On a vase of Greek marble in the Royal Museum at Naples (This vase was first described in [Italian 275] Bayardi, Catalogo degli antichi monumenti dissottarretti da Ercolano. Napoli, 1754, p. 290. No. 914.), we see Pan dancing with the nymphs exactly as he is represented in the preceding song. The sculpture is in that very ancient style, which is called Etruscan. Pan is here exhibited with goats’ feet and horns (Hom. Hymn. in Pana, 1. 2.). He wears the skin of an animal, and employs his right hand in drawing it up towards his left shoulder. In his left hand he holds the crook or pastoral staff, which is one of his usual emblems. Pan and the three females, with whom he is dancing, form a distinct group by themselves. They are moving round a large stone, and the artist probably imagined them to be moving first in one direction, and then in the opposite, as if performing the Strophe and Antistrophe around an altar. We learn from Mr. Dodwell, that the modern Greeks in their circular dances hold each other with a handkerchief, and not by the hand[293].
[293] Dodwell’s Tour, vol. ii. p. 21, 22.
That the Romans considered Pān and Faun to be the same, using the two names indiscriminately, the one as the Greek, the other as the Latin form, is evident from such passages as the following:
Pan from Arcadia’s hills descends
To visit oft my Sabine seat,
And here my tender goats defends
From rainy winds and summer’s heat.
For when the vales, wide-spreading round,
The sloping hills, and polish’d rocks,
With his harmonious pipe resound,