Just introducing myself...

[Anonymous]

I'm new to the SVR, and since my interests are for Greek Mythology, I thought I'd make a post here...

[Gnaeus Dionysius Draco]

Simply put: welcome . Hope to hear from you more around these boards.

Vale!
Draco

[Quintus Aurelius Orcus]

Yes i figured that one out by your post in the general forum. You have some intriguing ideas on mythology. I'm pretty sure that mythology can be discussed at the collegium religionis board.
vale
Romulus

[Anonymous]

I'll just keep reading and see what catches my interest...

But right now, that path I referred to in my post on the General Forum has hit a bit of a dead end.

Pan seems to go right from joining Dionysus' Entourage (which, right now, is sounding more and more like a Gypsy Caravan or a travelling circus) to "The great Pan is dead..."

As soon as I can get a concrete list of dates and events down, I should be able to put together a really good timeline. But anything between Arcadia and Sicily seem to be beyond my reach. And that's the one timespan I really have to confirm before the theory holds any merit.

I can't find any stories that describe life in the Entourage nor do I know of any that might even exist.

I was also hoping that someone in the Collegium Graecum might be able to point me in the right direction.

[Quintus Aurelius Orcus]

General speaking: almost all the major players in mythology have stories, myths, the rest doesn't seem to have that with the exception of a few who does have some myths. I think stories about members of the entourage of Dionysos or any other deity would belong to legends and folklore. That is what i think of it. I'm not sure about the last part.
vale
Romulus

[Anonymous]

That I'd actually have to contact someone who lives there or a source from there...



BTW...I'm not allowed to upload my own avatar? Or do I have to link to one off-site?

[Q. C. Locatus Barbatus]

you have to send your avatar to our aediles, but now there are elections going on. Once our new aediles are in place you can send yours.

[Gnaeus Dionysius Draco]

The entourage of Dionysus? Are you sure you don't mean the entourage of Dionysius? In that case, you are welcome to join the DIONYSIAN EMPIRE, the legitimate and ruling dynasty of the Societas Via Romana.

Just kidding here... carry on .

Draco

[Anonymous]

the Entourage of Dionysus was a group of Satyrs, Nymphs, humans and assorted others that followed Dionysus everywhere he went--hence the reputation of Dionysus for creating havoc everywhere he goes.

After Pan 'moved' to Arcadia, he joined the Entourage--which is probably why legends of his involvment with them are so hard to find. I mean...these people hardly sound like the type to keep an accurate record of their journeys--or even make them known.


If we were to take mythology at 'face value' as it were...Hermes, Dionysus and Arcas (the king of Arcadia) were all related--they all had the same father. And Maia (Hermes' mom), legends say, raised Arcas as a son after Hera took away Callisto (Arcas' real mom--a nymph). And Pan was a son of Hermes (some legends say he's a son of Zeus--which would still make him a brother to Dionysus, Hermes and Arcas).

The way I see it...Pan might very well have been like that wayward cousin or nephew that goes from uncle to uncle looking for a place to stay whenever he's in town. You know the kind of relative I'm talking about, right? He leaves the home, hooks up with Uncle Dionysus, who's currently hanging with Uncle Arcas throwing some really big parties down there in Arcadia...

Any way you look at it....these are some very powerful men with some very wild reputations....hooking up with their wayward nephew...

Arcadia was often referred to as a rustic, sylvan paradise with rolling hills and trees and fresh air and sunshine. A whole country devoted to liquor, love and fights...

My kinda place... =)

If the timelines correlate at all...there's also a chance that the Entourage--or members of the entourage--either founded or became a part of the civilization of Euboea and Negroponte...two places that were near and dear to Aristotle. If the Entourage was travelling around at the same time Aristotle was making his travels, the two might very well have hung out together.

Pan and his entourage might very well have had a hand in the creation of the Lyceum, changing the face of alternative education as we know it.

By the time monotheism hit Rome...characters like Pan--and his followers, were probably seen as the worst of the worst. The embodiment of the devil.

Under the threat of persecution and death...but with all audacity and playfulness--they decided to perpetuate myths of themselves as being super-human...or god-like...or half-animal...

"You want to be scared of me, be scared..."

and so the legends were born.

Pirates, gypsies, circuses, tribes of cannibals, slaves, shamans, hippies, beak-nicks, punks, artists, thespians, philosophers....it could all go down to the same couple of people a few thousand years ago and I think that's pretty neat.


=)

[Quintus Aurelius Orcus]

Pan and others like him, were seen as the embodiement of the devil by the Christians because of his hooves and horns. Pan was never truly seen as evil of any kind. He could scare the hell out of you to create a kind of "panic" fear. Also we must remember that most of the stories, myths/ legends were in someway altered by the Christians. In my opinion you can not really compare Pan and Satyrs with pirates and gypsies. Pirates and gypsies might have been demonized by society but were never actually seen as demons. Gypsies weren't really evil, maybe a few.
Well evil is an concept that was invented by man to condemn certain actions. Evil doesn't really exist.

[Anonymous]

Think about Pre-Ancient Greece and Rome...the nomadic tribes that were just learning to settle down and farm.

Before that, we were pretty primitive...probably maybe a small percentage of people had (or were granted) knowledge, wisdom, foresight to even have the benefit of reliable perceptions.

If you're a tribal chieftan or a shaman and you're looking to control and dominate a tribe of simpletons you're going to do what you can to make yourself look fearsome. You're also going to want to identify yourself to other tribes.

It's also well known that sentinels and knights--in many primitive cultures--will model or paint themselves to resemble demons, half-humans and other animals.

If we think about mythology as a figurative representation of history, we can follow the lives of what would be today's celebrities and icons.

Body modification, costuming...all of these things in one way or another go back to tribal markings and social identification. Like birds and insects showing their colors...we used to use these things to identify ourselves to eachother "This is me, this is who I am and how I believe. Like it or leave it."

Say, for the purpose of argument, that there were tribes of people that used elements like fear of the supernatural and insanity to keep the 'fake' people away. People we might consider anti-societals, anarchists, golliards, rebels, criminals, pirates...

As you say, the Christian devil was a personification of evil...the church used it to represent the things it considered bad. If they, in fact, feared anti-societals and demonized anarchy, they would associate those things with the devil.

If you were an antisocietal in an environment where society is slowly coming into popularity and looking to distance yourself from those that would do you harm--those that embrace society--wouldn't you use their own tactics agaisnt them and embody what they were saying about you so that you could scare them away?

[Quintus Aurelius Orcus]

On the one hand, there could be some truth to what you are saying but on the other, it does sound a little bit patronizing like we are all civilized while they were not. Society and civilization had different values and different set of rules. These things change over time by numerous factors. Some evolve, some collapse. And to be honest, i think that today's society is anything but civilized.
I think that it is the best thing to do concerning this topic, is to keep it on a spiritual level and not try to elevate it into the physical world because than people will have different opinions. You say that Satyrs and others, the way they were perceived, once existed but were humans none the less. Others might say that Satyrs, Nymphs and Gods might be demons and others might say that they were aliens.
Romulus

[Anonymous]

I agree, the human race is anything but civilized. Which is what started me on researching the antisocietals to begin with.

Society was, to them, what Technology is to us. One day, people started settling down and forming cities. Before that, it was all about spirit(s) and god(s) and whatever tribe you belonged to. It's not that they were devoid of society, just that their society existed along different lines.

Simply put...there was a time when you could wear your faith and your morals, no matter how different they were from those around you, and it was a signalt to others that you'd either like to be left alone or that you only want to associate with so many people.

We began to develop a moral and/or civil code in the name of what we called 'progress'. And it wasn't until we all had to dwell together--in the same place, such as a city or town--that we took down those divisions and started calling it Unity.

There may very well have been a core group of people that were averse to this idea, who used mythology and rumor to their advantage.

The last chapter in Pan's 'history' is the voice that cries out over the Mediteranean sea... "The great god Pan is dead." With no other information on him, people had no choice but to believe the rumor.

Well...

We've all heard that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. Maybe all he did was fake his own death.

Whether these creatures were real or fictional remains to be seen--which is always a good thing because it keeps us asking questions. (Dionysis once said that to be sane is to have your eyes closed.) You're right, though, in that the face of the antisocietal had to change throughout time because of how civilization changed around them.

We see this happen nowadays as well. A rebel starts a trend, the rest of the world picks it up. And then the new rebels need to do something else just to be different.

