Socrates' Prayer to Pan - and Pan as the "Highest God"


"Oh dear Pan and all the other Gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him."

This prayer comes at the very end of the Phaedrus. After offering this prayer, Socrates says to his young friend, with whom he has just spent an idyllic afternoon discussing Beauty surrounded by nature, "Do we need anything else, Phaedrus? I believe my prayer is enough for me." To which Phaedrus responds, "Make it a prayer for me as well. Friends have everything in common."

The Phaedrus is one of Plato's most celebrated dialogs, and one of the first translated into Latin during the early stages of the Renaissance. It is also one of only three Platonic dialogs that Marsilio Ficino wrote a commentary on, although he had hoped to write commentaries on all of the dialogs. The Phaedrus was also at the center of the controversy over the very acceptability of Plato as a philosophical influence for Christians - this controversy involved intellectuals and churchmen from both the Latin West and the Byzantine East, including Plethon, Bessarion, Ficino and many others.

In his Commentaries on the Phaedrus, Ficino tells us this about Pan:

He is called Pan (as if he were all), because he occupies the greatest rank in the order of the local Gods. For just as the supercelestial Gods are brought back to the prime intellect and the celestial Gods to the world-soul, so all the sublunar Gods and daemons, the local ones, are finally brought back to Pan, who reigns everywhere under the moon. Whenever I have spoken of Pan as the highest God, however, I have spoken not with a Platonic reason, but with some other.

Here Ficino makes two points - one directly and one enigmatically. The first, and direct, point is to identify Pan as the Great God of the material ("sublunar") world. In other wods, the supreme God of Nature.

The second point, to which Ficino alludes to with discretion, is that Pan has an even higher station - that of the "highest" God. Elsewhere in Ficino's work he holds that Pan "corresponds to Saturn, the prime intellect and highest God" - according to Michael Allen. But Allen does not state what Ficino's "other", non-Platonic "reason" is. Allen implies that Ficino might simply be using etymology (according to which Pan obviously means "all") - but Ficino might very well be referring to Macrobius' description of Pan in the Saturnalia, in which Pan is portrayed as a supreme, solar Deity.

Pan, Faunus, and Silvanus


Plato, Macrobius, Proclus and Ficino

Marsilio Ficino is probably the single most important figure of the Renaissance - and his single most important achievement was translating all of Plato's works into Latin. Ficino also planned to compose commentaries on each of Plato's dialogs, but only completed three: on the Phaedrus, the Symposium and the Philebus. Ficino held the Phaedrus in especially high esteem - in his commentary he goes so far as to remind his reader of the legend that Plato was, in fact, partly Divine and that none other than the God Apollo was his Father. Ficino leads us to believe that Plato's "Apollonian descent" is especially apparent in this dialog in particular.

Plato's Phaedrus is of great significance to the discussion of Pan because of the manner in which the dialog ends (see sidebar to this page). Socrates' prayer to Pan is a striking example of philosophical piety - and Ficino makes clear from his commentary that this prayer was considered to be a significant part of the dialog. Ficino hints broadly that there is more to Pan's "reputation", however, than even what can be taken from Socrates' prayer. Ficino states clearly that Pan is "the highest God" - and he also states clearly that he chooses not to reveal his source for this. In Macrobius' Saturnalia we are presented with the portrayal of Pan as a solar Deity, whose horns represent the rising of the Sun, and whose beard represents its setting. If Macrobius is Ficino's source, this would help explain his discretion - since Macrobius did not enjoy the same "Christianized" status as Plato.

In his Life of Proclus Marinus tells us, concerning Proclus' piety (translation from here):

".... if I was to enumerate all the facts of this kind, and to report the particular devotion which he held for Pan, son of Hermes, the great favors he received, and the numerous times he was, in Athens, saved by intervention of the Divinity, and to relate in detail the protections and the advantages he received from the Mother of the Gods, of which he was particularly proud and happy, I would no doubt seem chattering vainly, to those who may light on this book by chance, and some may even think I am saying things little worthy of belief. For there were a considerable number of episodes, that were of almost daily occurrence, when this Goddess [Cybele] spoke or acted in his favor."

In addition to Pan and Cybele, Marinus also specifically mentioned Proclus' relationship with the God Asklepius earlier in this same section. While the mention of Pan is brief, it is nevertheless telling. What we can say for sure is that Proclus, one of the greatest of the late Pagan philosophers, had "particular devotion" for the God Pan - and that Proclus received many "favors" from Pan - including being "saved by the intervention" of Pan "numerous times." Proclus, as an outspoken Pagan in a major city (Athens) faced great difficulties and for a time was forced to flee the city for over a year. Marinus appears to be giving Pan a large part of the credit for protecting Proclus against his enemies - the Christians. At the very least we can infer that Proclus considered Pan to be comparable in stature to Asklepius, Cybele and Hermes. It also appears that, like Pindar, Proclus assumed a close relationship between Pan and the Great Goddess Cybele.

The Cult of Pan in Greece

In the city of Athens, Pan was credited with nothing less than saving the city from military annihilation at the hands of the Persians in the year 490 BC. The Athenians had sent a runner, Pheidippides, to ask the Spartans for help against the Persians, who had already landed at Marathon. The Spartans were less than forthcoming, but as he was returning to Athens (through Arcadia) the God Pan appeared to Pheidippides, and He promised to come to the assistance of the Athenians. After the resounding victory over the Persians at Marathon, the cult of Pan understandably became an important part of the religious life of the Athenians.

