Such was the pleasant début of the god who was to make glad the hearts of men also, bringing laughter into a world of tears, and inspiring amid the difficulties and the ennui of civilization a wholesome passion for life in the open air. Lord was he of every snowy crest and mountain peak and rocky path. Soft meadows where crocuses and fragrant hyacinths nestled in the grass knew his presence. By still pools within the green woods he would sit contentedly, or lofty crags would tempt his lively feet to adventurous climbing. Over the high white hills he would range in the pursuit of wild beasts. And in the evening he would sit on some jutting rock or by the dusky water of a wayside spring and play on his reeds such melodies of honeyed sweetness as even the nightingale’s spring song could not surpass. With him the mountain nymphs, the shrill singers, went wandering with light feet, and Echo moaned along the mountain crest. Many a lonely shepherd among the hills or tired husbandman in the meadows must have desired to keep the god within his hearing. A broken fragment in the Greek Anthology, embedded among frigid Byzantine conceits, but springing one knows not out of what fresher age, seems instinct with such prayers as theirs:— “With lips along thy reed pipe straying, Dear Pan, abide, For in the sunny uplands playing Doth Echo hide.” Although Pan dwelt all over Hellas, his Arcadian birth was not disputed, and more than one Arcadian mountain was especially distinguished by his presence. Among the Nomian hills, to the south of Lycæus, he invented the music of his pipes. Mount Mænalus, near Tripolis, he often visited, and on Mount Parthenius he requested recognition at Athens. Over this mountain, named for virginal Artemis, ran one of the regular passes from the Argolis into Arcadia, a route followed to-day by the train from Athens to Tripolis. The swift Athenian courier was passing this way when he was delayed by the god. In the northwestern corner of Arcadia, skirting Achæa and Elis, rises another well-known mountain, Erymanthus, the favourite hunting ground of Artemis, who as Leader, Saviour, and Fairest received countless shrines from the Arcadians. The southern and lower continuation of Mount Erymanthus was known as Mount Pholoë, to which, as we know from the “Anabasis,” Xenophon and his sons and their guests used to come from Elis for the pleasures of the chase. Its beautiful woodlands were fabled to be one of the homes of the Centaurs, whose strange dual nature linked the world of men to the world of beasts. Heracles was entertained by them when, as one of his labours, he came to hunt the wild boar in the Erymanthian thickets.