Pan et le “Tout” : étymologie ancienne et traduction d’un théonyme, entre poésie et exégèse antiques

This article explores Pan’s ancient etymology, focusing on its reception by Greco-Roman literature and scholarship, as well as its implications for the theonym’s translation. Drawing on W. H. Roscher’s study of Pan as the ‘god of the All’ (Allgott), we will discuss a selection of texts establishing a link between this theonym and πᾶν. Our analysis will deal first with literary sources thematizing the relationship that Pan maintains with his alleged etymon – such as the fragmentary Hymn to Pan by Pindar, the Homeric Hymn to Pan, and Plato’s Cratylus – in order to illustrate the consequences of the ancient etymology on the interpretation of the god. We will then observe the treatment of the theonym’s etymology in ancient scholarship. While a scholium to Theocritus displays a certain ambiguity between the theonym and its ‘etymon’, Servius’ commentary on the Bucolics provides us with the Latin translation of Pan, apparently concealed in the Virgilian hemistich omnia uincit Amor.