” he chortled, running on.
I took off after him, sneering at the small lead he
had stolen on me. No matter, I thought. I can catch this
old satyr any night. But the muscles in my legs seemed
weak, likely to bend and buckle under my weight. Another
spasm welled up from my gut. I belched, to no relief at all,
feeling only a sour taste in my mouth.
“Daschylos!” I shouted in betrayal, but the old tub
was already far ahead. His bulk crashed through bushes
and reeds, spreading them apart like a ship creating a
wake. The two dryads saw him now, and shouted their
obligatory shriek of mock horror. It pierced my ears
straight through, left and right, crashing together
somewhere in between.
I continued to lurch forward, my usual uncanny
balance drowned by Papposeilenos and his damn wine. My
steps were plodding and unsure. Where I usually brushed
by tree and bush and rock like the gentlest breeze itself,
now I careened from one to another, each ungainly step
sending new poundings from gut to head.
I gained no ground on the two escaping nymphs,
while Papposeilenos pranced after them, shouting with joy,
occasionally yelling back over his white-hairy shoulders,
“Pan! Come on! What’s keeping you, boy?” I could not
gag out enough air for a reply. I continued to lurch ahead,
watching venomously as Papposeilenos ran down the
shorter, rose-crowned dryad. Down they went among the
reeds, amidst cries of triumph and expectant giggles. The
wreath of white roses flew up into the air above the now
wildly waving reeds.
The other dryad, the taller one, stopped, looking
back, looking to see where I was, her hands rising
impatiently to her bare hips. But even as Papposeilenos
and his lover of this night went down behind their screen of
reeds, so did I too. Everything gave out at once – head,
legs, gut. I fell beside the inky pond and retched into a
hollow on the bank, a rasping, gasping, unsatisfying retch,
doing little to undo all that cheerfully proffered wine. My
guts at last empty but still churning, I crawled away along
the bank, away from where I had been sick. Then I stuck
my head into the pond several times, still to little relief.
I lay there, on my back now, my eyes closed,
closed because whenever I stared up at the stars they
seemed to revolve disconcertingly in the sky. I must speak
to Zeus about this, I told myself in a moment of sheer
idiocy. And so I lay there, feeling the night breeze lick the
wet curls of my head, lick the clammy skin above my eyes.
And then I felt another licking, further down, down where
the line of hair below my chest had begun to bud. My eyes
shot open, sending more pain through my battered head. I
looked down to see the tall dryad, licking.
She had moved, as only nymphs can, through the
reeds as quiet as the air itself. And now she crouched
beside me, caressing me with lips and tongue, moving
lower, lower. My phallos began to respond, to emerge and
rise up from its fleecy home, to beckon her even lower. She
needed no more invitation, but clambered atop me,
straddling me, ready for me. And I thought I was ready for
her, I was quite sure I was ready for her, until the wine paid
me one last betrayal, and I wilted beneath her waiting body.
Smiling, she dismounted and began again,
applying herself with wondrous vigor directly to my phallos.
Again it rose proudly, certainly, regally. And again it
collapsed so limply as she made ready to welcome it inside
her.
I groaned softly. My dryad disengaged and smiled
once again. She planted a kiss on my forehead and slipped
away as quietly as she had first approached, leaving me
alone in my drunken embarrassment. Pappo-seilenos’
lessons for that night were complete.
10.
I wish I had taken Papposeilenos’ lesson more to
heart. I drank too much this past night, all alone in my
cave. I have not done this in a long time. The birds chirp
mercilessly this morning. How can your head be so light
and heavy all at once?
I dreamt of Apollo – who else to see when drunk?
Hmm, I seem to spend most of my time dreaming, or
remembering my dreams. Is that what death is, an endless
state of dreaming? Do we dream eternally, doomed only to
remember what was, because nothing more will be?
Oh, Apollo, Apollo. I invoke you, Apollo! I call to
you! But quietly, while my head still throbs. Phoebus
Apollo. God of Delphi and Delos, god of medicine, music,
archery, prophecy. Beautiful Apollo. Apollo, my uncle, my
rival.
No. No invocation without sacrifice. What do I
have left in my cave? Oh, my head. The boy has not been
here for many days. Hah! The “gift of Apollo” leaves no
gift for Apollo.
Wait! Here’s one for you, Apollo. Here is an
offering. My jugs of wine are empty, empty. If Apollodorus
does not bring more wine, should he desert me, then I
drank the last of it, got drunk enough to invoke you! How
is that, beloved god?
Oh, Apollo, Apollo. What was it that made us
enemies? Was it your beauty versus my – my beauty? Was
it that?
Was it my myriad lovers, more even than your
own? Or that so many of your loves went bad – unbelieved
Kassandra murdered in falling Troy, Daphne turned into a
laurel, Koronis who played you false, the aged and shriveled
Cumaean Sibyl. I, too, had my sorrows – Pitys, Syrinx and
Echo – Echo.
 What then, Apollo, what? Or was our rivalry older
even than me? Was it something I inherited from my father
Hermes, who stole your cattle shortly after his own birth? I
am my father’s son, Apollo. No less than you were yours,
as austere as Great Zeus himself. I wonder, Apollo, did
Zeus die before you? Did you know, did you envisage
yourself on Zeus’s throne on Olympos? Or did you realize
that, Zeus having died, none of us could live for long
ourselves?
I used to spend days in the Corcyran Cave where I
was worshipped, above Delphi. I could see the
processionals at your temple as they trudged up the Sacred
Way, as they turned just below the Treasury of Athens, its
outer walls festooned with Persian arms and booty. That
was unseemly, Apollo. All those trophies from the great
victory at Marathon at your shrine! Were you at Marathon?
Were you? Ungrateful Hellenes.
You know, Apollo, some nights I would come down
from my Corcyran Cave, down to your temple at Delphi. I
would pull my lynx pelt about me and creep down to
Delphi. I would come over the eastern wall, past the golden
snake-entwined Tripod Column from Plataea, and stand
before your temple. Some nights I could even hear the
Pythia – the Oracle herself – coughing gently as she dozed
on her tripod, the fumes from the burning laurel leaves
clogging her breath. And then I would go inside, and stare
at your statue.
Of all the statues you inspired with your good
looks – at Bassai, your great statue on Delos, the sacred
island that was your birthplace – of them all, do you know
which one I like the best? Do you?
Delphi. It is old, Apollo, older than so many of the
others. Less shapely, less handsome. But no other statue
of you so captures the idiot look of Apollo in love. The ivory
at Delphi captures how you paled each time you lost your
heart. Your brows arching in unison, your eyes wide in
stupefaction. I could almost see young Eros behind you
with a sheaf of arrows. That is how I choose to remember
you, Apollo.
Apollo, beloved of Zeus, besotted by many, and
each time acting like a virgin lad seeing a naked woman at
last. Oh, Apollo. Rivals, yes. But equals? Hah!
Apollo, I played my pipes last night for the last
time. I know this. I played them for Syrinx, she who
became the reeds of my pipes when Ge transformed her.
The pipes sit here in my cave and will remain here
untouched after I, too, am gone. And the moist air will eat
at the leather cords, crack into the individual reeds, and my
pipes will be no more. My pipes will not hang like odd
trophies, like Orpheus’ lyre on Lesbos. No, when I am
gone, so too will Pan’s pipes be gone. That is better. Better.
Orpheus, wonderful Orpheus. Your descendant,
Apollo, how many generations removed? Orpheus, son of
Olagros, son of Pieros, son of Linus, son of Apollo. Each a
true son, each a musician. Oh, how you used Orpheus,
Apollo. How could you endlessly regale us all with
Orpheus’s wonderful talents on the lyre you gave him. But
you were only waiting, weren’t you, waiting for someone to
offer the inevitable, obligatory, “But surely Orpehus’ music
pales against your own, Apollo.” And you would hide those
eyes of your under flitting lids and wave your hand as if to
say, “Not so.” What can be more sickening than a god
seeking compliments?
Not I. I never bent over to flatter you. Why
should I? Was I not a musician in my own right? And one
no less than you. Hmph! That’s just what I said to you that
night as we sat in a grove of elms, drinking. Or rather, me
drinking and you strumming endlessly on that lyre. Each
plucked string bounced against my ears like the drip of
water in the far recesses of my cave that sometimes keeps
me awake at night.
You were crafty, weren’t you, Apollo? Too often
had you heard me compare my music to yours, refuse to
grant your preeminence. You waited for me to say it one
more time, just so you could say, “Then let us have a
contest.”
“A contest?” I echoed.
“Yes. A contest. Like the Pythian Games the
mortals hold among musicians.” I should have been
warned, for your idiot grin was missing, replaced instead by
a look so sly that my father Hermes could have worn it.
“Where?” I asked.
“Wherever. Someplace quiet, serene. Someplace
where our music can be appreciated.” You paused, and
then suggested, “Delos?”
“No. Not the sacred island of your birth.”
“Arkadia, then”
And I agreed, when I should have been alert to
the trap slowly encompassing me. “And who shall judge our
music?”
You gave the false appearance of deep thought.
“Perhaps a mortal of exquisite taste, like . . . Midas, the
king of Phrygia. And perhaps a god who is close to nature.
What about Tmolus, the mountain god? How’s that for a
pair of judges?”
Oh, Papposeilenos, I should have listened to you
about the effects of wine. “Done,” I said. Done.
And so we gathered in an Arkadian glade on a
peaceful summer’s night, me, Apollo, and our two judges.
In all our past rivalry Apollo and I had simply brushed past
each other, rudely. But we had never contested face to
face, like this. And now I wanted desperately to win, to
triumph.
The air that night was summerstill, but cool
enough for the air not to mute our notes. No wayward
breeze dared blow in that glade, rustling a leaf or even a
blade of grass, or even whispering ever so lightly in our
ears. There was the most perfect silence for our contest.
I offered the beautiful god the choice of going first
or last. It was almost worth losing to see him ponder the
dilemma. Should he go first and so establish a standard for
me to challenge? Or go last so as to be fresher in the
judges’ minds and ears when it was all over. Ah, to watch
that beautiful brow furrow in perplexity. I had to clap my
hand over my mouth to stifle my snickering.
“First,” Apollo said abruptly. “No, last . . . no,
first. Yes! First!”
And first Apollo was. We sat in a circle about
Apollo, me to his left, hunched on a mossy rock; Midas in
the center, his black beard perfumed and curled, carefully
arranging his purple robes about him, hoping that everyone
had forgotten his near-ruinous gift from Dionysos of that
golden touch; and the mountain god Tmolus, adorned in a
lion’s skin, the upper jaw crowning his brow just as Herakles
wore his. Apollo strummed his lyre a few times for tune
and then cleared his voice, loudly.
“We’re not singing as well, are we?” I asked. This
rattled Apollo, as I hoped it would. “I thought this was
merely a contest of our music, not our voices. After all , it
is hard for me to sing and play the pipes, too.”
“No,” Apollo stammered, “no.” I knew that he had
merely cleared his voice to make sure of having our
attention. But, as always, I could not resist.
“Very well,” I said, “proceed.”
 This upset Apollo further, to commence at my
command. His fingers plucked at the lyre again, nervously
now, at least two strings being misplayed. But soon his art
took over, and his right hand moved gracefully over the
lyre, wresting from its taut strings tones of awesome
beauty. I could feel the sound as it escaped from each
vibrating string, sounds of great emotion, of happiness, of
melancholy, and sweet sadness. Oh, I was moved by the
sound, not that I let it show. Nor could I see how such
music would ever improve Apollo’s wretched luck with
women. But to deny the beauty of Apollo’s music would be
to deny the warmth of his son Helios. Orpheus himself
would have destroyed his lyre had he heard Apollo that
night.
When Apollo finished he put down the lyre and
looked about. Appreciative, awed silence reigned. It was
my turn next, although I knew full well that my music would
not compete. How could it? It was not the same. Might as
well compare Apollo’s ass and mine for the best tail!
Mimicking Apollo, I cleared my throat with a loud
grinding noise, as if to break the spell of his music. Then,
just for emphasis, I spat.
Bringing the pipes to my lips I ran them back and
forth once just to make sure they were all clear. Then I
began in earnest, slowly at first, with high notes, light
notes, lifting up the spirits of my audience, bringing them
away from where Apollo had left them. I played my pipes
as if they were a line to a reluctant fish in a stream, cajoling
it , teasing it, never forcing it too fast. I played my
audience just that way.
And when I judged that the were with me I
increased the tempo, running up and down the scales,
drawing them with me now. Midas, that simpleton, was no
problem. But even Tmolus’ foot began to tap in time. And
Apollo, scowling at me with arms folded, unconsciously let
the hard looks slip from his renowned visage as my music
softened him like a flame against hardened wax.
I had them now, just as certain as my music had
me. I played faster and faster, the notes rushing out,
dragging me along, hopefully taking my audience as well.
On and on, faster and faster, higher, higher, seducing them,
everyone moving now with the music – and then I finished,
abruptly.
My hairy chest heaved for breath, glistening with
sweat. I was satisfied. I had played my music, and I had
played it well.
“Well?” Apollo said, as if to regain control quickly
after my performance.
“Well, indeed,” I repeated.
Tmolus shook his head as if to clear my music
from it, the mane of his lion’s cape moving in waves. He
pulled at his beard several times, almost wincing as he
made the effort to recall Apollo’s sweet sounds. For a
moment, for the merest flicker, I hoped the mountain god
would forget, and declare for me. I admit I wanted again to
win in that instant. Tmolus looked at me and then as
Phoebus Apollo. “Apollo,” he declared.
I looked over at Midas while his dark features
searched out each of us. Maybe Athene, in all her wisdom,
could have discerned what went through Midas’ greedy
mind, what he hoped to gain by creating a tie, what favor
he might expect from me. I surely do not know, even now.
“No,” he said, puffing himself up in self-importance.
“Apollo’s was too sweet, too sentimental. I vote for Pan.”
Idiot! Yet it was a tie. Tmolus harrumphed at
Midas’s choice. I said nothing. But it was all too much for
Apollo. Sputtering in protest he found a fit punishment for
the King of the Phrygians, clapping as ass’ ears in place of
Midas’ inadequate ones.
 So, in truth, it could be said that no one won our
little contest, although Apollo’s music was better, and it was
commonly said that he had bested me, Midas
notwithstanding. Personally, I cared not. I had played my
music in my way. Indeed, I had played so much to my
satisfaction that I could hardly wait for the judging to end.
I watched as Apollo departed smugly, one arm embracing
Tmolus as they walked, while Midas slunk away, his hands
vainly trying to cover his new ears. I waited several
respectful, agonizing moments as they all left – and then I
ran for the woods. I yelled up several trees and grabbed
the very first dryad I found and gave to her the benefit of
all my music did for me. So, who won, indeed! Apollo and
his self-satisfaction or me, romping in some vine covered
dell with a surprised and surprising dyad? Who, indeed.
11.
The docks on Alexandria are busy. I saw them
again last night. Thamuz is ready at last to put out to sea.
No bad omens marred his departure – no sneezing on the
gangplank, no crows croaking in the rigging, no wreckage
on the shoreline, no dreams of keys or anchors or boars or
owls. And no dreams of goats – the harbingers of waves
and storms at sea. A superstitious lot, these sailors, worse
than most mortals. Hmph! I ran a risk last night when last
I appeared to the Egyptian sailor. What if he had forgotten
my divinity, and had seen only my horns, my tail, my
legs? What then?
But he has not! No, Thamuz sailed on this
morning’s tide. His crew set sails against the northern
wind, heading for Rome. And Rome he will see – after he
comes to me in Epiros. After, only after.
And then an omen came to me. I was
Apollodorus. How good to see my own messenger on the
day that Thamuz finally set sail from Alexandria. It is too
soon to ask the boy more questions, to begin making the
requests I must make of him. Too soon. He must continue
to believe in me as a god. I must not fade until just before
Thamuz’s sails can be seen over the southern horizon. As
long as Apollodorus believes, then I can survive. He must
not know yet what will happen . . . what is happening to
me.
It is good to know I leave one believer behind, at
least one. I wonder, will Apollodorus still believe in me as
he ages? Will he remember me? Or will new gods displace
me, deny me, leave me as a vaporous memory?
If we old gods die and others follow – surely to be
replaced in their turn – were there not gods before us as
well? Who preceded us? Before Zeus and his siblings,
before the Titans, and before them Ge – Mother Earth
herself, and before her, Chaos.
But what preceded Chaos? Nothing? Then what
spawned him? And where is Chaos now, so many gods
having flowed from his descendants? My head aches from
these questions, as bad as if I had too much wine. I doubt
that even Athene could have answered these. Or would she
be too wise even to try? Maybe that is what wisdom really
is.
But where is Chaos now? He, alone, of all the
gods, is still alive – I suspect he never dies. No matter
which deity holds sway, Chaos will always be there –
slumbering, waiting, ever eager to begin things anew by
first reducing everything to nothing. Maybe that is who we
gods are – Chaos’ continually failed joke. Hah! There’s an
answer I like.

