Aegipan

Illustration from the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493)

Aegipan (Ancient Greek: Αἰγίπαν, Αἰγίπανος, "Goat-Pan") was a mythological being, either distinct from or identical to Pan. His story appears to be of late origin.

Mythology

According to Hyginus, Aegipan was the son of Zeus (some sources say his son Apollo) and Aega (also named Boetis or Aix),^[1] and was transferred to the stars.^[2] Others again make Aegipan the father of Pan, and state that he as well as his son were represented as half goat and half fish, similar to a satyr.^[3] In Greek art, Aegipan is thus often depicted as a sea goat, the mythical creature represented by the constellation Capricornus. When Zeus in his contest with Typhon was deprived of the sinews of his hands and feet, Hermes and Aegipan secretly restored them to him and fitted them in their proper places, after stealing them from the Corycian cave where they were being guarded by Delphyne.^[4]

According to a Roman tradition mentioned by Plutarch, Aegipan sprang from the incestuous intercourse of Valeria of Tusculum and her father Valerius, and was considered only a different name for Silvanus.^[5]

Literature

Later writers such as Pliny the Elder used the terms "Aegipanes", "Aegipans", or "Oegipans" to describe a race of satyr-like wild men said to reside in Libya.^[6] This depiction was continued in medieval bestiaries where the terms aegipans and satyrs were sometimes used to describe ape-like or bestial creatures. These are thought to be fanciful descriptions of baboons or monkeys. A reference to oegipans as a species also appears in Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher.

Notes

Depiction of an aegipan with a young pan (1890)

1. Hyginus, Fabulae 155.
2. Hyginus, De Astronomica 2.13.28
3. Eratosthenes, Catasterismi 27
4. Apollodorus, 1.6.3; Hyginus, De Astronomica 2.13.28
5. Plutarch, Parallela minora 22; Smith, s.v. Aegipan.
6. Pliny the Elder, Natural History V - 8

References

• Apollodorus, The Library with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. ISBN 0-674-99135-4. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Greek text available from the same website.
• Hyginus, Astronomica from The Myths of Hyginus translated and edited by Mary Grant. University of Kansas Publications in Humanistic Studies. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
• Hyginus, Fabulae from The Myths of Hyginus translated and edited by Mary Grant. University of Kansas Publications in Humanistic Studies. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
• Plutarch, Moralia with an English Translation by Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1936. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Greek text available from the same website.
• Smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London (1873). Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.

External links

• Media related to Aegipan at Wikimedia Commons

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). "Aegipan". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.