Now if there is one historian that all historians should be familiar with it is Herodotus. Here is what Herodotus has to say about this rather important episode in Athenian history:

According to the story of Pheidippides himself, and what he told the Athenians, Pan met him on Mount Parthenium, above Tegea. Pan shouted his name, "Pheidippides," and bade him say this to the Athenians: "Why do you pay no heed to Pan, who is a good friend to the people of Athens, has been many times serviceable to you, and will be so again?" This story the Athenians were convinced was true, and when the Athenian fortunes had again settled for the good, they set up a shrine of Pan under the Acropolis and propitiated the God Himself with sacrifices and torch races, in accord with the message He had sent them.

Possibly the most famous of all Greek poets, Pindar, who lived during the time of the battle of Marathon, composed a Hymn to Pan. Pindar also claimed to have had an epiphany of the "Mother of the Gods" - and the poet closely associated Pan with this Great Goddess. As already noted above, Proclus, who lived almost a thousand years after Pindar, also associated Pan with the Goddess.

According to Philippe Borgead in his The Cult of Pan in Ancient Greece, in the city of Delphi Pan was closely associated with both Apollo and Dionysos, in Thebes His cult was inseperable for that of the Mother of the Gods, and He was also considered to be the Son of Apollo, and Pan was also worshipped in Macedonia and by Greek colonists in Upper Egypt - all this in addition to His cult in Athens and in his "hometown" of Arcadia (p. 180).

Faunus and Silvanus

Agrippa tells us that the Latins "did adore with the highest worship" the God Faunus. The relationship of the Latins to Faunus, according to Agrippa, is the same as that of the Athenians to Athena, and Delphi to Apollo. (TBOOP III, xiii) So there can be no doubt that, at least in Agrippa's mind (and according to his sources) Faunus was a "major" God.

One of Agrippa's most important sources was none other than Vergil's Aeneid. In the Aeneid we are told that Faunus was the father of King Latinus himself. It was the marriage of Aeneas and Latinus' daughter Lavinia that gave rise to the royal blood-line that Julius Caesar claimed. Again, this would certainly indicate Faunus' importance - to say the least.

So what kind of God is Faunus? Typically He is referred to as the "Roman counterpart to the Greek God Pan." This is true as far as it goes - but Faunus clearly existed in Roman religion prior to the "Hellenization" process. In fact, one of the chief characteristics of Faunus is that He is credited with giving the Romans their religion in the first place!

However, like Pan, and also Silvanus, Faunus was a God of Nature. And also like His counterparts, Faunus was a God of both wild, untamed Nature in Her darker and more dangerous aspect - as well as of peaceful, idyllic, nurturing Nature as She is romantically envisioned by city-folk.

"Silvanus" is the Latin version of the name of an Etruscan God named "Selvan" - "Silvanus" literally means "of the woods." Etruscan religion was of central importance to the Romans. Among the most sacred of all religious texts of the ancient world were the Sibylline Books - which were used in a highly developed form of "bibliomancy" by the Sibyls - an ancient order of Priestess/Prophetesses. The Sibylline Books - which were burned by the Christians in the early fifth century.

It is very difficult to disinguish the "original" Etruscan Selvan from His Romanized form. This is not a problem limited to the God Silvanus, though - Etruscan religion, as noted already, had a pervasive influence on the religious thought and practices of Rome. This problem is made even more intractable by the thorough Hellenization of Roman religion.

Arcadia

Arcadia is both a real place and also a realm of the imagination. In reality it is the mountainous central part of the Peloponnesian peninsula (the southern part of Greece). It was also the "frontier", in the geo-political sense, separating the rival city-states of Athens and Sparta. Arcadia has always been associated with remoteness from civilization - in part because it's rough terrain is not suited to intensive agriculture, and so it's population had to rely on the herding of goats and sheep.

The Arcadia of the imagination is that of Ovid's Metamorphoses and Virgils Eclogues, although both of these Roman poets relied heavily on much older Greek mythological sources. Ovid tells us that Arcadia existed prior to even Jupiter - during the time when Saturnus was the "Supreme" God, and before even the Moon existed. This is significant because the Moon was thought to represent a "cosmic frontier" that separated the realm of humans from that of the Gods. In other words, the primeval world of Arcadia was a time and a place when humans and Gods lived together.

The God Pan has always been associated with both the real and the imagined Arcadia. It was while running back to Athens, by way of Arcadia, with the dissapointing reply from the Spartans that Pheidippides had his epiphany of Pan - leading to the establishment of Pan's cult in Athens and its subsequent spread throughout the Hellenistic world. Ronald Hutton mistakenly assumes that it was only with the Industrial Revolution that city-folk began fantasizing about a wild, erotic God of Nature. But few people have ever been as urbanized as Socrates, who prided himself on never venturing beyond the walls of Athens - except on that one afternoon described in the Phaedrus. It is fitting that Socrates' elegant prayer to Pan comes just as he and his young friend are about to return from that idyllic afternoon tryst. And as we have also seen, both Pindar and Proclus identified this God of Nature as the companion and consort of the Great Goddess - again bringing into question the grounds on which Hutton has based his attempted deconstruction of "thoroughly modern" Paganism.

 
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