I walked with the boy down to the woods, and into

them. He headed down to his village. I walked alone in the
woods, the sun at my back. Shadows from the trees fell
across my path, and one pattern struck me. Three thin
trees, barely more than saplings, all in a row, the branch of
one crossing them all. Their combined shadow looked like a
temple, the columns and the lintel. And it was a temple,
my temple, the temple of Pan. No better temple has ever
been built to me, not even my Paneion high above
Alexandria. The temple I saw today is more fragile than
marble, perhaps. But it is Mother Earth herself who honors
me so, not mortal man. And this temple will go on long
after those man-made temples are decaying ruins.
Mount Olympos was such a place. What is it like
on Olympos now? Is there life, earthly life, on that wide
mountain, now that we gods are dead?
Hmph! I never much cared for Mount Olympos,
never enjoyed going there. All too formal. Great Zeus’s
palace. I think he built it more to impress the others, to
remind them of his place – and theirs – than for any other
reason. Great white columns of marble and alabaster
soaring out of sight past the clouds. And those clouds,
always reflecting whatever mood Zeus was in – snowy
white; golden or rosy, especially when he was in love; black
and grim whenever Zeus and Hera argued over his latest
lover. And floors of finest marble, so slick underfoot. The
rare times I went there, by custom or command, I could
always feel Great Zeus’ grey eyes on me as my hooves
clacked against the floor, as if he were waiting for me to
track in some forest mud – or worse.
Ha-ha! I once did just that. Once, on my way to
Olympos – I think to celebrate the wedding anniversary of
Great Zeus and Hera – like a war memorial – I passed some
sheep droppings on the lower slopes of the mountain. I
picked up two or three pellets. They were old and quite
hard, no worse than handling the dry turds peasants use for
fuel. I entered the great hall with my hands respectfully
behind my back. I could see that Great Zeus, sitting so
very far away on his throne, was pleased by my unusually
demure approach. In my hand were the sheep pellets. I
waited as I crossed the room, all the others watching as it
was my turn to pay obeisance. No one challenged Zeus’s
primacy or rule, but how we hated to be reminded of it, or
to have to acknowledge it in front of the others – except for
some of his children. I could always count on Apollo,
Athene, Artemis to put on extravagant displays of respect
and affection.
I waited, waited until I was near enough for Zeus
to see what happened, but not near enough for him to see
how. Walking slowly, as required – so Great Zeus could
drain the last drop of respect from the ceremony – I let a
pellet roll down the back of my leg. Everyone saw it hit the
marble floor as if dislodged from the cleft in my hoof. I
stopped, and looked down. I stole a quick glance at Zeus.
His great white brows arched, in surprise first. I casually
lifted my right leg and inspected my hoof. Nothing. Then I
did the same with my left leg and seemingly dislodged
another pellet. Surprise turned to horror and disgust on
Zeus’ brow. I heard a gasp or two from the others. I
shrugged and smiled an embarrassed smile, and resumed
my stately progress. Out of the corner of my eye I could
see Apollo, his disgusted scowl a perfect reflection of his
father’s. And I stole a glance ay my own rather. Hermes,
too, frowned, but I could tell that he had seen through my
ruse, for he had to struggle to keep down a malicious,
conspiratorial grin. There was no tricking the trickster who
sired me.
Later, as we went in to dinner, my father came up
to me. We embraced, and the he said, “Next time, you
should clean your hooves before coming into the palace. Or
perhaps your hands.”
But what is there now on Olympos? Does Great
Zeus’ palace still exist, or did it vanish with him? The great
rooms, the fountains, the fine furniture – did they all
disappear as soon as Zeus himself breathed his last?
Even Zeus, Great Zeus. What is it like when a god
dies? Did Zeus die like his mutilated father Uranos? Did
Zeus know at the end, like I do, that even he must die? Did
his oracle at the Dodonian Oak suspect the end? Which
thunderstorm was Zeus’ last? Which one was the first in
which Great Zeus hurled no lightning? Did the lightning
seem different that day – less grand, less strident, less
brilliant? Or did it matter at all?
And yet Zeus left some part of himself behind – if
anyone even knows it. He reshaped Mount Ida on Krete,
his childhood home and haven, where he nursed on the
goat Amalthea, into the image of his profile. As long as
that mountain stands then Great Zeus will be seen, if
mortals only know what they are looking at.
Mount Ida remains. Mount Olympos remains, but
not we who once dwelt in a heavenly palace on its broad
summit.
12.
For too many days and nights the World has not
seemed to be the same color that it was when I was young.
It all seemed brighter then, sunnier, glowing. Now it has
been dulled in shades of grey. Has it changed, or have I?
Or have we both? When the sun rises does it still suffuse
Delos in that same pink-orange glow, starting with the very
sea wall, moving back past the statues and votive urns,
back past the temples with their columns tinted pink at the
base, the friezes blue and red and white? Do the buildings
still stand out so, while the rest of the island sits pale green
and dusky brown, offering a backdrop but not competition?
How can Delos still shine when we gods no longer inhabit
these places, when our statues are not living memories, but
only reminders of what was?
Ah, but tonight, tonight. Tonight the World
recaptured all that it had lost. The mountains to the east
pale in color and begin to fade. A rim of pale purple,
orange, pink rises slowly in the sky. Beneath it comes a
curtain of pale blue-grey, pushing up the paling blues of
daylight, arching up overhead, seemingly northward.
The paling blue-grey covers all, until every feature
of the World blurs and fades.
The sun is orange as it descends, reddening to
deep pink as it approaches the rim of Ocean. And now the
sun is gone, and a half-moon hangs lonely in the stubbornly
blue sky. I am eager for the stars to appear, to keep me
company.
The sun is gone. A pale pink glow hints at where
it slipped away. Greyness pulls over the World like a
blanket over someone descending deeply into sleep.
The stars appear at random across the sky, one
here, one there, not all at once, not all in the same part of
the heavens. And a rim of pale pink and lightest blue
lingers long after the passing of time.
I have seen such an evening before. Such a
beautiful, placid evening on the very verge of war.
A runner, moving quickly over the Tegean Hills – a
man, no a woman. No, clearly a man – above the waist
chest flat and covered with sweat-matted hair. But below
the waist a brown triangle. A hermaphrodite, like that awful
child fathered by my father on Aphrodite? Then, as the
runner nears I can see it is a man, naked except for the
small leather pouch girding his phallos and balls, tied about
his waist with thongs. Naked may be fine for the races at
Olympia, but who wants to run great distances with their
phallos and balls flapping about painfully? So, it was a man
sweating, panting, racing madly from Attica towards the
dour Spartans.
That is how I first saw Philippides, on an evening
like this in the hills above Tegea. In truth, I had known for
some time of the coming of the Medes and the Persians to
Hellas. Who could not know – mortal or god – that the
entire East was on the march to make war on the Hellenes?
Who could not understand the meaning of the earthquake
Poseidon delivered at Delos? And so I waited in the hills,
waited for Philippides to pass me.
How long he seemed to take as he came down the
road from Argos. “No swift-footed Hermes here,” I smirked,
invoking my father’s name. I almost left my perch to spring
up behind the Athenian, hoping to spur him along with a
small fright, but I resisted the urge. “Patience is a virtue,”
as Great Zeus so often told us, recalling yet again the revolt
that overthrew his father. So I waited. And waited.
Philippides’ heavy panting preceded him along the
track, as did the stench of his sweat. His near-naked body
glistened from his exertions. I sprang from my rocky perch
and hovered above him in the air. I blew a soft note from
my pipes. Philippides’ head snapped around at the sound.
His already plodding pace slowed even further.
“Why Athenian, does your city ignore me? I am
Pan Elis – Pan of Good Luck – who has been good to you in
the past and will do so yet again.”
Philippides’ dark eyes, bleary with fatigue, widened
as he heard my words. He shook his pretty young head, as
if to shake my voice from his unbelieving ears. And then he
was off again, my booming laugh virtually carrying him
down the road to Sparta. Indeed, would he ever have seen
Sparta without me? No, or why else would there be a
sanctuary to me at Tegea, where all this took place, where
men held the tortoises to be sacred to me? And a niche
dedicated to me beneath the Akropolis in Athens, where
sacrifices and foot-races were held. Ah, the irony! At Tegea
there are sacred tortoises to my impelling a runner, while at
Athens they held foot-races. These mortals – how hard it
was for them to decide how to honor us.
I would have gone to Marathon anyway, just for
the mischief of it all. What gods, I wondered, would these
Easterners invoke? Would their gods appear? Had I but
suspected the havoc that a later eastern god would bring to
us all, perhaps I would not have been so eager then. So I
went to Marathon.
I have sat unnoticed in cities and villages and
heard bards sing of the women weeping as their men went
off to war. But was there ever weeping like that I heard the
night before that battle? Had any of these minstrels heard
that weeping their hearts would have broken. To gain some
advantage on the plain at Marathon the Hellenes had felled
trees, hoping to obstruct the Persian cavalry. Oh, the
weeping, the threnodies shattering my ears as I came over
the hill called Agrieliki, above the Athenian camp. The
pitiful cries of dryads and hamadryads forced from their
leafy homes, of those dying as their trees were felled! Red
rage overwhelmed me. I clawed at the earth with my
hooves. I would make straight for the Persian camp and aid
them against these crazed Athenians!
And I suppose I would have, had not Athene
intercepted me on the slopes of Agrieliki. “You cannot help
those men!” she cried, her grey eyes burning at me.
“Why not? Look! Look what your Athenians have
done! Look at the tree nymphs dead and dying! Your
people have done this!”
“And would they have done this had not the Medes
and Persians come to Attica? Who lies at fault here, Pan,
those who invade or those who resist them?”
Hmph! I never had much use for Athene – all
business and no pleasure. But there was some merit in
what she said, and some threat. Her helmet and spear
seemed a little more than decorative that night, and even I
knew better than to cross Great Zeus’ favorite daughter.
So, with my hairy chest still heaving with anger I turned
away from the Persian camp, and spent part of the night
aiding the dryads, trying to find some new homes,
succoring others as only I could do best.
So, I must join Athene against the Persians and
Medes, with their curled black beards and their strange
leggings. But how? Not just amongst the ranks of
Hellenes. It must be something worthy of me, of Pan. And
then a ruse came to me. I slipped into the Persian camp
and assumed the guise of the traitor Hippias, he whose
tyranny the Athenians had overthrown, who now traveled
with the enemies of Hellas so as to regain his power. I took
Hippias’ form and carefully picked my way to the ornate
tent of the Persian commander, Datis, and suggested that
we re-embark our dreaded cavalry in order to descend
quickly on Athens by sea once these few troublesome
Hellenes encamped before us were destroyed. The black-
bearded general demurred, but my disguised grey brows,
arching with hints of the faction in Athens waiting for my
return, did the trick. Running his hand through his scented
black curls, Datis foolishly gave the order. The cavalry, with
their bronze helmets and horsehair crests, were re-
embarked. They would seize Athens and we would join
them after our undoubted victory. Or so I, disguised as
Hippias, whispered in Datis’ gullible ears.
And then, with Eos already lighting the eastern
horizon, I transformed myself into an Ionian in the Persian
service and returned amidst the still threatened trees. With
the cries of the dryads still in my ears I sought out Athenian
sentries and whispered traitorously that the Persian cavalry
was gone. As I had hoped, the Hellenes dropped their axes
at once and ran to their commander, Miltiades, with the
news. Thus did I win the battle at Marathon, and save
some few tress on the plain between the Agrieliki and
Kotroni.
After this, the battle meant little to me. The
Persians had already been abandoned by their gods. The
Athenians and the Plataeans had not. Abandoned? Hah, I
doubt that any of the Persian gods even crossed with their
army from Asia to Europe! Where was Emperor Darius’
favorite, the sky-god Ahuramazda? Where was Mazda?
Where was Anahita? Better yet, where was Mithra, who so
closely resembled Apollo? Ah, there was the Persian god I
sought in battle. If I cannot vie with Apollo, then Mithra will
do! Where is this Persian sun-god? No where.
We gods gave Miltiades good omens and he led his
Athenians in a charge, losing in the center but winning on
the flanks. Ah, the joys of battle! The noise and clamor,
the excitement! Over and over I entered the Persian ranks,
jabbing here, tripping there, disguised now as a huge Mede
with a great reddish beard spread over my breastplate. But
mostly I whispered words of doom in the invaders’ ranks,
hints of treason and betrayal, until I instilled in them what
men now call panic. Panic! Named for me! I did this! Pan
did, the Savior of Attica and Athens.
And now the Athenians and their allies chased the
panicky Persians to the sea, trying to destroy the ships
anchored in the bay below the Charadna River. And it
happened that two Athenians seemed to set out after me as
I joined in the retreat, appearing again as the red-bearded
Mede. One I cuffed roughly and sent sprawling, but there
was something in my gesture that seemed to reveal me to
the other Athenian, one Epizelos by name. I had no desire
to kill any Hellenes. Indeed, I feared to, not knowing what
Athene might do to me in turn. Yet I dared not be
revealed. So I blinded poor Epizelos as punishment for
seeing through the disguise of a god.
Now all was chaos and slaughter in the Persian
lines as they fought to escape the Hellenes’ pincers, and to
save their ships. On this day the sea truly was wine dark,
reddened with the blood of the invaders. Persians and
Medes and their subject allies died in their hundreds or
were made prisoner. The Hellenes had won.
That night I stole back into the Athenian camp
and picked my way amongst the prisoners. Here, indeed, I
found the true fruits of victory. An altar at Tegea and races
in Athens are one thing, but here was a Carian slave girl,
abandoned in the Persian camp during their rout. Cloaked
in a hastily borrowed himation I took her away to the slopes
of Agrieliki along with a flask of Chalybonian wine. Darius
alone, the King of Kings, was permitted to drink this brew.
It was either a great gift to Datis, or the general stole it
himself. No matter, this flask I now took, along with the
beautiful Carian. Soon the slavegirl was abandoned in other
ways, lost in the rapturous pleasures of my victory
celebration. How she trembled at first, in fear. How I made
her writhe with ecstasy. Once again did I conquer that day.
What have I become, sitting here in my cave
above the sea? I am just like the rheumy-eyed veterans I
have heard so often myself, from Troy, from Marathon, from
Salamis, from Aegospotami, Cunaxa and Chaeronea, from
every battle fought by the Hellenes. Now too I sit and
reflect on the glory of my past, so as to escape the absence
of a future. I once mocked mortals when they did this,
when my own days were limitless. But now I understand
them. To remember, at the closing of days, the time when
one was young, when one did great deeds, saw great
things, dreamed great dreams. It is a comfort to remember
such times, to feel that some effort was well-spent. To give
the past meaning, more than just memory. To remember .
..
13.
Last night I listened as the now nameless wind
rustled the leaves of the trees. The World had more trees
when I was young. I never felt lonely when I was among
trees, sheltered in the deep woods. The dryads and
hamadryads kept me company, the lovely nymphs
whispering and laughing in the branches. Now they are
gone, too. The rustling of the leaves no longer carries their
soft voices. Now that sound is hollow and empty.
I left my cave, sleep having parted company with
me again, and watched as the tree tops waved in mocking
greeting before the starry sky. Oak, pine, cypress and
juniper all mingle in the space before my cave. I rose off
my woolly haunches and walked among them. The needles
of pine trees would jab at those mortals running in flight
through the woods. So memories jab at me among the
trees tonight. So many trees; so many dryads. How many
nights did they giggle in their branches above us and we
sang and drank and reveled? Midnight lovers entwined in
pairs, and threes – and more! Great vistas of coiled,
writhing bodies. Endless flasks of wine. Mortals’ clothes
abandoned everywhere. Thrysos thrown to the ground
now, those pine-topped flays no longer needed to stimulate
and to arouse. And the sounds! Laughing, sighing, singing,
panting. The sounds that lips make against flesh. A chorus
of shared pleasures. Gods and mortals and satyrs and
nymphs, all one on those woodland nights in Arkadia. And
then some dryads, carried away by our fervor below, would
slip down and join us, to be carried away now by the sweet
madness of pleasure.
When did the dryads die? I do not remember their
passing. They used to die when their trees were felled, like
those so brutally killed before Marathon. But all these trees
still stand. There are trees everywhere in Hellas – plum
trees, cherry trees, hornbeam, spindle and all the others.
But their dryads are gone, all gone. Did they die too when
people stopped believing? Perhaps those living in the
sacred trees died first – the oaks of Zeus, the ash of
Poseidon, the hazel of my father Hermes, the hawthorn of
his mother Maia. As the gods waned did the dryads in
these trees die? Perhaps, in whatever autumn that was,
their souls fluttered to the ground with the dying leaves,
and mingled with Mother Earth on the way to Hades.
Maybe that is how the tree nymphs passed.
The woods seem lonely to me now, deserted. The
sound of the leaves taunts me. I returned to my cave.
I returned only to remember a dryad I had known,
Daphne. While I was in the woods a pine cone had blown
loose from its tree and landed before the entry to my cave.
I found the cone this morning, and thought of Daphne and
the pine tree that was her home. That tree is gone now,
like so much else.
Daphne was different for me, special and
extraordinary. And yet, I have not thought of her in ages. I
wonder why. With Daphne it was less frenzied, less
passionate than my coupling usually was; it was different,
more languorous, more tender, warmer. Daphne did not lay
with me out of the frenzy induced by nighttime revels, but
out of choice. She accepted me for what I was, and – loved
me! How hard to think of it, even now. I recall how she
would run her hands through my woolly curls, and touch my
horns – not out of curiosity as so many other lovers did, but
out of affection that these horns were mine. She would
slowly run her hands down the thick hair on my chest even
as I loomed over her naked body, our loins already joined.
With Daphne there was no hint of revulsion at my form, no
need to be lost first in the wine-induced madness.
Daphne is dead now. No, not like the others who
died unexpectedly. No, she died when her pine tree was cut
down.
 I did not know at first that she was dead. It was
several days since last we had coupled before I returned to
her tree, days of wine and madness in some other woods. I
returned to Daphne for the sweetness she offered me,
returned only to find the gashed and jagged stump, the
inner wood white and raw, the sickly sweet smell of fresh
cut wood in the air. A hunter named Hippomedon had
chopped down her tree for fuel for his miserable hut. For
fuel! To heat the hovel in which he lived he had destroyed
my own warmth.
It was night when I crept down the hill to
Hippomedon’s hut. Smoke rose out of the squat daub
chimney. Outside stood a pile of freshly cut pine. Tears
stung my eyes as I yelled out, “Boreas! Boreas!” I
summoned down the north wind. Hippomedon grew cold in
his hut, so very cold. He came out for more wood, wood
from my Daphne’s tree, for his fire. But there was not
enough, for he was so cold. He came out for more, and
more again, until all the wood was consumed. Then, in his
chill madness, he began to throw what few belongings he
had on the flames, until the entire hut was ablaze while he
stood outside, blithely warming his hands before it. Other
hunters lived in glades nearby, and they came running when
they saw the flames.
“What is this, Hippomedon? What are you doling?
You will set the entire forest ablaze.”
But all the now mad hunter said was, “I am
warming myself,” even as Boreas blew the flames into a
frenzy. I made a funeral pyre of his hut for my Daphne.
And Hippomedon lived out his days in frigid madness.
I took the pine cone this morning and kept it as a
remembrance for my remaining days. I have never been
sentimental. Why now do I keep this memento? Is this a
sign of age, a desperate clinging to the past?
14.
Selene has gone again. There is no moon tonight.
Or rather, Selene has been long gone, and now her orb has
gone as well, taking with it that special blue-black color
from the sky. No, tonight the sky is dark, so very dark.
But the night is not still. The chirping voices of
hosts of insects cackle and crash against my pointy ears.
Hmph! “Pan, Lover of Noise,” the mortals called me. Not
now. Now I would love some quiet, some sleep.
Perhaps I should be grateful. Perhaps the insects
serenade their onetime companion of the night. Perhaps
they call out to me to join them as I have so many, many
times before. Not tonight, not any night, not any more.
And yet, I did love noise, once. I loved the awful
sound of Great Zeus’ bellowing thunder. What madness
could be more pleasant than dashing about a forest chasing
maenads and nymphs while thunderbolts crash in the skies
above, the screams of the pursuer and pursued, lover and
loved, mingling with the bright white noise streaking
through the sky, the noises all mingling to blot out any
thoughts save pleasure? Or, with loins locked, my phallos
spouting triumphant even as Great Zeus split the heavens
with a fearsome blast. A gesture of approval from the Lord
of Olympos himself. Thank you, Great Zeus.
And the noise of the sea, the endless sameness
and endless change of the waves as they break on the very
edge of Poseidon’s realm. I can hear the waves on the
shore below my cave. You could hear them in the camps at
Marathon the night before the battle.
Ah, yes! And the sound of battle. That strange,
compelling sound of metal striking metal, sometimes dully,
sometimes with bright clanging; of wooden shafts and
bones all snapping; shrieks, cries, and yelling. All of it
drumming in the ears, blocking out everything, blurring
indistinctly, only to be recalled later in its separate sounds.
Later, when the carousing of the drunken victors and the
moans of the wounded and dying all fall away. Strange, not
unlike the sounds we made in Arkadia when we pursued
one another in rapture. No swords here, or spears, but a
phallos ready to plunge. And no wounds to be made, only
the waiting koleos to be found, to be filled. And moans of a
different kind, not of pain, but of pleasure. And still, the
pattern is the same.
And my noise! Me! Great Pan himself!! The
lovely sound of my braying cry. The terror I caused when
hunters or shepherds disturbed my midday nap, crying out
across the forests. No word, no oath, just an awful
trumpeting noise shattering the day just as these intruders
shattered my sleep. And the sounds we made when we
chased each other through the woods. “Evoe! Evoe!” we
shouted. “Evoe!” Our cry, our special sign that the bonds
are slipping, that restraint gives way, that we are ready, we
are eager, we want pleasure, passion, mindlessness as our
senses explode. “Evoe!”

