Feasts, Orgies, and Lust: Pan and Dionysus in Ancient Greece,

It is therefore a God of fertility as well as male sexuality. It is represented as endowed with an immense potency and sexual appetitehence its relationship with the orgy. According to tradition, he dedicated himself to chasing through the forests nymphs and Girls in search of his sexual favors. Like God lustful, and male goat of penis always erect, dweller of rocky places, and musician; He seductively touched the syrinx, attracting the nymphs who danced naked around him, overflowing with sensuality and creating fantastic orgies.

Over time the god Pán would be associated with the Satyrs, with whom he undoubtedly presents many similarities and with whom he seems to be related. The satyrs in the culture are in effect all of them “slaves of their instincts”. They share a taste for music, orgy, he came, he sex and the animals”.

 “He is at once an animal, shepherd and hunter fisherman, and the divinity that protects cattle and wild animals. In addition to being the patron of animal reproduction, he was undoubtedly considered a happy god because of the influence his musical gifts instilled. He was therefore undoubtedly a festive God. However, he had to be careful, at the same time it becomes terrible if it turns out that he is woken up from his nap.

local lust

Generally, hybrid beings in Greek culture do not fulfill the role of gods. They rather fulfill the role of intermediate beings, however Pán is an exception. He is a god in the strict sense: “immortal and the object of veneration in different regions of Greece. However, it is not entirely anthropomorphic, one of the main characteristics of the Greek gods.

It is interesting how this monstrous host character of the lust and the orgy.

This god of lust, fields and music was originally revered by a nomadic pastoral culture. With the rise of cities and the abandonment of nomadism, its influence was initially reserved for Arcadia. It is a mountainous and marginal region, "which preserves political, linguistic and religious archaisms."

Pan is considered the most honorable of the gods in the rest of Greece. It has been considered as "the spitting image of an Arcadian shepherd". Only in Arcadia do we find Pan in its purest form, free from the Dionysian influence, that is, from the god of wine and all his retinue. We must consider that Bread and Dionisio, they are two independent and well differentiated characters. However, why have they been related?

From sexual god to war god

It is from 490 BC, the statute of the god changes, and is no longer restricted to a limited sector of ancient Greece. Rather, he becomes a universal god of that culture and no longer a local one. In that year, as a result of the Athenian victory at Marathon (a battle between the Greeks and the Persians) and "thanks to a panic attack among the enemy troops, Pan became the official divinity of Athens and his worship spread throughout the Hélade” (throughout the entire Greek area). Pan is no longer just an Arcadian divinity who safeguards herds from wild animals. He becomes a god who protects the Athenians from the barbarians."

It is no longer just a God of virility, lust and music, but also a god of war, uniting all of Greece. Despite being a god of war, this lewd patron is by no means a warrior god, since he is never present on the battlefield but "dedicates himself to preventing the confrontation from taking place."

Now detached from the local particularity, that "sovereign of a light muse" and "hybrid body that combines several natures" becomes part of the retinue of that other god of great importance mentioned above, also related to sexuality, Dionysus. This connection of Pan with the god of wine and his Dionysian cult, with its orgies and debauchery, thus makes the goat-legged god become part of the courtship of one of the most famous gods of ancient Greece.

On the lustful Dionysian feasts

But what happened in the Dionysian festivals and what were they about?

It is relevant to underline the sacred character of the parties and orgies in ancient Greece. In these festivities the citizens toured the polis in a car with the image of Dionysus, the people behind him followed him, singing, dancing, in an unbridled state of drunkenness. "They killed a goat so that its blood would strengthen the earth (goblins), from there derives the word tragedy and how the manifestation of the choir would be, derives the word comedy”. 

We can find in these Dionysian orgiastic festivities the foundations of ancient Greek theater, and therefore the foundations of Western theater. Well, “when the choirs sing and others answer, we already have dialogue and it is the dithyramb, here we already find the base of the theater, people who act and people who observe. Before someone read a story, there was only the character, now the actor represented the character.

Thus Dionysus conforms as a god who encourages the representation of Greek myths and tragedies, inviting a game of masks and choirs.

The very drunkenness that was induced and celebrated in these parties and orgies in ancient Greece, tells us nietzsche in his first great workThe birth of tragedy”, tore the veil from the world of appearances, the world of the order of measure, and the characteristic beauty of the god Apollo. Behind the veils of the order of the world, one glimpsed the dissolution of the individual, of hierarchies and of the formality that daily life requires, under the effects of drunkenness and the fusion of individuals in the orgies.  

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