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The Death of Pan
Pan. is dead. Great Pan is dead.
Ah! bow your heads, ye maidens all,
And weave ye him his coronal.
Ezra Pound
The ancient spirit lives within us
Unwillingly concealed;
The Great Pan did not die,
No; Pan does not die!
Kostis Palamas
It happened like this. Aemilian the rhetorician told Cleombrotus the
Spartan a marvellous story concerning the mortality of demons.
Aemilian’s father was voyaging to Italy, and, the wind falling, the
ship drifted late in the day toward the islands of Paxi. After supper,
as the passengers were drinking, a loud voice was heard coming from
one of the islands and calling on one Thamus. All were amazed. Twice
the voice called and there was no answer. The third time Thamus
replied. And the voice then said:
‘When you approach Palodes, announce that the great Pan is dead.’
Thamus resolved that, if there were a following breeze, he would sail
past the spot and say nothing; but if the sea were calm he would trans-
mit the message. There was no wind. So when they were off Palodes,
Thamus looked toward the land and proclaimed, ‘The great Pan is
dead.’
There arose at once great cries of lamentation and amazement, from
many throats. And since the strange news spread, Thamus was later
sent for by the Emperor Tiberius.
This marvellous story, from Plutarch’s On the Cessation of Oracles,
succeeds by the mention of Tiberius in putting the death of Pan
intriguingly close to the Crucifixion of Christ; and therefore it has
struck poets from Spenser to Pound as a mystical allegory of the
destruction of paganism,
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