I have sat all night, sleepless, at the entry to my

cave. I have listened to the night, as its sounds returned to
life after my brief cries. And, then, as cold, grey light crept
above the trees, silence finally came. It came in that
suspended moment between night and day, that slow
awakening the mortals call dawn. Not a pretty dawn, not
this morning. Too many clouds streaking the sky, grey and
blues and dying dull purples. A heavy dawn, a clumsy
dawn. None of Eos’ lost artistry here. Ah, but that
wonderful silence as the creatures of the night shrink before
the light, before the creatures of the day reclaim the World
as their own. A regal silence, as the sun regains the
heavens. And where are you now, Helios? Your bright
chariot and its four white horses fly no more – and yet the
sun rises every day. Do you sleep still on your island of
Trinacria in the west? Or did the golden boat that carried
you each night back to the land of the Ethiopians in the east
simply vanish, with you on it?
So I have spent these wonderful, fleeting moments
of silence. I have sat here, facing east, watching this
sullen, grudging dawn. Just as the temples the Hellenes
built for us all faced east.
But like the Hellenes, I will die facing west. When
I found my cave I selected the place for my bedding that
way. But who will inter me? Who will pour at least three
handfuls of earth on me? How can I be at peace in
whatever afterlife I go to unless this is done?
The boy. The boy will bury me. I know he will.
He will return, to Hellas, to Epiros, to my cave. I know he
will. And then he can perform the rites that must be done.
I know he will.

The boy has come, and gone. We did not talk

about my burial. Not today, not yet. Instead he jabbed at
me again with disconnected questions.
How he amuses me! Through all his questions I
sense the one question that he wants answered most and
yet will never ask. “What was it like to be a god?” Strange!
how I use the past tense when I pose the question myself.
And yet, how to respond? A feeling of freedom; an absolute
absence of cares; of greater abilities, appetites and fancies
– and of gratifications. An eternity of ripening Spring is how
I would describe it. And what of the jealousies – like Hera’s
thousands, real or imagined about philandering Great Zeus;
or rivalries – like Apollo and me; or tragedies – like Syrinx,
like Iynx, like Echo? What of them? Did these make us any
less godlike because we too felt the call of our emotions?
Or did this not endear us to our mortal devotees? We were
above them and yet of them, superior but comprehensible.
 How will they fare under these new gods from the
east? These gods seem to me more cloaked in unnecessary
mystery, more terrible, more severe. Too eager to inspire
awe. Perhaps it is only their uncertainty over their new
role. I do not know. But I am glad that I will not bear
witness to their running the World.

I expected to see the boy yesterday. It is three or

four days since he was last here. It is not like him to leave
me for so long. Or has he, too, stopped believing? No, he
must not! Hmph! The god praying for believers, rather than
the other way around. No, as long as this boy lives I will
have one believer left. He is necessary to me. I wonder if
he realizes that he may be the last believer of the last
Olympian god?
There is a noise outside my cave. I peer around
the entry. Ah! Apollodorus. I watch him as he approaches
– a firm step, well-shaped limbs, good for swimming, as
swim he must, soon.
He sits down before the entry, as always. I come
out now, scowling just a bit, the displeasure of a god. “I
had expected you yesterday,” I harrumph.
Apollodorus nods. “Yes, I meant to come, but . .
.” His right hand moves up to his neck, briefly covering it.
Only now do I notice the bright cherry mark there, the scar
of battle, the bite of passion. I cannot contain my smile.
“This is one excuse that Great Pan can well accept.” The
mark is submerged momentarily as the boy blushes.
How old is this boy? Fourteen? Fifteen? “You
gave as good as you got, I trust.” He blushes again. “Your
first lover?” I ask proddingly.
The boy jumps to his feet. “No! not my first! I’ve
slept with several!” Oh, I’ve touched a nerve.
“Do you have a favorite?”
 Apollodorus shrugs. “There is one, Labda. I’ve
slept with her several times. But last night I was with
Eurybis, for the first time.”
“And?” I prod.
But he shrugs again.
“Well, never mind. We must celebrate your
success. Let us have some wine.”
As we sip our wine I amuse myself with the boy’s
inability to answer which lover is his favorite. There is no
answer. I know that well. Each is better, each is different,
all are the same. An old lover brings the pleasure of
familiarity, shared passions, known preferences. And a new
lover – ah! the touches, new skin, freshness, new delights.
Yet I must laugh still over the boy’s choice of
words. “Slept with,” he said. How these mortals yearn to
describe it and yet shy away from the act itself. “Slept
with!” Sleep is the last thing on your mind, until ardor and
passion are spent, and all melts into languorous rest.
Would there be jealousy anywhere if all lovers did was
sleep? Or “having sex.” Everyone has sex, one way or
another, except poor Hermaphrodite, who had both. Or
“making love,” as if love can be made. Love can be born,
can grow, can die. Love can be nurtured, protected
betrayed. But can love be made?
I never talked much about the pleasures of the
flesh. I just felt longing and did it! A leer out of the corner
of the eye, a coy response from some maenad or naiad and
off we went, a mad gallop for two, both riders, both ridden,
stallion and mare, over and over. Sex, love, passion,
pleasure. It was always there, a fact of existence,
especially in those wonderful moments of lust, when the
mind is carried away, when all thought is lost to feeling.
But why talk about it, or especially talk around it? Do it.
 As if such an act can be described. Revel, rapture,
passion, mad coupling. They are all inadequate. It cannot
be named, only experienced, enjoyed. Time and time
again.
Now look at me. All excited again. Ah, the
memories flood back. Selene, the moon herself; and Aega,
the daughter of Helios the sun. Can anyone else, mortal or
god, boast that? And Echo, my dear wife, cursed though
she was by Hera, and doomed by her passion for
Narkissos. And Eupheme. And Syrinx and Pitys – no! I will
not think of them, not now. And all the others, maenads,
dryads, naiads, oreads, hamadryads, courtesans, village
maids, slaves; Athenians, Carians, Ionians, Macedonians,
Egyptians. How I loved them all, and still do. I would take
any of them now, and yet instead of grappling with a warm
passionate body, I sit in my cave and grapple with my
memories.
There is a sadness to this time in my life, when the
past seems so much more real than the quickly fleeting
present.
15.
The boy Apollodorus came running up my hillside
today. His coming and going marks the passing of my days
as Thamuz’s boat beats against the northern winds.
Apollodorus ran, hurrying to reach the sanctuary of my cave
before a thunderstorm broke over the forest. I saw the
heavy, dark grey clouds way out to sea. Flashes of
lightning shot out of them before they made land, striking
emptily at the slate covered waves. Thunder and lightning,
all without Great Zeus. Did he create so well that his works
go on beyond him? Or was he ever necessary to them at
all?
Watching Apollodorus run reminded me of the
young athletes competing at Olympia. I told him that and
he smiled. No – he beamed. “Truly?” he asked. “Do I truly
remind you of the great Olympian athletes?” That was not
quite what I had said but I lied, saying, “Yes.” And then I
told him about the Olympics I had seen, how I watched
perched on the altar dedicated to me right beside the
entrance to the race course for horses. The Hellenes call
this area the Beak, for it resembles the prow of a ship.
Agnaptos built the Beak, and the stoa just beyond it. But
the stoa I did not talk about with the boy. I could not, could
not talk about Echo’s Stoa. If the boy ever goes to Olympia
some day, let him find it for himself. Let him shout down
the length of the stoa and hear his voice come back to him
seven times or more.
Selene, Syrinx and one hundred more, and more
yet again. Yet it was with Echo that I went through a
marriage ceremony in the deep Arkadian woods. Why her,
why Echo? She did not stir my immediate passion at first,
as did poor Syrinx. Nor was she as beautiful as my dear
Selene. Yet it was her, Echo, whom I married. Why?
 Hah! why should I be able to answer that
question? Why did Zeus take Hera as his wife, or Aphrodite
take Hephaistos as her husband? Did they know why they
were wed? Does anyone one? Did I?
No, even now I do not. Does it matter anymore?
No.
And yet – and yet Echo was different. She must
have been, or else why would we have wed? And she was,
she was different. I knew that the very first time we met.
I lay in a bower made soft with pine needles,
entwined in the arms and legs of a maenad, her passions
overwhelming and now overwhelmed. I grunted with
pleasure, bucking madly against her until that wondrous
moment of release and relief. And then, just as my phallos
gushed, something large and wet dropped on my back, first
one, then several more. “Arghh!” I yelled, breaking free of
my lover’s embrace, sweaty skin sticking painfully together,
looking up for the offending bird who dared befoul my back
at the height of my passion.. But there was no bird in the
canopy of branches above us. And then I was hit again.
I turned, only to be struck now on my chest. I
reached down into my sweat-matted hair and pulled away
an overripe grape, or rather the remains after it had
exploded against me. And then I was struck again, and
again by overripe grapes, each one releasing its sticky
juices as it pummeled me.
Now, through the gloom of my bower, I could see
her, or rather – them, two nymphs sitting beneath a heavily
laden grapevine. Both giggled uncontrollably, and then one
plucked yet another grape and flung it at me.
This one hit my belly. “By my very horns and tail!”
I screamed as I ran towards them. The one nymph, the
one just sitting and laughing, jumped up and fled. But the
other one sat there, her left palm full of heavy, thick
grapes. I charged out of my bower and up the slope where
she sat so serenely. She had yet another grape ready to
fling, her arm poised like the most practiced soldier with a
javelin. And then she let fly, unerringly. My phallos was
still stiff from my interrupted pleasures and my sudden
anger. The heavy, aged grape hit my phallos squarely, and
hard.
Even an old, juice-laden grape can bring unique
and exquisite pain when it is thrown at your phallos. I
bellowed, my hands instinctively clutching my aggrieved
phallos. Still running, I broke stride now, and stumbled.
And still the nymph sat there, laughing hard now, tears
forming in the corners of her very blue eyes. Panting now,
in some pain still, and in anger, I let loose the cry that
mortals dread, the one I reserve only for those most
deserving to be frightened near enough to be sent to Hades’
dark kingdom. I could hear birds, beasts and revelers all
across the forest start at the sound. And yet she sat there
still.
Again I charged, close now, passing the first laden
tendrils of the grapevine. And then she let fly with her
other hand, the one clutching a small mound of the
engorged red fruits. She threw them all at once, and they
smashed into my face. The sticky juice got into my eyes,
my nose, my beard. Again I was forced to stop my charge.
Only now did the nymph jump up.
I could vaguely see her through the grapes’
stinging juice and my own pawing fingers. But she did not
run away, she did not tease me to give chase. She came
down to me amidst the grapevines and stood before me,
almost insolently. “Why, Pan, you are covered with the
juice of grapes! Here, let me help you.” She was shorter
than me, by almost a head, and so she stood on tiptoe to
reach my aggrieved eyes, kissing them gently, softly, licking
the lids as I closed them. And then she kissed the tip of my
nose, my moustache, my lips. And my lips responded to
hers, but only for a moment, as she continued to kiss away
each of the grapes she had thrown. One at the base of my
throat, several amidst my hairy chest, the one smashed
against my belly, the remains of the one that broke on my
phallos.
After several moments I broke away from the
phallic embrace of her lips, her hands clutching my
buttocks, her fingers toying with my tail, and sank to the
ground beside her. She reclined, and I mounted her, and
we were lovers.
“Echo,” she told me later, when I asked her name,
as my fingers played with her flesh, her flesh a bit darker
than most nymphs, her hair dark, and long and wavy. “Ah,
look, my dearest Echo, but you too have grape juice on
you.” I reached up and grabbed several grapes, and
crushed them against her, on her breasts, her belly, her
nether hair, her koleos. And I licked her clean as she had
licked me, ending again in a mad, rollicking, roiling
embrace.
“Echo,” she had told me, in a very soft voice, a
gentle voice, a voice with a seeming laugh entwined within
it. “Echo.”

