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A widespread belief, among the mythical accretions around the story of Christ, is the account of the death of Pan, which according to Christian tradition, took place at the time of the birth of the Christian Savior, or, according to another version of the same story, at the time of his death. This story persisted for over eighteen centuries, being kept alive, amplified, built upon, quoted and otherwise exploited by numerous writers, apologists, controversialists and missionaries in the interests of Christianity. Among the more enlightened Christians it has served as a symbol that with the coming ot Christ, the ancient world, its beliefs, its Gods and rituals came to a sudden end and that thereupon a new world-order came into existence. But the pious Christian generations of the past, steeped in religious tradition and guided by faith, accepted the story as literal fact; and they were encouraged by the Church dignitaries to hold fast to it as a historic occurrence of incontrovertible veracity, a proof among many, of the superiority of the Christian religion over the beliefs of the pagan world.
It happens that the story and its development can be traced with fair accuracy. The manner of its unfolding from Eusebius, the valiant champion of Christianity during its earlier Roman days, who seems to have been the first Christian apologist to shape the story of the Death of Pan and give it definitely its pseudo-historic standing, down to Milton and Mrs. Browning, who rhapsodized about the occurrence with Christian reverence and poetic fervor, illustrates the growth of myth by purposive accretions such as a student of psychoanalysis would naturally expect to find wherever phantasy is moulded to one's “heart's desire.” I propose to take up this subject in another contribution.
For the present I shall reverse the order of inquiry and attempt to trace the story not from Eusebius forward and downward to our day but back to its first source. The task is simple, the account of Euseb