So even if we're not talking about being able to follow specific people, as if they were immortals, through thousands of years of history...we can still follow the philosophy of antisocietal/anarchic behavior...which was my initial goal.

The Catholics had their Saints, Camelot had it's knights, maybe the Antisocietals have the cults of Dionysus and whoever came before them. For we must consider that for every student there is a teacher. The mindset had to start somewhere--whoever it was that started saying "I don't like what I see happening around me and I'm going to use fear to drive it away..."

Aristotle, Peisistratus, Dionysus and Pan (or their beliefs in them--to keep this on a spiritual level) all have roots in Euboea. The Nymphs, Maenids and Satyrs (Or beliefs in them...) were all from Cambria, Sicily and New Guinea...and Greece was right in the middle. All of these figures had a penchant for shaking up society in whatever way they could. If all of these people and their entourages (and those that believed in them) all of a sudden started showing up in the same place at the same time...don't you think that'd lead to something as important as a myth?

[Quintus Aurelius Orcus]

Going back to Pan's history. According to the Platonists and Neoplatonists, there are also daimones, beings that mediate between heaven and earth. They bring the prayers and offerings to the Gods and also brings the answers back to Earth. So in a way, the daimones are behind all the oracles in antiquity. What's know about daimones is that they live long but are in a way mortal. So the story of Pan's death could be the story about a daimone called Pan who died after several centuries. It were the Christians who spread this story and used it as a tool to claim that the Gods were dead. Daimones are neither good nor evil, they are both. The notion of good and evil was an invention of man. There are good daimones and bad daimones, but not in the same context as the Judeo-Christian/ Zoroastrian demons who were evil right to the bone.
I believe that Burkert wrote that the belief in daimones is older than the belief in Gods.
Romulus

[Anonymous]

Avete!

Pan didn't die, it was all a horrible mistake.

An Egyptian named Thamus was sailing past the island of Paxi when he heard a voice calling 'Thamus Pan-megas Tethnece!' which meant 'The All-Great Tammuz is dead!' obviously a lament for Tammuz/Adonis.

Unfortunately he misheard it as 'Thamus, Great Pan is dead!' The problem was people believed him and the rumours got out of hand!

An early case of tabloid misrepresentation!

[Anonymous]

Pan didn't die, it was all a horrible mistake.

An Egyptian named Thamus was sailing past the island of Paxi when he heard a voice calling 'Thamus Pan-megas Tethnece!' which meant 'The All-Great Tammuz is dead!' obviously a lament for Tammuz/Adonis.

Unfortunately he misheard it as 'Thamus, Great Pan is dead!' The problem was people believed him and the rumours got out of hand!

An early case of tabloid misrepresentation!

Or perhaps it was one more mistake to be taken advantage of by a crafty and opportunistic 'superbeing'.

I was thinking today about the cyclical nature of the universe, how people are always saying that certain things occur in cycles and that all behavior is repetative. And about how all of this relates into the 'cosmic drama'...everyone having their own role and purpose within a story.

Every story needs a hero and a villain, some source of conflict or cause of drama, a resolution, etc, etc...

I think part of what we're talking about when it comes to paradigms that occur across different cultures are sort of the 'universal' characters which always have to exist at some time on the planet in order for our global story to continue.

Before the days of technological advancement, one had to hire a herald or a scribe or biographer, priest or minister in order to publicize his achievements and make them believable.

This is a good way to document the facts and statistics of a situation from the point of view of the victorious which so often becomes the author of history. But to get a perspective from the 'everyman', or the 'outsider' of history, I think we need to look closer at mythology and folklore.

An eyewitness or a victor in a story is going to tell one side of things. The writer of folklore and mythology, however, is going to look at what is going on around him and include his own opinion of them 'in between the lines' of the tale. So as to disguise opinions which may or may not be acceptable for the time. This was how we come to being able to use folklore and mythology to trace the histories and ways of ancient cultures.

If you look at how the internet has allowed us to boast of our own achievements and to dig up information about people, in many ways it has empowered us to build a powerful reputation for ourselves once again and it's only a matter of using it properly.

If we really want to talk about reviving some of the old ways and going back to before we started to make some of the mistakes society has made since it started to progress....

If mythology had the power to make men into gods...what is the internet going to do about making rumor into reality?