Echo consumed my thoughts in the days and

nights ahead. Even we gods have fallen in love. I have,
more times than I remember now. But Echo was different.
She tugged at me in a way that no other lover did. I felt
that tug, I responded to it. Every night we spent together,
beneath that grapevine until we had plucked it bare, by
lakesides, in the cave that was her home. And for the first
time I did not seek out others, just because they were
there; nor did my passion for her cool to the point where I
kept coming back out of habit and lingering affection.
 It rained one night, and we lay in the bower where
Echo had pelted me with those grapes. We lay, tired, a little
sweaty, in each other’s arms, letting the night mist refresh
us again. And as we lay there Echo began to describe to
me a wedding she had seen, in Athens, between two
mortals. She described in great detail how she and her
sister Pyrene had been in the Attic woods when an Athenian
maiden came to make he offerings to the nymphs and to
Artemis, before her wedding. Intrigued, Echo and Pyrene
followed the bride’s procession back into the city. There,
the bride sacrificed a lock of hair each to Athene, to Hera,
and to the Fates.
In the procession that followed the rites at her
father’s home, the bride and her closest maiden friend, her
paranymph as the Hellenes call them, walked with Echo and
Pyrene unheard and unseen beside them, as the
bridegroom led them to his open carriage. Echo described
to me the white veil of the bride; her small crown of
flowers; the jewels and bracelets with which she was
adorned for this special day; the smell of her perfume.
“Lilies, from Aegina,” Echo guessed.
“Why do you tell me all this?” I asked.
“Because I would like to be married like that
Athenian girl. Because for one day she was like Hera
herself, a queen over all else. Because her face showed me
a beauty and a happiness that I have rarely seen on any
mortal or god. And I would like to share in that.”
I shook my head. “But did Hermes marry my
mother, or did your parents, Zeus and Ge, marry? This is
not for us.”
“It could be. We could be married. There is
nothing to prevent it. Marry me, dearest Pan, and I will
give you a gift no other lover of yours has yet given you. I
will give you children.”
 I sat up, looking at her, my eyes questioning her.
Echo smiled at me. “Do not question me, Pan. I know it is
so.”
As I sit here in my cave above the sea in Epiros I
still do not know what it was that made me agree, but I
did. Was it Echo’s promise of children? I doubt it. One did
not need marriage for that. Echo and I, and more gods and
mortals than Great Zeus’ beard had hairs, were proof of
that. No, I agreed because I was in love with Echo, and
wanted to please her.
And so we married in the Athenian style. We were
married in the traditional mid-winter month of Gamelion,
the month that the new Masters of the World have named
for their two-faced god Janus. We were married during the
fullness of the moon, as gods who have married have
always been. The night before, Echo made sacrifices to
Artemis in preparation for the transfer of her devotions to
Hymen, the god of marriages. Hah! Echo had sacrificed
her own hymen long before. But Echo did not tell me that
she had secretly visited the spring Kanathos in Argos,
where Hera went every year to renew her virginity, so that
Echo could renew her own. Perhaps it was this, more than
anything else, that brought about all the disasters that Hera
later inflicted. And Echo sacrificed to her sister nymphs,
and to Athene, and to Hera, and to the Fates, giving them
all locks of her beautiful thick brown hair.
In Athens the first rites are performed in the home
of the bride’s father. But Great Zeus was not about to allow
that at Olympos – not after my tracking in sheep
droppings. Nor did he deign to attend such minor festivities
himself. He sent in his stead his own son, the drunkard,
dear, fat Dionysos, fresh from his bloodless conquest of
India, about which he could not keep quiet. Dionysos chose
an Arkadian glade – a pretty glade, I must admit – a glade
whose cypresses seemed to rival the very columns of Zeus’
Olympian palace. There Dionysos performed the necessary
rites and prayers and offerings. And then I stepped before
the company, joined by my brother Arkas, the two of us
leading Echo and her paranymph Pyrene.
The look on Echo’s face as we walked to our
chariot, as Arkas extended his hand to Echo as she stepped
between us, that look made me understand the look she
had seen in the face of that Athenian maiden. Only now did
I wish that Hera had been there, so that my Echo could
have outshone her with a deep, rich beauty I have never
seen again on any woman, mortal or goddess.
Echo wore a gown of purest white, trimmed with
gold threads and rich purple borders, closed about her waist
with a sash of blue akin to that upon Poseidon’s seas on a
sunlit day. How very strange to see her clothed for the first
time. How alluring the clothing made her, even though I
knew her body so well. And she wore sandals, tied with
thongs of golden cord, and pearls from the narrow sea to
the east of Egypt, and from me an amethyst on a gold
chain, an amethyst still raw and unpolished, an amethyst
resembling nothing so much as a large grape. And the
scent of lilies from Aegina rose about the soft waves of her
hair.
And I wore a cape of white and purple, too, and
we both wore upon our brows crowns of wild flowers –
poppy, white sesame, wild thyme and myrtle.
The centaurs Hyles and Mermeros pulled our
chariot to the end of the glade, while dryads, naiads and
oreads went before us, strewing perfumed petals in our
path. We alit at an altar where Hymen himself stood ready
to perform the rites. Mortals search on their wedding days
for omens – one crow betokening sorrow or separation, two
meaning happiness, or, best of all – two turtle doves. But
we had no need of these omens, with the god of marriage
himself in attendance.
 Hymen gave us a small branch of ivy, the symbol
of close ties, and sacrificed the heifer I had provided, and
invoked Artemis, Athene and then the absent Zeus, and
Uranos and Ge for fertility. And at the mention of her name
Ge smiled, for Echo’s mother had attended. And then the
Graces, and the Fates, and finally Aphrodite were invoked.
At last Hymen removed the heifer’s gall and threw it behind
the altar, and then examined the entrails. He studied them
closely, probing with his knife, his bloodied fingers. I felt
Echo growing tense beside me. What was he looking for?
What had he seen? At last, Hymen looked up. “Good,” he
said. Echo let loose a long held breath.
Now Echo cut off another lock and twisted it
around a spindle as an offering to Athene, while I cut off a
long, thick, curl of my own and bound a tuft of grass and
herbs for Apollo. And then we invoked all the gods yet
again, before Dionysos, acting for his own father and
Echo’s, placed my hand in hers, and we took the oaths of
fidelity, and sacrificed yet again.
It all went on so long that it seemed less
ceremony than ordeal. Has any groom not chafed at the
length of the rituals? Hah, I doubt it. But through it all
Echo shone with that special radiance, making me feel that
if nothing more than as an expression of my love for her
this wedding ceremony was worthwhile.
At last we left the customs of Athens behind, for
while the Athenians would set limits on the extravagance of
the feast, and had men and women sit apart, we fell to on
an array of sweetmeats and cakes and cheeses and fruits
and wines far into the night. And the woods of Arkadia
resounded with our laughter and our singing. Eos had
already begun to light the eastern edge of the woods with
dawn when Ge at last performed the duties of the bride’s
mother, and twisted the hair lace that Echo had worn, which
until now had been unbound. In the days when mortals still
believed in us, wedding guests would hold torches as the
bride and groom retired for the night, and the guests would
take the part of Hermes, Artemis, myself and others. On
this fine Arkadian night Artemis herself did the duty, as did
my father Hermes, and the others, too. And Echo and I
passed between them to the bower, our bower, and there
we shared a quince, to give our first conversations harmony
and sweetness. And there, where I had thoughtfully placed
large bunches of grapes, we relived the first night we were
lovers, again and again.
16.
A bolt of lightning has slithered out of the sky and
struck a tree deep within the forest below my mountain. A
bright plume of flames beats up against the sky, shaking
and dancing amidst the wind and rain, defying the very
storm that has given it birth. I can see it no matter how
furious the storm, just as I could see the hymeneal
torchlight dancing outside our wedding bower, the quivering
light playing on our skin.
Echo gave out a soft whimper of pain when I first
penetrated her that night. “What is it? What is wrong?”
Suddenly, Echo seemed shy. “I went to Argos, to
the spring of Kanathos. I bathed in it and renewed my
virginity. It is my wedding present to you.”
I listened, and I was touched, even as some small
foreboding hovered on the edge of my thoughts. But all
was lost as Echo ran her fingers over my body, and I kissed
her breasts, and my mind concentrated on pleasure, on
love, on passion. Echo, my wife, fell asleep first that night.
Hah! which lover of mine has not been the first to succumb,
to cry out “Enough!” when my own phallos stood ready for
more?
Echo slept contentedly in my arms, one hand of
mine still cupping a breast. She slept oblivious to my own
questions about what we had done, this wedding we had
had. Just as Apollodorus sleeps now in my cave, oblivious
to the storm outside. The storm broke in full fury all about
us tonight as we spoke about the athletes at Olympias and
supped on dried fish and wine. I could see that he
preferred not to leave, not to risk running home amidst the
bolts of lightning screeching down through the tallest trees.
Nor did I make him ask. Even the gods are bound by the
duties of a host. He is the first person to share this cave
with me. Strange, but I have grown accustomed to my
solitude. I, who hardly ever spent a night of his life alone,
now prefer it so. Hah! and the first person to break this
solitude is a boy, a lad with but the earliest wisp of a beard.
And here I sit, at the very edge of my cave, just
beyond the dripping water as it streams down the
mountainside. Another night that I cannot sleep. But it is
not the storm, nor even the unaccustomed presence of
someone in my cave. It is Echo. It is her memory that
keeps me awake now.
The plume of flames – the lightning-struck tree –
still burns, not doused by the rain, yet not strong enough to
spread against the storm. Crooked, twisted streams of
water snake down the slope away from my cave and
towards the woods, joined by so many others as they rush
down. I can hear that awful trickle deep within my cave,
running flush with the rain that manages to seep through
tiny cracks in the skin of my mountain. Who is older,
mountain – you or we gods? You, I suspect, at least older
than Zeus and his family, eh? And you will grow older still
when I, the last of them – the Great Pan – am gone. And
only the boy will remember this as Pan’s cave.
I had other caves dedicated to me once. My
sanctuary at Thasos. And above Delphi, the Corcyran Cave,
my sanctuary above Apollo’s temple. That cave had a
proper stream within it, not the nasty leak I have here, a
proper stream buried deep within. Hah! how the mortals
willingly believed in us then. In a cave the sound of a
distant gurgling stream would be taken as the voice of the
god, as though I meant to speak in mumbled whispers. No,
I never had the need of interpreters! What mortal ever
mistook the voice of Pan, or my meaning? Did Philippides?
Did any shepherd foolish enough to disturb my sleep? Did
my willing maenads? Did those who heard my bray of
triumph? Ah, to love some oread and to cry out at the peak
of pleasure, to have the sound explode from the cave and
down the mountainsides. Apollo, did you ever hear me at
Delphi, hear me as I yelled in triumph and in passion? Did
you?

At last I have slept, a short snoring nap some time

after Apollodorus left. It was past dawn when he awoke.
The storm had already passed beyond us, moving south to
Aetolia, south across the Gulf of Corinth to my native
Arkadia. And the defiant plume of fire died away, too,
leaving only a trailing wisp of smoke soon swept away on
the morning’s sea breeze.
The boy seemed oddly embarrassed when he
awoke, sheepishly rubbing his eyes, smiling, somewhat
disoriented. I still sat at the edge of the cave, having
turned around at the sound of Apollodorus’ stirring. He
squinted out at the sunlight breaking into a thousand small
jewels on the raindrops still clinging to the leaves. I
greeted him for the new day, and he me. Then he said, “It
is late.” I shrugged. Even though my days have become
numbered, I still cannot share the concern mortals feel for
time. “Will you eat before you go?” He nodded.
I set out some bread, some dried figs, some
cheese, some honey, while the boy went out of the cave. I
watched as he bent his head under a small stream of
rainwater coming down just outside the entry. He let it hit
the very back of his head, dividing its descent four ways –
down his back, over the top of his head, and around his
face left and right. Then he cupped his hands below the
stream and splashed his face, before rejoining me inside the
cave. Now his hair looked like the leaves on the trees, all
sparkling with beads of water.
Apollodorus ate lightly and hurriedly, mumbling
between bites and gulps that he must be on his way, that
his mother would be worried. How different from me. I
never worried about hurrying anywhere after a night’s
adventures were over. I was home wherever I was – in
every deep forest, beside some stream or lake with a
satiated maenad asleep beside me, draped across the broad
bough of some tree with an exhausted dryad, under a rocky
outcrop watching the morning mist coil under the first light
of day.
Grabbing a last dried fig and dipping it in the
honey, Apollodorus jumped up and excused himself,
promising as always to be back soon. As the boy ran down
the stones from my cave towards the woods he scampered
amidst the crisscrossing streams still coming off the
mountainside. Occasionally he would splash in one or
another, until he reached the first line of trees. Then he
turned and waved to me. He has never done that before.
Yesterday the boy reminded me of the mortals
racing on foot at Olympia. Today he reminds me of a
mountain kid testing its agile legs for the first time. Or
perhaps a satyr first learning his nimble steps, first
discovering the joys of being light-footed, of being able to
bound off rocks as if they were ankle deep in thick, flossy
moss. Or of skipping over streams with the merest ripple,
of crossing glades with no more disturbance to the grass
than a breeze.
Yes, yes, Apollodorus, scamper down this hillside
back to the farm girl who waits for you, ready to lay with
you beneath the stars. You will know pleasure, but may
whatever gods remain give you – at least once – passion,
lust.
Ah, to sit in the dark evening shadows as the
moon rises, the moonlight blue-white, dappling us all as we
drink. Drink, drink until inhibitions melt beneath the wine.
I have seen mortals drink and sing and dance until their
thoughts blurred, until they were at last able to forget
themselves, until they could not care, until they were free
to give themselves over to purest sensual pleasure, to wild
and mad couplings over and over again, grabbing for one
partner after another, faces unseen and names unknown
even as lips touched and loins locked. I have seen old men
rut like young goats and recent virgins become insatiable
courtesans all in the frenzy of such a night.
Lust, lust – that is what I am thinking of. Pure
unbridled lust. More than want or need or desire. Or even
passion. Lust – when your entire body and mind ache with
the urgent need for gratification. When all your mind knows
is the aching for this fulfillment, so much so that nothing –
no risk, no danger – nothing will stop you. And when you
find a partner, one sharing your madness, when you couple,
all your mind hears above the panting, the groaning, the
grunting as your thoughts scream, “Yes! Yes! More !
More! Oh, yes!” until the release comes at last for you
both, so complete, so overwhelming that your thoughts
disappear entirely, drowned in an oblivion of cascading
senses.
And when you have recovered, when you lay there
on the ground, limbs still entangled and stuck together with
the sweat of your passion, when your heaving chest finally
subsides, you may be able to couple yet again, but not
then, not for the rest of that night with the same sweet
madness.
That is lust. May you know this, Apollodorus, at
least once.

