The first who reduced Mythology to a kind of system were, in all probability, the Egyptians.  Egypt was ever the land of graven images, and under the veil of Allegory and Mythology the priests concealed religion from the eyes of the vulgar.  In the beginning, brute animals and certain vegetables were represented as the visible symbols of the deities to which they were consecrated.  Hence Jupiter Ammon was represented under the figure of a Ram; Apis under a Cow; Osiris of a Bull; Mercury or Thol of an Ibis; Diana or Babastis of a Cat; and Pan of a Goat.  From these sources are derived the fabulous transformation of the gods celebrated in Egyptian Mythology, and afterwards imported into Greece and Italy to serve as the subjects of the Grecian and Roman Pantomimes.

Pantomime as we now know the term, means, not only the Art of acting in dumb show, but also that of a spectacle or Christmas entertainment. (I may add in parenthesis, that in the early part of the last century—­the nineteenth—­the dictionaries only refer to Pantomime as meaning the former of the above two definitions, and not the latter.)

Pan, regarded as the symbol of the universe, was also the god of flocks, pastures, and shepherds in classic Mythology, and the guardian of bees, hunting and fishing in his Kingdom of Arcadia.  His form, like the Satyrs, both supposed to have been the offsprings of Mercury, was that of a man combined with a goat, having horns and feet like the latter animal.

Mimos (Gr.), as I have stated in the beginning, means an “imitator,” or a “mimic,” and from which word we have the derivation of the words “mimicry,” “mimetic,” and the like.

Pan was the traditional inventor of the Pandean pipes, and also from his name we derive many words that are in our language, such as “panic” (Pan used to delight in suddenly surprising the shepherds whilst tending their flocks), and the other attributes of this noun, including that recently coined term of the Americans, “panicy.”

Pan is said to have been the son of Mercury, or even Mercury himself, and others say that he was the son of Zeus.  Mercury and Zeus, it will be remembered in Mythology, were only names for Noah.  Pan is unnoticed by Homer.

A heathen deity of Italy, Lupercus, the guardian of their flocks and pastures, has also been identified with Pan, and in whose honour annual rural festivals, known as Lupercalia, were observed.

The Lupercalian festivals were held on the 15th of the Kalends of March.  The priests, Luperci, used to dance naked through the streets as part of the ceremonies attached to the festival.

Mention has been made by Dr. Clarke, in his “Travels,” Vol.  IV., that Harlequin is the god Mercury, with his short sword herpe, or his rod, the caduceus (which has been likened to the sceptre of Judah), to render himself invisible, and to transport himself from one end of the earth to the other, and that the covering on his head, the winged cap, was the petasus.  Apropos of this, the following lines in the tenth Ode, of the first book of Horace, will probably occur to the reader: