It wasn’t all bad though, panic sexuality can lead to new things. A life that consisted of only panic sexuality led to heartbreak, regret, and lack of family. The ancient Greeks saw the joys in panic sexuality, that idea of instant gratification and living in the moment, but they also believed that it came with a price. Pan has no primary partner, his ladies were the nymphs, and those nymphs seemed to change frequently. With a few exceptions, Greek gods were rarely monogamous, and nearly all the male gods had lovers on the side, but they almost always had a primary partner.
Pan was anti-monogamy, and his myth is full of conquests and dalliances, but is void of long-time girlfriends and partners. Pan was the god of lust, or of sex in its grunting, groaning, moaning, dirtiest form. Pan was not the god of love, and he was not the guy you petitioned if you were looking to fall in love. Pan was the patron of what has come to be known as “panic sex,” sex for the sake of lust and physical satisfaction.
The fact that Pan was generally depicted with an erection speaks to the fact that he was a sexual god, but not sex in the way we always view it in the modern world. While nudity amongst the gods of ancient Greece was common, gods with throbbing members were not. Pan was associated with sex from the very beginning. The two subjects go together like cake and ice cream. It’s almost impossible to separate Pan and sex, or sex and Pan. Shepherds also used caves for shelter when they were out in the fields, and this might have something to do with the cave being the preferred place to worship Pan. Caves served as dwelling places for the first humans, and visiting one was thought to put an individual in touch with their true feelings. Caves were also seen as the birthplace of new beginnings, a place to regroup and start over. The grottoes had always served as a haven for outcasts, and Pan with his dual nature-half beast and half god, was often viewed as an outcast in Greek society. The grottoes were a link to the primitive world and were seen as way to escape the burdens of civilization. There may have been a great deal of symbolism associated with the caves where Pan was worshiped. (The acropolis in Athens housed many temples and shrines dedicated to the ancient Greek Gods the most magnificent structure on the top of the acropolis was the temple dedicated to Pallas Athena-the Parthenon.)
On the acropolis in Athens he wasn’t given a temple or even a church, it was said he resided in a crack on the side of the plateau that housed the acropolis. The grottoes dedicated to Pan weren’t dedicated solely to him either he generally shared his sacred space with nymphs local to the region. Only in his native Arcadia was Pan worshiped in a temple, in most of the ancient world he was worshiped in caves or grottoes. Arcadia was a land of shepherds, peasants, and acorn gatherers it was not a hotbed of agriculture or city-life.Īs a god of the people Pan wasn’t worshiped in the traditional Greek way. And while the Greeks might have originated in this rocky, hilly, country in Greece, they didn’t stay there. They referred to it as the land “that existed before the moon,” and thought of it as the home of the first Greeks. To the ancient Greeks Arcadia was a magical, ancient place. Pan hailed from the region in Greece known as Arcadia. Archeology has also been beneficial in revealing the truth about ancient Pan, but there is still a lot of color that needs to be added to get the full picture. We know about his worship because of some letters and plays that have survived which provide general details about how he was venerated. Most of what we know about the worship of Pan comes from sources outside of mythology.