I found myself smiling long after Apollodorus had

gone, still remembering my own joy as I discovered my
quick-footedness. I will go walk in the woods. They are still
fresh and damp from last night’s storm. The trees, the very
earth will be giving off those rich, deep smells that follow on
a heavy rain. The ground is soft and still very wet. My
hooves cut deeply into it, and make a sucking noise as I pull
them out. My nostrils flare as I move amidst the trees.
There is that smell, more sensual than the richest perfume
of the most accomplished courtesan. My head tilts back,
my mouth agape as I breathe in great draughts of the
scented air. Oh, for a dryad, a maenad, a simple peasant
girl now! To lay her down on the soft, damp earth, to be
made drunk by the smell of the woods, the earth, her body,
mine, all mingling scents of sensual pleasure.
What is that sound? Overhead. Somewhere in the
apple trees above me. A dryad? A survivor, like me – alone
and lonely, waiting for the companionship that only I can
bring? Ah, there, I hear it again, a faint noise, “Kwee,
kwee.”
No, it is not a dryad. Just a bird watching me. It
sees me now and has changed its call. “Chewn. Chewn.
Chewn.” No, there it is. Oh, no! It is picking at the bark
with its sharp bill, its head contorting remarkably on its
agile neck. I know the markings of that bird too well, the
dark streaks on the head, the white lines over the eyes, the
peppering of white and black feathers, its wings the color of
discarded ancient iron weapons too long exposed to the rain
and sun. It is a woodpecker, a wryneck. Why? Why?!
I must leave the woods. I must. I must go back
to my cave. Why? Why on the morning after reliving my
wedding to Echo must I see a wryneck? If Hera were alive I
would suspect her at once. But the spiteful Queen of
Heaven is gone. Who mocks me so, who taunts me?
I run, I run out of the woods. My heat beats fast,
it pounds. The vision of that wryneck haunts me. I see its
every feather in awful detail.
Oh, why? Why? Oh, Iynx!
17.
How many days has it been since I saw that
cursed bird in the woods? Two? Three? I don’t remember.
I have sat here in my cave. No. I have cowered here in my
cave, haunted by the vision of that wryneck whether I am
awake or asleep. I have only gone out once, yesterday,
when I heard the boy coming through the woods. Then I
left and scampered up my hillside before he emerged from
the trees. And I sat there, hidden among the boulders,
stone-silent myself while Apollodorus softly called my
name. I sat there silently until he shrugged and went off,
leaving behind offerings of food. Only then did I return to
my cave, to my haunting visions.
Every moment seems to bring the wryneck before
my eyes. Over and over I see its head twist and turn in
amazing postures. The soft black and brown and grey
feathers lift and ripple in the wind. Argh!
And so I sit here. Pan, the hero of Marathon, the
victor over the Keltoi at Parnassos, unable to budge from
his cave because of a small bird.
Ah, but those battles were different. What had I
to fear from mortal combat, or even with foreign gods?
Nothing. The chaos, the noise, the clamor, the unending
ability to do mischief, the exhilaration as the dust and
sound, the smell of blood all flood your mind, overwhelm
you, allowing you to act without thinking. Lust is lust,
whether in bed or in battle. But this is different. How do
mortals do it? How do they cope when their children die?
Or is that why they have so many? Do they forget, and
watch the living ones grow up and so forget the dead? I
don’t think so. I have never forgotten poor Iynx, who has
virtually grown when Hera damned her. I had only three
children. Had I three hundred I still would remember what
befell my Iynx.
 Iynx was our gift to one another, a child conceived
on our wedding night, Echo’s promise to me fulfilled. The
next morning, as we lay in our wedding bower, covered with
the traditional gift blanket, Echo knew she had conceived
and told me so. I don’t remember reacting at first, or even
later. It all seemed so remote. And even as Echo’s belly
swelled and grew tight, as her breasts filled, I could not
believe that all this was real, was somehow connected to
me.
And yet it was. It was my daughter who was born
on that later misty night, born in that very same bower
where she had been conceived. It was my wife inside that
leafy chamber, grunting and panting amidst the
encouragement of her sister nymphs while I stood outside
unattended, alone, ignored. But when Iynx was born, when
Pyrene handed me my daughter, still sticky from her birth,
then I knew. I carried her our from the sheltering trees and
held her high over my head, and brayed my call of triumph.
My shout shattered the night stillness and Iynx bawled
back. “Cry out! Cry! You are the daughter of Pan! Cry
out!” And Iynx did, and her cries and mine filled the night,
until my shouts dissolved in laughter and then in tears.
How hard it is for a god to be a parent. Hah!
Look at Zeus. He had to be hidden from his father and
raised by the goat Amalthea. And look at Zeus himself as a
sire! What wonder, what miracle that Athene should spring
full-grown from his brow. Hah! Zeus knew better than to
bind himself with some babe if he could avoid it. Athene’s
birth was selfishness disguised as wonder. Hmph! And
imagine Athene, that eternally stern virgin as a child!
Impossible! The wonders and joys of childhood would have
been lost on Athene, wasted, utterly wasted. Much better
that she was born as an adult.
No, Iynx lived with her mother and their sister
nymphs while I came and went as always. But whenever I
returned to those Arkadian woods I sought them out, Echo
and Iynx, and later Iambe. And I would place my first
daughter on her unsteady chubby legs, caught between my
own fleecy limbs, and sing to her, and run my fingers
through her brown curls, and stare for long periods of time
at that special light that shines only in the eyes of children
as they discover the World for the first time. And I taught
Iynx to sing, and to dance, and at night I would walk with
her in the woods and lift her up just as I had on the night
she was born.
“Call out for me, Pappo,” Iynx would say.
“Doesn’t it scare you? My call scares many.”
“No, oh no. Call out like on the night I was born.”
And then I would sweep her up in my arms and
hoist her overhead, and call my call, mingled now with
Iynx’s giggles of delight. And to those nearby my call only
meant the triumphant call of Pan the Father, celebrating
with his daughter in the woods.

