With his homeland in rustic Arcadia , he is also recognized as the god of fields, groves, wooded glens, and often affiliated with sex; because of this, Pan is connected to fertility and the season of spring. In Roman religion and myth , Pan was frequently identified with Faunus , a nature god who was the father of Bona Dea , sometimes identified as Fauna ; he was also closely associated with Silvanus , due to their similar relationships with woodlands, and Inuus , a vaguely-defined deity also sometimes identified with Faunus.
The connection between Pan and Pushan, both of whom are associated with goats, was first identified in by the German scholar Hermann Collitz. In his earliest appearance in literature, Pindar 's Pythian Ode iii. The worship of Pan began in Arcadia which was always the principal seat of his worship.
Arcadia was a district of mountain people , culturally separated from other Greeks. Arcadian hunters used to scourge the statue of the god if they had been disappointed in the chase. Being a rustic god, Pan was not worshipped in temples or other built edifices, but in natural settings, usually caves or grottoes such as the one on the north slope of the Acropolis of Athens.
These are often referred to as the Cave of Pan. The only exceptions are the Sanctuary of Pan on the Neda River gorge in the southwestern Peloponnese β the ruins of which survive to this day β and the Temple of Pan at Apollonopolis Magna in ancient Egypt. Archaeologists, while excavating a Byzantine church of around AD in Banyas , discovered in the walls of the church an altar of the god Pan with a Greek inscription, dating back to the second or third century AD.
The inscription reads, " Atheneon son of Sosipatros of Antioch is dedicating the altar to the god Pan Heliopolitanus. He built the altar using his own personal money in fulfillment of a vow he made. Numerous different parentages are given for Pan by different authors. Like other nature spirits, Pan appears to be older than the Olympians , if it is true that he gave Artemis her hunting dogs and taught the secret of prophecy to Apollo.