When we married, Echo and I, we never expected

to live married lives like mortals. At least I did not. I did
not expect to live forever with Echo and our children, to
forsake my wanderings and meanderings, my random
passions with passing maids and maenads and nymphs.
Why, even Great Zeus himself, married to the goddess of
marriage herself – grim Hera, lived that way. Why then,
should I live any differently?
Great Zeus indeed! Zeus the Perpetually Horny
would have been a better title. I like to blame the bitch
Hera for all that happened to my family but, in truth, can
Zeus be exempt? Or can he? Why hadn’t Hera learned to
live with Zeus’ infidelities? Why? Why?
I know the story well, too well. How many times
did Echo recount it, much to her regret? How many times
did we laugh about it? Argh! Hera!! Hera, you great bitch!
Iynx was on the verge of womanhood, a beautiful,
tender fruit, not yet quite ripe for plucking, when Echo
decided to share with her the secret of that spring in
Kanathos. That Echo had visited the spring before our
wedding only we had known, but she wanted to share it
with our elder daughter as well. Only a blind man could not
have appreciated the woman Iynx was about to become. To
look at her was to know that she would never lack for lovers
– the way the light of both sun and moon lit an aura about
those brown curls, the soft swelling lines of breasts and
hips. And her eyes! Somehow those wonderful blue eyes
never wholly lost that childlike brightness. It seemed to me
a gift. It should have been an omen.
Hmm! Were someone else to hear me now they
would think I coveted my Iynx. I did not. Zeus committed
incest but once, with his sister-wife Hera. But he was the
king of the Olympian brothers. And other than that
necessary evil that grew more evil over the course of their
marriage, this was a sin for all. Who could not recall the
monster Gorgons, older than Zeus himself, who sprang from
the incest of Phorkys and his sister Keto; and the Graiai,
three hags at birth sharing one tooth and one eye? No, but
I knew beauty when I saw it, especially I, who had so many
lovers. And this beauty was my daughter.
“There may come a time,” I overheard Echo tell
Iynx, “when you will have a lover more special to you than
all who came before, and any who may come after. And
even if you are only lovers once and then once again you
will want to bring him gifts more precious than perfect
pearls from the seas beyond India, rarer than wine chilled
with ice from Mount Olympos. For such a lover you should
go bathe in the spring of Kanathos.”
“But mother,” Iynx asked, “is that not sacred to
Hera?”
 I heard Echo giggle with delight, and my mind’s
eye pictured her sly and happy smile. “Yes, but even the
Queen of Heaven cannot be everywhere. And for a lover
such as I have described even the risk of Hera’s wrath
would be a small care. I bathed in Kanathos before the
night Pan and I wed.”
Oh, Echo, Echo! If only you knew the disasters
you were calling down on us all. Not just Iynx, or you, or
even our daughter Iambe. But all of us! All! All! But to
know this would be to know more than even we gods could
know.
And so Echo, with out eldest daughter in tow, left
our Arkadian woods for the land of Argos. The Argive
territory extended beyond their city, down even to the sea,
and there in the port of Nauplion was Hera’s sacred spring,
the source of her yearly renewed virginity. And there,
beneath a cloud covered night sky, Echo revealed the spring
to Iynx. “Come on such a night, a calm night,” Echo
instructed. “A night of thunderbolts and lightning is a bad
night, for when Zeus is busy who knows where Hera might
be.” And Iynx gazed at the spring, and remembered its
location and all that Echo said.
How well I know this story. How many times did
Echo retell it? How many? Too many . . .
They returned by way of Argos itself, Argos with its
great temple to Hera. At the banks of the river named for
its god Inachos they paused to rest. Iynx lay upon the
bank while Echo walked along it, picking flowers. I can well
imagine the beauty of Iynx’s pale body, bright and vivid
against the deep green grass, so fresh, so alluring, so
unspoiled. And so she must have appeared when Great
Zeus himself, Zeus the Ever Lustful came upon her. He was
smitten at once, and sat beside her, and poured words
sweeter than ambrosia into her ear, allowing his curled
beard to brush her cheek, finding an excuse to rest his hand
on her bare waist.
Oh, how we laughed about that when Echo told
me. Ravishment by Great Zeus himself could not have been
far away when Echo chanced to return. She had not seen
her divine father in a long time, and yet even as they
embraced Echo knew he was eying her alluring companion,
preparing himself for what must surely follow as soon as he
could get Echo to leave. How marvelous, then, when Echo
introduced Iynx as her daughter. Ah, Zeus, Zeus! Did you
wilt then? Did your proud thunderbolt fade like a passing
sprinkle? Hah-ha! Your own daughter’s daughter. And yet
so lovely, so ready . . .
It is any wonder then that when Zeus left them
there, mumbling ill-conceived apologies, almost tripping
over himself to be gone – is it any wonder that when he left
them and then met Io she excited him so? Had Zeus
passed by a three-legged sow in heat he would have fallen
to with abandon. And Io was beautiful, the daughter of
Inachos, a priestess of Hera’s no less! So Zeus besieged Io,
coming to her in dreams, constantly pursuing her along her
father’s bank until, disguised as a cloud, Zeus took Io and
relieved his burdensome passion. And not a solitary
passion. Oh no! But the twinned desires Zeus bore for
Iynx and then for Io! And for all this poor Iynx was
somehow to blame. To hear Hera tell it, Iynx caused Zeus
to fall in love with Io, that my fair daughter used some love
potion on him. As if that rutting divine ever needed help, or
even so much as a suggestion, or a hint!
No, if Iynx was guilty of anything it was only of
arousing Zeus’ already prodigious passions without giving
him relief. And yet Hera blamed Iynx.
It is strange how some of Zeus’ loves inspired
Hera’s jealousy and others did not. Leto did; and Io; but
not Tygete, nor Elara, nor dozens of others. Ah, but Io did,
and Hera blamed anyone she suspected of involvement.
And yet . . . and yet would Hera ever had known had not
Echo recounted her story of that day they met Zeus on
Inachos’ bank, had she not told it to so many, amusing
them all with the discomfort Great Zeus endured? If she
could have resisted the delicious tale of Zeus’ passions
unfulfilled, would Hera ever have known? I think not.
And when Hera found out, and worse yet
discovered that Echo had impertinently used her spring at
Kanathos – then punishment was sure to follow. And
enflaming Hera’s white hot jealousy even more, Zeus tried
to hide Io, transforming her into a white heifer, and Hera
sent the hundred-eyed Argos to guard the heifer. And who
was it that lulled the monster to sleep and killed it at Zeus’
behest? Who? My own father, Hermes! Oh no, it was all
too much for Hera, too much.
She could not get at Hermes; he was too powerful
a god. Or at me, who for once seemed innocent. But Echo,
and Iynx? Mere nymphs? Who would save them? Not
Zeus, if he even knew what his harridan of a wife had in
store. Or did he know, and were Echo and Iynx the prices
he blithely paid for peace in that cold palace on Mount
Olympos?
No, Hera had her revenge. She transformed Iynx
into a wryneck, her own joke, for mortals like to use this
bird in love potions of their own. A wryneck! My beautiful
Iynx transformed into a woodpecker! And Echo, poor Echo.
Somehow the mortals later said that it was for distracting
Hera while Zeus dallied elsewhere that Hera punished Echo.
No, it was for telling and retelling the story of how Zeus was
denied Iynx and so ravished Io instead. That is why Hera
deprived Echo of the power of speech, condemning her to
repeat the last words spoken to her. And it was Hera who
caused Echo to fall in love with Narkissos, only to be
rejected, to pine away, to waste away until only her voice
remained and she died.
And where you done then, Hera? Were you?
What of young Iambe, our younger daughter? What blame
had she in this? She had been left behind in Arkadia when
Echo and Iynx went to Kanathos. But even she must be
destroyed by the madness of your jealousy. Iambe had
inherited from me the gifts of laughter and of song. Her
gifts were great indeed, for her verses were sufficient to
cheer Demeter when she searched for her daughter
Persephone, abducted by Hades. The mortals say Iambe
hanged herself when she realized how some of her satires
cut, how they hurt. But I know better. That sweet child’s
verses never hurt anyone. Only her presence hurt you,
Hera. So you invited her to sing at the mysteries in the
Heraion, your temple in Argos. And you provided her with a
song – The Most Tragic and Lamentable Song of the
Wryneck. And Iambe bravely got past the title, and the first
verse, her grief and hurt choking her voice, until her tears
overwhelmed her, and poor Iambe fled, and hanged herself
on a tree overlooking the cursed river Inachos.
Was your vengeance complete, Hera? Who was
left then but me, kept a drunken prisoner in his cave by his
father until the grief-madness left me, until I stopped
spouting threats to scale Olympos itself, until the hot tears
no longer streamed down my face.
And where are you now, Hera? Where? Oh, your
death is the only one I would gladly have witnessed, the
only one. Then I would have sung a song for you, an
endless litany of Zeus’ loves – every goddess, every nymph,
every mortal whom he found preferable to you. Oh, how I
would have sung, Hera. Of Leda, Euryodia and Agea; of
Danae and Metis. And all the others, too. Hear them, Hera,
hear them. Listen, now, to the places Zeus’ phallos has
been. Listen!
 Oh, but it is too late. I did not sing this to you as
you lay dying, Hera. And now you are dead – while Pan still
lives. That is my vengeance. I am the last of the gods!
Not you, not Zeus, but me! Great Pan! I am left!
I am tired. I have cried again remembering these
things. The sky grows lighter outside. Another day, the
fourth since I have seen that wryneck. I think I will go walk
in the woods, slip in and out of the mist between the trees.
Perhaps I will see that bird again. It is all right now. It is.
I am tired, drained, but I must walk in the woods first.
Then I will come back and sleep.
18.
The woods are still tonight. So very still. Only
thin wisps of clouds drift over the stars. Oh! There! I feel
ashamed.
There you are Crotus, my son – the celestial
Archer, who the new Masters of the World call Sagittarius. I
have spent so many days remembering your half-sisters,
Iambe and Iynx, so many days crying over them. The
sisters you barely knew. And so little time thinking of you,
my son.
Are you jealous? What should I say? Should I
apologize now for rarely visiting Mount Helikon, where your
mother Eupheme tended to the Muses? Was that any
different than Hermes and me?
And yet, I do think of you, Crotus. I do. Mostly I
think of the day, when you still hovered between boy and
man, when I taught you to run.
“But I know how to run,” you said proudly.
And I took you into the Boeotian woods, saying,
“You run like a boy, which you are. Run like your father and
you will be a great hunter, a great lover.” And so I taught
you to step lightly, to spring mightily, to glance off rock and
moss like the wind. And you did, your hairless legs, so
unlike mine in appearance, suddenly remembering the
inheritance of your father. Hah! how you ran, how you
laughed as you bounded up and down the slopes of Helikon,
moving as you never moved before, your thick golden hair
streaming behind you, your body still boyishly thin as you
passed naked through the trees.
That is what I remember most about you, Crotus.
Not all of the times you tried to outrun me – and lost. Not
your skills with a bow that made you famous. Not the deep
sorrow I felt when you died so young. Just a warm
summer’s day when I taught you to run, to move as swiftly
as your unerring arrows. Such a simple thing.
And when you died, long before the others, and
were transformed, and became the Sky Archer – and a
centaur as well . . . Hah! at last you shed your human legs,
and bested your father at last, with four grand legs to my
pair. But I do not weep for you now, Crotus. For you live
still in the starlit sky. Your mother is gone, and your
sisters, and your companions the Muses. And my time, too,
draws to a close. But there you are, still, in the summer
sky. Long after I am forgotten, after every temple and
shrine to me is long-dispersed dust, you will still glow in the
heavens, Crotus. You will be my most enduring legacy.
19.
Thamuz. Thamuz. Where are you? Where are
you?
I’ve lost him. My mind’s eye searches the sea
between Alexandria and Hellas but I cannot find the
Egyptian. Where is he? What disasters have befallen him –
and me?
Like a lost erne blown far out to sea by the
capricious winds my mind searches the endless waves.
Look, look how steadily the Etesian winds blow out of the
north. Have they beaten you back, Thamuz? Have you
returned to the safety of your harbor? Or do you creep
westward along the African coast, fearful of leaving the
sight of land?
Where are you?
Or has some errant wave plucked at your ship,
dragged you down to wherever Poseidon himself now rots?
Or is it mutiny? Where are you, Thamuz?!
Listen to me. Listen. I sound as bad as these
superstitious sailors themselves, plaguing myself with every
conceivable horror and fright. If Poseidon were still alive I
would sacrifice a great bull to him for Thamuz’s safe
passage. Hah! if Poseidon were still alive then I would not
need Thamuz at all. But I do. I do need him. I need him
to sail to the coast of Hellas, to be forced north by a savage
twist of the wind, to be becalmed off Paxos. All this must
happen if he is to hear my message, the sad news of my
passing.
Where are you, Thamuz?
My mind grows tired of searching the waves. They
roll and heave hypnotically, but taunt me with their
emptiness. Or bring false hopes. Twice now I have seen
other ships. Once a Roman trireme, haughtily making its
way towards the coast of Asia. And once one of the great
merchantmen that haul Egyptian grain to feed the crowds of
Rome. But where is he? Where is Thamuz?
My mind aches like the tired wings of that lost
erne I have imagined. At least I can turn my thoughts
elsewhere, and not have to contemplate that awful, dread
moment of exhaustion, that moment when the final beat of
the wings is made, knowing it is the last, knowing that you
must plunge headlong into the sea, to die there, to sink
away.
And yet, how like this imagined erne I am. I am
alone, not on the sea, but in the World. And I will die and
sink away – unless Thamuz comes to Hellas and hears of
my passing.
Tired, tired of watching the foamy white edges of
the waves as they move endlessly, seemingly in all
directions, little bands of different colors of blue, green and
grey writhing amidst them like rivers within a wider flood.
White foam everywhere, every –
No, that is not foam! Not there! Not to the
north! My mind sweeps down, hard and fast, a sea hunter
spotting prey. There! There is Thamuz! I see him, see him
at last, puffy proud on the deck of his miserable ship,
nodding in satisfaction at its smooth progress, lines taut,
sails full, the reassuring creaks and groans of a ship
underway.
The Egyptian is further north than I had
supposed. He makes good progress despite the northerly
winds. He is closer than I thought. Strange, but this
means that my end is closer too. And yet, I feel relief more
than regret or fear. Relief that Thamuz comes; relief that
my long-awaited end approaches.
It is well. It is as planned, as foredreamed. Sail
on, Thamuz. Sail to me here in Epiros.
20.
In Athens they call this month Boedromion. Or at
least they did. The new Masters of the World have new
months, new names. Numbers mostly, and out of sequence
when their rulers have inserted new months of their own,
months bearing their names. No matter. It is the end of
summer, and to me that is Boedromion, the month in which
the Athenians held torch races in my honor, in recognition of
my appearing to Philippides and speeding him towards
Sparta.
Indeed, it was on such an evening as this that I
went to Athens to see these races. The only time I went.
Cities were not the places for me. All harsh and confining,
cold stone piled upon stone. Hah! monuments to mortals’
futility. What is Athens today? A sleepy provincial town.
And once mighty Thebes? Worse again, a tumbled, leveled
ruin, a memory, a scar.
Over and over mortals build cities, desert the
countryside, flock to the cities, crowd them, only to invite
others to attack, to besiege, to rape, to pillage. What terror
can be worse than a city falling to its enemies? The hideous
cries echoing up and down streets dark with smoke; the
sounds of footsteps in flight or in pursuit, of possessions
seized and broken, laughter, screams, cries, shouts – all
surrounded by stone walls once meant to keep the enemy
out, but now confining the terror within.
Has there ever been a city to escape this fate?
Will there ever be such a city? Never.
No, cities were not for me. Was not my mother
Kallisto seduced away from a city by my father? And
certainly no city named for the grey-eyed virgin, named for
Athene! She won this honor by bestowing upon the city the
olive trees, besting Poseidon and his offering of a cold
spring on the Akropolis. Still, what charms could a city
named for Great Zeus’ humorless daughter have for me?
And yet, on such an evening I came to Athens,
leaving the Attic grove in which I had spent several days,
stealing a cloak, a long one, from a farmer, and going to
Athens. I wonder why. I never went before, or after. But
to be so close, to be in Attica during Boedromion. I had to
see it, just once.
I was dignity itself as I marched along the road
that goes between Athens and Eleusis, my cloak properly
drawn tight about my right side, thrown over my shoulder
to cover my left arm. All this woolen refinement, and still
naked underneath.
Oh, these poor mortals, draping themselves in
wool or flax or silk, men growing their hair or cutting it,
having beards or shaving them, women daubing their faces
with white lead and lamp black. And why? Why? To attract
one another! To lure, to entice, to seduce – and all the
while claiming that clothing gives dignity, propriety. All this
display of clothing and finery just to work up the courage,
the lust, to doff everything, to join flesh unencumbered by
clothing. Poor mortals, the very plainest of beasts,
inventing plumage for display. Not even great woolly legs,
or a small tail, or horns.
But I displayed none of that this day, the himation
cloaking my legs and tail; the cloak and broad-brimmed
petasos blocking both the bright sun and my wondrous
horns. Unremarkable, unnoticed, I joined the crowd
flocking into Athens for my race.
I stopped, with others, at the fountain outside the
Dipylon Gate, drowning my amusement in cool water as I
read the inscription on the fountain:
O Pan, O Men,
Be of good cheer,
 Beautiful Nymphs,
Rain, conceive, overflow.
Hah! Why pray to me to keep a fountain flowing?
“Rain, conceive, overflow.” Hah! All I could think of was my
phallos raining, pouring deep within some nymph, having
her conceive, her belly overflow!
The crowds swelled as we entered the agora, and
then thinned rapidly as people began staking out positions
to watch the torch race. But I pushed on, determined to
see the competition from my altar. And, as I neared the
cleft in the very flank of the Akropolis, the crowds grew
again, so many Athenians eager to be near as well. Ah, but
to be near what? Not just the god, but the sacrifice. To be
well-positioned to partake of the meat and wine offered up
to me, shared with my devotees.
My altar was a simple affair, really little more than
a squared pillar, about waist high against a man, with a
broad hollow in the top for the flame. The flame had
already been lit as I elbowed my way to the front of the
crowd, bright flames dancing above the dark streaks, the
marks of blood and smoke from past sacrifices.
I remember the self-important Athenian who
presided over my ceremonies that day, invoking me several
times as he recalled all that I had done for Athens at
Marathon. Now here is proper respect, I thought, better
than all that was forgotten when the Persian trophies were
taken to Apollo’s shrine at Delphi. Again he invoked me,
before finally directing the runners to dip their waiting
torches into the altar flame. But my attention wavered as I
stared at the young woman beside the very wordy
Athenian. Now here’s a proper offering, I thought, proper
for this god. As fresh and dewy as a new day, demure in
her linen chiton, its borders a tapestry of dancers and
birds. Only the rich could sustain sacrifices or wear such
cloth. Who was she? His wife? His daughter? His
mistress? His slave?
The torches were all lit, sending wavering shadows
across the base of the Akropolis. My benefactor spoke out
again. “Be as swift as Philippides, for Pan is with you now
as he was with Philippides on that day in the hills above
Tegea. In Pan’s name, go!”
And they did, and the crowd roared as some thirty
naked young Athenian lads ran off into the gathering
evening, away from the Akropolis, west towards the Hill of
Ares. And as my racers made their progress through
Athens I progressed through the crowd until I stood next to
the young woman. Her name was Evne, and she was the
daughter of the Athenian, one Archander by name, a
wealthy trader. I struck up a conversation with her, talking
fast, talking glibly, my himation tight about my body,
cloaking my legs, even as the foremost runners ran in the
gap between the Hill of Ares and the Pnyx, turning north
against the very flanks of the Hill of the Nymphs.
“A proper hill for a race to Pan,” I ventured. Evne
blushed. “And yet the god himself has never seen a nymph
to compare with you. Of that I am certain.”
Evne blushed again, the pink in her cheeks
reflecting the flames of my altar. “How would you know
that, sir?” she asked.
“The Great God Pan has no worshipper more
devoted than myself. I came all the way from Arkadia just
for this. And now I owe him a double sacrifice, one for his
deeds at Marathon, and one for meeting you.” Evne
blushed yet again, a good sign, a sign of acceptance
verging on willingness.
By now the runners were well past the hill named
for the Nymphs, running hard behind the Colonnade of
Giants along the west side of the agora, and then turning
sharply right around the colonnade and into the agora
itself. We heard the large crowd there cheering as the first
torch bearers ran by, their pace quickening down the street
of the Panathenaea. The noise of the crowd moved towards
us like a wave, heralding the runners before even the
flames they bore were in sight. Evne jumped up and down
several times in excitement, clapping her hands until I
slipped my left hand into her right and squeezed it. I too
felt excited, but not with the race. Oh no. With seduction.
Now we could see the first bobbing torch in the
distance, even as the crowd’s noise gave shape to a name.
“Mestor! Mestor!” they cried, cheering on the leader, while
others offered encouragement to those running behind.
And then the leader was in sight, the sweat on his naked
body glistening from the light of the torch he held so high in
his now expected triumph. We were all roaring now. I
tightened the grip of my hand, jumping in unison with Evne
as Mestor ran to my altar, and then I drew Evne to me and
hugged her, and in her excitement she hugged me in return,
and even shared the kiss I slyly planted on her lips.
The other runners continued to come in, all
sweating and breathing hard. Archander, puffed in self-
importance, waited patiently until the last runner came up
before my altar, and then cleared his throat emphatically.
At that familiar sound of authority Evne was suddenly aware
of her hand in mine and withdrew it. I stayed close.
Archander waved about for silence. At last, he got
it. “The honors of Pan fall to young Mestor.
Congratulations!” Cheers erupted again. “To Mestor goes
this crown of olive leaves, a gift from Athene herself to
Pan’s victor, and the honor of the first sacrifice as well!”
Cheers again, as Mestor stepped forward, passing
off his torch as someone handed him a chiton, and then a
along knife. Archander had provided well for the sacrifice,
as several fat cattle and even more sheep were led towards
us now. A bull was to be my first gift, and as Archander
and another Athenian held up its head by the horns,
exposing the neck, young Mestor stepped forward and
deftly slit the beast’s throat. Blood spattered satisfactorily
amidst approving murmurs.
And then began the ritual butchering. Several
Athenians worked at once. Finally one joint was properly
stripped of flesh and the entrails were then wrapped around
it. Archander passed this morsel to Mestor, who carried it
to my altar, flinging this offal into the flames. I chortled,
quickly muffling the sound with my cloak. Ah, these
mortals! They sacrificed to us parts they would never eat
themselves, reserving the best flesh for the feast to follow.
And they told themselves tales of how Prometheus had once
tricked Zeus into such a meal, thus making it acceptable as
a sacrifice. Great Zeus never ate such offerings in his life.
If he had, the sound of his divine wind breaking would have
carried through every hall in his Olympian palace. Wind!
Hah! Zeus’ farts would have put Aeolus himself and his
cave of winds to shame!
Entrails crackled, smoked ands blackened over the
flames. Rivulets of fat sputtered down, hissing as they hit
the hot stone. But I was the only one who watched the
flames consume the offering. The reverent Athenians were
too busy looking after the butchering of this first bull,
greedily eying savory portions before they were roasted on
the flames of my altar.
Meanwhile, Archander stepped forward, holding up
a small silver cup, very small I thought. “To the god Pan,”
he shouted, pouring the meager portion of wine onto the
flames, too small a draught to douse them. But amphorae
brimful with wine quickly followed, and cups, and soon we
all began to drink eagerly. Water followed as well, to thin
the wine, but I made sure that somehow the water missed
Evne by my side.
 Her luminous dark eyes widened as she tasted the
undiluted wine. Her tongue darted along reddened lips,
absorbing the thick sweet taste. I drank as well, and then
touched my lips to hers, my tongue running along the wine
on her lips. Evne closed her dark eyes, and returned the
pressure of my lips with her own. And then she
remembered herself, and pulled away. She straightened
her gown as if I had already begun caressing her through
it. Not yet, not yet.
“Surely Pan would not begrudge us a kiss on the
evening of his festival,” I said authoritatively. Evne grabbed
at the first platter of roasted beef that passed, taking a
piece, taking refuge in a large bite.
All around us now the feast, the feast in my honor,
became more boisterous as platters of meat and amphorae
of wine passed among the crowd, as another bull and
several sheep also offered up their entrails to me. Happily,
Archander was too busy officiating to pay much attention to
me, while I plied Evne with wine and with stories of the
beauty of Arkadia, comparing it to her beauty, pouring the
sweet words in her ears as she poured the sweet wine past
those lovely lips.
On into the night the Athenians celebrated, eating
their fill and more with the meat they so infrequently
tasted. Like all Hellenes they used the feast as an excuse
to eat and drink their fill, until their chitons glistened with
grease from the rubbing of their hands, until red stains of
wine spotted every garment in sight, until the groans and
belches of overindulgence, male and female, punctuated the
night. And all the while I kept sweet Even company,
carefully judging the wine I offered her, carefully keeping
her from other would-be suitors, especially the stinking
Mestor, who felt his victory meant he had won more than a
race and an olive wreath.
 And slowly the Athenians drifted away into the
night, to their beds to dream kindly of the god in whose
name they had gorged, to think of the next opportunity
they would have to celebrate so. And even Archander,
puffed up with pride and sodden with wine, finally tottered
off, oblivious to the whereabouts of his daughter.
“I must go,” she said.
“No, you must stay.”
She looked at me, confused.
“Pan is god of the night. He sleeps by day. Why
else do shepherds go so quietly in daylight, lest they wake
him and arouse his anger? What better time to honor him
than now, his time?” I stood and held out my hand.
Uncertain, Evne took it and stood as well.
Moving ever so slowly I led her back towards my
altar, whose flames were dying now, giving off thick grey
smoke as the last of the fat and the final offerings burnt, as
the incense used to kill the smell of roasted flesh
sputtered. The smoke hung about the altar like a curtain,
obscuring the cleft behind it. I led Evne through the thick
smoke, letting the heavy, sweet smell of the incense drift
into her brain, to mix there with the wine. I led her behind
the altar, into the niche in the flank of the Akropolis.
“What better place to honor the god than at his
shrine?” I passed my full cup of wine to her. She drank. I
drank. And again we kissed. Now she resisted me less, the
wine, the feast, the smoke, the incense all bewildering her.
My hand crept out of my himation and drew her to me,
pressed her against me. I felt her body yielding to mine,
yielding. And then she stiffened again and pulled away.
“No, we must not. Not in the shadow of the Akropolis, now
below the temple of Athene!”
I smiled and drew Evne back to me. “Athene may
rule above; here Pan holds sway.” Somewhere off in the
distance someone had taken up a pipe. “Listen! Just as I
have heard Pan himself on many a night just like this.
Would you deny one of his most devoted followers?” And
again we kissed. Now my hands roamed over her body,
squeezing her breasts, caressing them, sweeping down over
her hips, tugging at her bottom.
Evne’s senses spun behind our impervious smoke
curtain. Now she responded to me, her arms locked about
my neck, stroking it, clutching my himation until it came
away from my woolly head. Her fingers began to toy with
my thick curls even as I pressed her against the rocky
flanks of Athens’ mount. And then Evne’s fingers
encountered a horn, then two. She gasped, pulling away,
and stared at me.
“I honor the god by echoing him,” I said, invoking
my wife’s name in an act of seduction. “And you may be
my Echo tonight.” I threw off my cloak, exposing my fine
hairy legs even as my phallos exposed itself. I reached
quickly for Evne and undid the shoulder clasps on her
gown. It fell away from her and we sank in unison onto the
ground.
“Tonight you are my Pan,” she said dreamily as she
spread her legs.
“I am, tonight and always.”
I was Evne’s first lover, and she took to the
sheathing of my phallos with enthusiasm, with spirit. Twice
more we went at it, and during that second time, as my
phallos entered her, all I could think of was how Athene had
one less virgin in her city, of how I entered Evne’s koleos in
this cleft in the Akropolis. A cleft in a cleft! Watch me,
Athene! Watch, for this is as close as you will ever come to
these delights!
And so I passed the night of my festival in Athens.
“No,” Evne said as I got up on my haunches. “No, my Pan.
Once more, you goat-god. Take me, take me like the
goats!” And she knelt before me, her head pointed away,
offering her koleos to me, and I took her like a goat, like a
ram, a battering ram. And now, as my phallos erupted
again, Evne cried out in pleasure and I let loose my bray of
triumph, shattering the early morning air in Athens,
alarming the Scythian slaves who patrolled the city at night.
In the dawn mist I slipped away, to the west,
joining the retreating edge of the dark night, thinking all the
way that never had I received so delightful a sacrifice. And
I had done my duty as well. I had given fair Evne pleasure,
passion, rapture ecstasy. Surely the gifts of a satisfied and
benevolent god.
21.
The winds are more eternal than we gods and our
rituals. Hah! that’s good! More eternal! Hah! No, the
winds are eternal; we gods are not – or are no longer. Ah,
but the winds, constant and true, even without the names
they once bore. So, the winds that the Hellenes call Etesian
have blown consistently out of the north, beating against
Thamuz’s ship, forcing him to tack back and forth on his
voyage. Sail on, Thamuz. Remember your dream,
remember floating high above the Paneion.
But now, now there must be a change. Zephyr!
Spring once more out of the west and cut across Thamuz’s
bow. Force him, force him to veer eastward. And then you,
Notos, come out of the south and bring the Egyptian to
Paxos and becalm him off the coast of Epiros. Oh, the
shifting winds will scare him, but he will already have sight
of land. And well will he be preparing his dockside tales for
the taverns, of how the wind suddenly shifted, first west,
then south, of how he bravely stood by the tiller, ready for
whatever came next. Oh, Thamuz, I have prepared an
even better story for you to tell. Bear the news of my death
and the emperor himself in Rome will want to hear you. I
can hear your knees knocking already, far worse than they
would on a deck heaving and groaning beneath you on the
stormiest sea.
All this will happen once the winds shift. Do this
for me, you blustery sons of Astraeos and Eos. Do this, and
in my death let us all be proclaimed one last time. And
then we will fall silent as you winds.

It is time. Apollodorus lounges against a rock

outside the cave, absorbing its sun-fed warmth like a
snake. “Sit down. We must talk about your final devotion
to me.”
 The boy looks at me quizzically. “A final
devotion?” he repeats, wasting precious time.
“Yes, a final devotion. Now listen carefully. There
is a boat coming up this coast, bound from Egypt. I knew
when that boat had departed, and I know when it is due
here. When it passes this coast, it will stop, and you must
swim out to it and tell them, ‘The Great God Pan is dead.’”
Oof! The boy smiles like an idiot. He thinks this is
one of my pranks. “Do you understand? ‘The Great God
Pan is dead.’ You will tell them that, tell them that you
yourself heard it proclaimed here in Hellas, and that they
must carry the message with them to Rome. If they refuse,
threaten them with the wrath of the god.” I will play on the
sailors’ superstition. Ah, but Thamuz must not refuse, not
after I have already appeared to him in a dream.
Apollodorus smiles again. I yearn to grab him by
the shoulders and shake him to make sure that he
understands. Yet I dare not. It would be a final irony, too
bitter even for me, to instill panic in this herald of my
death. Who would note my passing then? I repeat my
question, “Do you understand?”
He nods. I see a question forming across his
brows. He will want to know – why?
“When?” he asks.
I scowl at my missed guess. “Soon.”
Very soon. Too soon. Not soon enough.
22.
No sun today. Just clouds, heavy, grey, sullen
clouds. Like yesterday. So cloudy that the sun could not
warm the rocks of my cave. There was no heat for them to
give off at night. My cave was cold, cold – as cold as that
cave on Mount Parnassos. Ah, but it was winter then, and I
had two oreads to keep me warm through the night.
The mortals once referred to Parnassos as “Home
of the Nymphs.” And so it was. Oreads, dryads, naiads all
living on its slopes, amidst the trees and streams and
caves. Almost as many as in my own Arkadia. So it was
only natural that I should pass a winter’s night – or several,
there with the nymphs, offering my fleecy body against the
chill. What better way to ward off the cold than to work
your entwined bodies to a fever’s pitch of passionate heat,
and then to sleep close together, guarding between you – or
among you, the warmth you have created. Ah, that was
Mount Parnassos in winter, a continual lustful struggle
against the cold.
Those nymphs, what were their names? Calyce
and Bateia? Yes. No. Yes, Calyce and Bateia. Even after
incredible exertions of passion in the cave they called home,
the cold penetrated. The cold cut into my limbs, coiled its
icy way into my dreams. So cold that it awakened me, or
so I thought. I sat up and saw heavy snow forming a white
wall across the mouth of the cave. Only now, awake, the
cold seemed less fierce than when I had been sleeping. No,
it was something else. My ears twitched. A sound. The
rumble of rare winter’s thunder?
Now, Bateia, awake as well, sat up. “What is it,
Pan?”
“Ssh!” I ordered, again straining to hear that far
away sound. Now Calyce was awake too, her head jerking
to catch the sound better. “Ah, you hear it too.” I stood
and moved towards the snowy entrance. Even the sound-
deadening effect of the heavy snowfall could not keep that
sound from my keen ears. Calyce was beside me now,
huddled against me at the very edge of the growing wall of
snow.
“I know that sound,” I said, my voice rising.
Bateia was with us as well, afraid. “What is it?”
“What is it? Listen! Listen to those voices, those
shouts. Only one thing brings mortals to such a pitch of
hope, of fear, of lust, of terror, of fright and pleasure and
pain. It is the curse of Ares, or his gift. It is war!” And
without knowing who fought whom, or why, I kicked at the
wall of snow with my hooves and scampered into the
snowstorm, anxious and eager not to miss the struggle.
Winter lightning crackled in the sky, turning heavy
grey clouds pink. An awesome thing, winter lightning, less
intense than its summer brother but somehow more
threatening for its rarity. The sound of thunder threw me
off, as did the snow. Where was the battle? But then I
heard sounds that gave me pause – roaring, singing,
shouting. Then blaring trumpets. Then more singing,
deeper now, and then the sound of swords and spears
beating rhythmically on shields.
I knew those sounds. Only one army entered
battle with such a prelude of terror, sounds designed to
heighten the bloodlust of those who uttered them, even as
they terrified and transfixed their enemies. Keltoi! The
Keltoi from the north – the new Masters of the World call
them Celts – were again rampaging and ravaging Hellas!
How many wars before and since that night have I
seen? I can still recall the night Agamemnon’s Mycenaeans
sacked Troy, and the night when his palace was pillaged in
its turn, long after his own murder. I stood at Marathon
against all the races of the east – Persians, Scythians,
Medes, Libyans, Babylonians, Indians, Egyptians,
Hyrcanians, Cretans and more. I have watched Hellenes kill
each other with repeated pleasure – Spartans, Thebans,
Athenians, Corinthians, Plateans, Ionians. For a lark I
travelled some distance with Alexandros across Asia. I
watched as the Romans overran Hellas. But none of them
ever filled me with the awe mortals must feel at the onset
of battle, except these Keltoi.
And now they were on the slopes below,
somewhere, on the snowy slopes of Parnassos, screaming,
shouting, hurling insults to the Hellenes. Some Keltoi were
armored, their shaggy blond hair covered with hideous
horned helmets. Others, even in the snow, stood naked
save for sword and shield, showing contempt for both the
enemy and the elements.
I moved towards the sound of the Keltoi’s battle
frenzy, down the mountain slopes thick with snow. Blood
was on the Keltoi’s minds now, blood their greatest love
save one – that of plunder, of gold. Gold necklaces,
bracelets, rings, even gold to line the skulls of dead
enemies so as to make them into drinking vessels. Gold,
the golden treasuries of Delphi. Hah! would their frenzy
have lessened or increased had they known that the
Hellenes themselves had already looted the shrine in their
own internal wars?
Not the proud Delphi of old, the Delphi that
ignored my intervention at Marathon even as they
celebrated the defeat of the Persians. No. When the Keltoi
burst out of their river valley and into Hellas, when the
brave Hellenes came to the Pythia in her steamy shrine,
asking, “Shall we remove your treasures?” – what did she
say? Would that latest withered hag in a long line of them
allow herself to be left destitute? “No,” she croaked, sitting
over the vent into the Earth. “Leave all the oblations where
they are. Apollo and the White Virgins will protect them.”
 So now the Hellenes stood ready to defend a site
so sacred that even they had looted it. Hah! And yet there
the Hellenes were, their familiar armor, their Corinthian
helmets with their crests and horse hair plumes. I had not
yet reached their ranks, the Keltoi’s battle howling had not
ceased, when the Hellenes charged, led by a bold youth in a
golden helmet, the plume blue and purple. How strange,
my first reaction: “Alexandros!” But no, that erstwhile god
had been dead in Babylon over forty years before. No, but I
knew that young warrior. Ah, who else would lead a charge
to defend Delphi? Who but Apollo, disguised as a mortal
warrior. Did not Apollo’s Pythia promise as much?
And charge the Hellenes did, unbalancing the
Keltoi, who found themselves with no room for their war
chariots and horses. The Hellenes were on them too
quickly, the snow fell too heavily for the barbarians to
maneuver.
Lightning again arced across the snowy gloom.
Only now did I realize its source, as I saw Ares himself –
smiling his dread battle-crazed smile – exchange blows with
a Keltic god, the awful Lug. Dressed for triumph was this
invader, his fine white shirt, his helm and breastplate of
gold, his green cape, his perennial swarm of ravens. Again
and again Ares and Lug swung sword and shield at one
another, the huge sparks flashing across the skies as
lightning.
And there were other Keltic gods as well – Taranis
the sky god, Aduinna the huntress, Nemeton the war
goddess – all full of bloodlust like the mad Keltoi
themselves. This was not a war between mortals; this was
a struggle for the heavens, no less than the great
Titanomachia when Zeus and his siblings defeated their
parents and their allies, the Titans. Athene joined us on
Parnassos, and Artemis, both armored and more eager to
fight than ever they were to tumble in some bed. An me,
the Great Pan. I flew up to the fray, sidestepping the
flashing hooves of Damona the cow, as she made for
Athene. No, I saw my foe at once, he with the heavy
antlers, Cernunnos, lord of their underworld.
“Evoe!” I shouted, as if at an Arkadian orgy. “Only
one god in Hellas will ever wear horns of his own!” I
lowered my head and charged. Cernunnos, bellowing, did
the same. The cracking sound of horn against horn carried
through the snowy air, high above the clang of weapons,
above the screams and shouts of battle. Again we had at
each other, and again, each time our heads crashing into
one another. Ah, but now Cernunnos gave ground, and I
saw why. His antler’s spread outward like a buck’s, leaving
a softer plate in between, just where my wondrous horns
hit.
“Now I have you,” I shouted prematurely.
Cernunnos did not wait for my next charge but lowered his
antlers and came at me, hoping to impale me with their
prongs. But the goat-footed god was too swift for him. I
nimbly stepped aside and grabbed at the right antler as it
passed. I grabbed and I twisted, and heard it snap loudly.
Cernunnos roared in pain, his body tumbling out of the
clouds and down. I brandished the antler now like Herakles
with his club, looking for another victim.
But down below the mortal battle, too, had been
decided. Brennos, chief of the Keltoi, had been badly
wounded, although by whom no one could say in the
steadily thickening snow. “Retreat,” cried the barbarians,
every mouth below its blond or red drooping moustaches
echoing the cry. “Retreat!”
Ah, what better cure for the bloodlust of battle
than the slaughter of a retreating foe! The Keltoi streamed
off Mount Parnassos just as they had attacked, an entire
nation on the move – women, children, veterans all in flight
before the triumphant Hellenes. Wagons adorned with the
skulls of defeated enemies bogged down in the snow or
tipped over. Blood collected in deep red pools in the
trampled snow, seeping through the white mantle towards
the covered earth. Chariots raced and crashed together,
splintering, horses neighing mournfully as legs broke and
they fell into the cold, deep snow. And behind them all
came the Hellenes, half-stunned by their victory, yet ready
to take advantage of it. The Hellenes killed Keltoi, men and
boys alike; women mauled, raped, reserved for slavery.
Every battle ends this way. For the losers the
indiscipline leads to rout and slaughter; for the victors,
success leads to indiscipline.
And for me? Ah, the three lucky Keltoi women I
rescued and swept away to my Corcyran Cave above Delphi
were thankful for my attention. Keltoi warriors have little
time for their women. Oh no! In truth, the men would
rather lay with one another, sometimes even in threes. The
women they leave to their own devices, except to breed
more children. So, in my triumph I gave my three prisoners
a dose of what they had been missing – not once, but
several times each. And when one of us flagged the others
would pick up Cernunnos’ severed antler and so prod our
renewed enthusiasm and vigor. Better even than the pine-
topped thrysos we used in Arkadia. All through the cold
winter’s night we kept our blood and bodies warm.
No such warmth this night. No Keltoi women
eager to feel a man between their legs after so long, no
Calyce or Bateia cuddling close. No, I am alone tonight in
my cave, alone. I hope the sun is strong tomorrow.
23.
These last few days I have been thinking about my
father, about Hermes. There are duties owing to the dead,
and yet I have done none for him.
I thought of him last evening, while gazing at the
pine tree that stands just at the edge of the clearing before
my cave. There is nothing remarkable about this pine. I
have seen pine trees like this all over Hellas, ever since my
youth. It is one of those pines whose branches spread out
quite wide from the trunk and fairly close to the ground –
unlike the pines higher up in the mountains, these grow out
rather than up, forming a vague, soft triangle of green.
I sat there, gazing at it, when suddenly the shape
seemed oddly familiar. I squinted at it, turning my head
this way and that, puzzling over the odd sense of
recognition. Another tree, another place? And then it came
to me. A smile involuntarily arose on my lips as I
recognized the shape of the winged silver hat, the petasos,
that Great Zeus gave my father. I watched the dying light
of day play on the pine and remembered how sunlight
would glint and gleam off my father’s hat as he raced hither
and yon across the heavens. Hermes! Messenger of the
gods; the bringer of dreams; god of wealth, of luck, of
thieves. Hermes, the conveyor of the souls of the dead to
Hades’ dark kingdom.
Hah! my father took part in so many final partings
in this World. Yet who was there for him when he died?
When he suddenly found mortality what deity conveyed his
soul to wherever it must go next? Or did he know the way
already? Perhaps he will be there for me after all. No –
that is not true. I know that. My father and I have parted
without knowing it. He is gone, and I must follow. But his
handsome face will not be there to lead me on to wherever
I go after this World.
 Strange, how so striking a visage could produce
me. I like my features, their sharpness, their rascality, but
no one, not even one lover amongst hundreds ever thought
me handsome the way my father was. In that he even
resembled his dear half-brother Apollo. Hah! half-brother
Apollo! How I loved to twit him as “Uncle” when I most
annoyed him. “Yes, Uncle.” Or, “Yes, dear Uncle.” Or, “Yes,
beloved Uncle.” His handsome face would rage like
Hephaistos’ forge.
But I never parted with my father. Like a late
patch of snow he simply vanished. There was so much to
tell him – of my pride in his position and power; of my
enjoyment in his own rascality; of my envy of his
appearance; of my thanks for my life; of my love for him.
Easy to say now, now that he is not here. It is all right,
Hermes, it is fitting. You have stolen away, and robbed me
of a “Good-bye.” It is what I should have expected from the
god of thieves, even if he was my own father.

Apollodorus sits before me now. The ship nears

Hellas. Soon the winds must shift and drive Thamuz to this
coast. I cannot allow my death to be unnoticed like
Hermes! I must see to my own preparations.
“I must tell you, Apollodorus, how much I have
appreciated all the devotions you have paid me. To attend
a god is no easy matter, and you have done me proudly.”
He bows, even blushes. He consorts with a god
yet remains humble. Admirable.
“But when next you come I would have you bring
me special foods – lobster, crayfish, and the red berries of
the quickbeam tree.”
Apollodorus’ eyes grow wide. He is aghast. “But .
. . but Lord Pan . . . red foods are forbidden! They are to be
served only at the feasts honoring the dead.”
 “Yes, Apollodorus, that is so. But remember what
I told you about the ship that sailed from Egypt. It is near.
The time comes. My time comes.”
A hundred questions race across his face, yet he
asks none. He has not believed that I am serious about my
death. I have not told him that all the others are already
gone. I cannot. It would destroy the faith that brings him
here, that preserves me. He is uncomfortable. He gets up
to leave.
“Remember, red foods.”
“Yes, Lord Pan.”
My funeral feast will honor me, and all the others
as well. I have planned it all: the red foods, especially the
berries that mortals called “the food of the gods.” And ale
made from spruce sap, the ale we drank at our revels in the
woods. And other foods that I will gather. These will make
up my funeral feast.

Two days have passed since the boy was here. I

grow anxious. Thamuz’s ship draws closer. Did I scare the
boy with the plans for my funeral feast? No, I could not. I
cannot sit in this cave any longer. Another fitful night, and
now a foggy daybreak.
There is a wonderful quiet about a fog-shrouded
morning. The cool grey dampens everything, muffling sight
and sound. I have always loved these mornings for the
sense of privacy and solitude they give, a sense of being
closer with the surrounding World in some very private
place. The shroud of fog isolates me in the small domain I
can encompass with my vision. It is my private place.
Ah, but soon there will be other shrouds for me.
And will I be alone then? Will anyone await me when I
leave this World for the next? Or will I simply trade the
loneliness I now feel for another? Or will I even know at
all? Fog slips through my brain as I ask these questions.
How do mortals cope with this their entire lives? I prefer
not to think of it. It will be. That is enough. I cannot
change it. I cannot avoid it. It will be.
And yet . . . I am curious. And I do hope some
part of me will know, will recognize whatever happens.
24.
I ponder life and death and it fogs my brain. And
so I drink and the fog grows worse, thicker, heavier,
stickier. I got drunk again last night, hoping one fog would
drive out another.
There is that awful moment when the drinking
stops and you know that the glow that you feel is fleeting.
Silence follows. Silence to remind you that all your cares,
all your worries, everything that you had banished with
drink will return – that they have never really left. They
were always there, always, even while you felt so good.
The wine made the problems seem unreal. That was a lie.
It was the euphoria that was unreal. Everything is at it
was. You may still have a drunken joke or two, but they are
hollow now. Reality has crept back through the drink.
The summer is dying, but not yet gone. Like me.
In winter, when I felt the thick remains of drink numbing my
brain, I would wander the mountain slopes and find some
patch of snow to rub all about my face. There is none now.
It is too soon – or late.
Oh, the feel of frost underfoot, crackling and brittle
in the early morning chill. I will never see frost again. Ah,
but there was that time, on Parnassos, when I crept from
my cave still laden with the sweet perfume of passion and
wine, and sought out some snow for the throbbing in my
head.
It was early spring, cold, but little snow left. The
white patches were few. At last I saw one, gleaming white
through the dark pines. And then I saw the girl, a mortal.
I watched from behind the trees while she amused herself,
making patterns in the snow with her footprints.
At first her face seemed plain, but as I watched,
quiet as only I could be in the woods, I saw that she was
pretty in her own way, her eyes large, her lips very full, her
cheeks round and bright now with the morning chill. I
watched and watched, and finally I stepped forward, as
silently as possible, my hooves betraying me with a soft
crunching noise as I reached the snow, whose skin had
grown thick with the warming air, covering the softer white
within.
Her first instinct, when she saw me, was to run,
but her curiosity stayed her. I said not a word, but merely
came closer. Then, I began to make my own patterns in the
snow, complementing hers, intertwining hers, coiling in and
out of hers. She responded with new patterns, as did I in
turn, our paths gliding close, crossing, recrossing. Soon we
were dancing with one another, holding hands as we spun
around, kicking madly at the snow, sending up large white
sprays.
Her himation opened but she no longer needed the
woolen cloak’s warmth. The dancing warmed her now. The
himation fell to the ground. We danced and danced, and I
watched as the rapture of the revel crept over her, taking
her, possessing her. I moved one hand to her hip, and as
we danced I loosed the simple girdle about her chiton.
Then I reached up for the shoulder clasps and loosed them
both. We danced, and her chiton spun away. Her eyes
grew wide and wild at the prospect of dancing naked in the
snow.
Our dancing whirled faster now, spinning, her body
pink against the blurring white background. We spun faster,
and faster, and faster, until we fell in a heap on her doffed
himation.
She breathed heavily now from the dance, her
pretty breasts rising and falling quickly, her thoughts
whirling as we had been. I spread out the cloak beneath
us, and she stretched out on it. I lay beside her and drew
her warm body to mine, my fingers dancing on her flesh as
we had danced on the snow.
 Ah, what a wondrous coupling that was. I
mounted her, and bucked and thrust, our bodies warm from
each other, from the dance, from the spring sun on that
hillside. Twice my phallos spurted its rapture and still we
continued, her spurring me on again now by rubbing snow
against my back. I shrieked with angry delight at the chill,
and grabbed her up to me, and we rolled over and over one
another, off the himation, across the snow, first one then
the other on that cold white bed. And then we stopped
rolling, me on the bottom, my woolly legs protected against
the chill, our hips continuing to move in that most special
rhythm.
Finally, we lay exhausted, her body huddling
against my fleecy one. And then we parted, never having
spoken a word. She dressed and disappeared into the
woods. And when she was gone I grabbed some snow and
rubbed not only my face but all of my body.
25.
My heart beats quickly this morning. I tossed and
turned fitfully last night, sweat dropping off my body onto
my fabled lynx mantle. All night I heard the winds moaning
outside, tormented as they writhe and twist out of their
normal summer paths. Ah, but it is worthwhile, my
friends. Listen to me Notos, listen Zephyr, Boreas, Eurus.
It is worth your pain, your anguish, as you accomplish this
for me. No – for us. For in the proclamation of my passing,
so pass us all.
And now . . . and now my heart beats fast, the
ichor races through my veins. Thamuz’s ship has rounded
Cape Akritas. Soon he will sail past Pylos, past the ruins of
the palace of wise Nestor, who led the Messenians to join in
the war against Troy. Come. Come, Thamuz. Come to me
here in Epiros. Come,

The boy has come, as I asked. He stands

diffidently at the entry to my cave while I spread out my
meal in the late afternoon sunshine. It is my funeral feast,
just as I asked. Oh, this fine boy, this gift of Apollo. Look,
look at my red foods. Crayfish, and a lobster, already
cooked and now red, and quickbeam berries. And cherries,
bright and red; and grapes – purple, yet with reddish veins
visible beneath their skins like some ancient one’s hand.
And the currants called Parnossian.
And I have done my part as well. There is a slab
of beef, barely cooked, its red juices sparkling. And flowers
– whitebeam berries, and hawthorn berries in honor of
Maia, dear Hermes’ mother – my grandmother; and the red
pomegranate in honor of Hades, onetime lord of the dead;
and red elder berries from my native Arkadia, and the red
fruit of the guelder rose. And one red flower from a yew
tree, with its poisonous seed. Mortals call it the
“deathtree,” and once held it sacred to Hekate. And why
not? Did she not join with my father and lead souls to the
dark dwelling of Hades? Was she not the queen of ghosts
and of magic? Who better to honor at my last feast than
this goddess?
And one last token. I found a stout hazel and took
an old limb and fashioned from it a knife. The hazel was
sacred to Hermes, to my father. He will partake of this
meal with me.
Hah! was there ever such a profusion of red at any
meal? What battlefield ever looked so red as does this
setting? None! Not Marathon, or Parnassos, or any of
Alexandros’ slaughters in the east. Not even the epic
struggle between Zeus and his siblings against the Titans.
And yet, it is a battle already decided, a battle I have
already lost. All the more reason to feast well tonight.
Poor Apollodorus. He is appalled as I dig in with
fervor and gusto. He has brought food of his own – just
some bread, a few olives, some dried meat. He will not
touch any of my meal. We only share some bright red
wine.
We eat in silence and yet I feel him wincing as I
take every bite. And we drink, we drink.
“I give you my father, Hermes: Messenger of the
gods, god of roads, guide of souls, god of thieves.” Our
cups touch. “I give you Selene, Syrinx, Iynx. I give you
Iambe. I give you Echo! I give you Papposeilenos.” Our
cups touch again. “I give you your own guardian. I give
you Apollo, whose gift you truly are.”
The wine has worked its way though the boy’s
blood. My meal no longer scares him so much. He must
stop drinking. We must talk.
“Apollodorus. There is one last devotion I must
ask of you. One more.” His eyes glow, then lower. His
usual eagerness is countered now by my deadly meal. “In
two days the ship I mentioned will be below in that bay,
there where you can see the waves even now. Tomorrow
night you must come back here and spend the night in my
cave. And on the following morning you must climb down
to the shore and swim out to the boat. You must convey
the message I gave you, the one I told you. You must tell
the Egyptian that he is to take it to Rome. Do you
understand?”
He nods, this time with certainty.
“You are sure?” I must be sure.
“Yes, Lord Pan.”
I sigh, deeply. It is good. The boy will do it. My
passing will be made known. I pour him a final cup of wine
and then send him home.
“Remember, you must return tomorrow night.”

Apollodorus is gone now; my funeral feast is over.

I have eaten my fill, eaten the red foods as if they were the
nectar and ambrosia that Great Zeus served on Olympos.
But there is still something I must do. I drink another cup
of wine, and belch, loudly. The hair of my moustache and
beard is sticky with food and wine, sticky as I wipe my hand
across the hairs.
I must climb the rocks that form the mountain
above my cave. I must go to where I last cried out my love
for Selene. But tonight I must proclaim myself one last
time, once before Thamuz’s ship appears in the sea below,
like Charon’s ferry waiting to convey me to the World that
comes after this one.
Who hears my voice as I sound out my glories?
Do they recognize it as the voice of a god? Are they
terrified, surprised, awed? I do not know. My proclamation
is for my sake above all others.
 I stand on the uppermost rock, hooved legs braced
apart, back arched to take in full draughts of cool night air,
my hands cupped about my mouth.
“I am Pan! Honored at Athens, Oropos, Pattalia,
Sicyon, Elis, Heraea, Megalopolis, Acacesium and
Alexandria. Also near Parathenses near the grave of my
brother Arkas, between Tegea and Lakonia, and in my
Sacred Grove by the River Garates. And on Mounts Chaon,
Lanpeia and Lycaeus, and on the Molusian Rock. And on
Mount Parthenius, where my Sacred Tortoises had their
home, near where I appeared to Philippides, and on Mount
Parnassos in my Corcyran Cave.
“I am Pan, husband of Echo, lover of Selene, of
Syrinx, of nymphs and maenads and mortals beyond
counting. I am Pan, father of Iynx and Iambe, and of
Crotus.
“I am Pan, who took part in the great victory over
the Persians at Marathon; who helped rout the Keltoi in the
snow below Parnassos near Delphi.
“I am Pan, also known as Pan Lyterius – Resting
Pan, in Troezenia; Pan Sinoesis, after a nymph who nursed
me, and Pan Scoleitas after a nearby hill, both near
Megalopolis; Nomeian Pan in my pasturing at Melpeia, near
where I first made my pipes.
“I am Pan, the goat-footed, two-horned god.
Lover of noise, sharp-eyed, merry-laughing. Pan the
Reveller, the Great Cavorter, Pan the Lover.
“All these things you called me, and more, in the
days when you believed in me.
“I am Pan!”
26.
The day has passed in a trance. I recall little
except sitting outside my cave, staring at the sea below,
waiting for Thamuz’s ship to come into view. How long did I
sit? When did it arrive? I cannot remember.
I sat all day, feeling that if I did not, if I failed to
concentrate, the Egyptian would not arrive. I am tired, as if
by my own will and not the twisted wind I have drawn
Thamuz up to the coast here to Epiros.
But there it is, the ship riding at anchor, its sails
useless in the sudden calm. I sense the fright on that ship.
For so many days have the winds blown perversely, driving
them here, here to the waters below my cave. Fear not,
Thamuz. Tomorrow the winds will blow, and shift, and
release you, and speed you to Rome.
I am tired, and yet I cannot sleep. The boy
sleeps, on my bed, covered with his own chalmys and my
lynx. Sleep well, Apollodorus, for great things await you
tomorrow.

The night, my last night has passed. It is blank to

me, a void before the coming end . . . Or is it? No, I know
now what I will miss most when I pass – if I feel anything.
What I miss already. It is not my myriad lovers, or my
children, or my pipes. No, it is the World itself. To sit, even
as I sit now, and feel the breeze ruffle the hair on my
haunches. To smell the sea, the woods, the loamy Earth
itself. The World is a colder place for our passing. We were
the World, we were the very expressions of its every mood
– the winds, the rain, the sun, the moon. What will the
world be like, now that we are gone? The same? Yes. But
different, too. Colder.
Thunder and lightning both hammer without Zeus.
The tides roll without Poseidon. Helios and Selene are both
long gone and yet the sun and the moon still shine. Away
to the west Etna breathes smoke into the air, yet
Hephaistos’ forge is long cold and dead. We have served
our purposes in this World, we have made it a less terrifying
place for mortals. We helped them tame, in their minds,
the things they will never control. And now we die – all of
us die one last time in my own last breath – killed by
indifference, by disbelief, by new beliefs.
These new gods in our places are too removed
from all we were, too remote, too mysterious. They miss
the joy and simplicity that we were. And yet . . . it is not
these gods who have bested us. It is our followers, our
erstwhile devotees. They feel they know the World better
now, and so they need us no longer. And yet I know – I
better than any god – how little mortals understand of this
World, how little they appreciate it, how little they know
how to love it. I know all they will miss, will forget, will
misunderstand. Man moves away from the World, from the
rain, from the stars, from the sound of the whispering
blades of grass. Man allows his new understanding to breed
new ignorance. How very sad. How very good not to see
this new age, to be dismissed and to die as a brief
harbinger of what comes, a memory of all that is lost.

I feel as if I have kept a vigil all night. Strange, to

be corpse and guardian all at the same time. No pyre for
me like Achilles on the beach at Troy. No, there are flames
of my death, the red fingers of dawn.
Ah! an owl! I am glad. In Athens it was the omen
of death. Strange, but the sound comforts me now, assures
me.
Apollodorus is awake now. I offer him wine to
ward off the morning chill. And now I repeat the message
again. It is as if he neither heard nor believed me before.
His eyes grow wide. They stare. Has the god gone mad, he
wonders. I repeat it. I ask him to repeat it. It is all too
real for him now. “Fear not, Apollodorus. That is my
message and you must carry it.”
We walk out of the cave together, and around to
the right, to where the boulders form both precipice and
path down to a thin strand of beach. We clasp hands, and
then I embrace him. He bows, gravely, and then disappears
over the edge of the rocks.
I can follow his progress as first as he gingerly
picks his way down. Life is stirring on the ship. What’s
this? A breeze? No! Not yet! Hurry, Apollodorus, hurry!
Where is he, why can’t I see him? Has he fallen? There are
men moving about the deck. Hurry! Hurry!
Wait! There, a glimpse of him, moving amidst the
rocks. Oh! if only he had my goat’s legs, that he could
scamper. Hurry, Apollodorus, the wind, the wind!
I see Thamuz on the deck, rubbing his eyes, his
hands, putting up wet fingers to the breeze.
At last, at last, the boy is on the sand. He is running,
shouting to the boat, waving. He kicks off his sandals and
runs to the water’s edge. Now he strips off his chalmys. I
see his naked form shiver in the morning air, The water will
be even colder. Please, Apollodorus!
He shouts again, and at last dives into the foamy
white of a breaking wave. Where is he now? Ah, he
surfaces, and I can see his youthful limbs stroke and kick
against the cold water. Strange, no matter how far away he
goes his body remains clear to me, every sinew and muscle
on it clear as they carry him on the sea.
At last someone on the ship sees him. Sailors are
running to the rail. Soon Apollodorus will be taken on
board. I can already hear him give out my message, slowly
and proudly, and said thrice, as I told him: “The Great God
Pan is dead.”
And so I will be. And so I am.

186
The Great God Pan by Mark M. Lowenthal © 2012