Pan started as a shepherds’ god in a wild and backward area of Greece, but became one of the best-known in the Greek and Roman world. This was partly because the leading city of Athens imported him as a saviour, and partly because he came to represent the freedom, peace and simplicity of the countryside to urban people. He was the most earthy of Greek deities, summing up wild nature in its beauty but also its danger. He was a god of both liberation and menace, and this lecture faces up to him as both.

This lecture was recorded by Professor Ronald Hutton on the 17th of September 2025 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, London.

Professor Hutton is Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He took degrees at Cambridge and then Oxford Universities, and was a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. He is now a Fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Historical Society, the Society of Antiquaries and the Learned Society of Wales, and has won awards for teaching and research.

He has lectured all over the world, authored twenty books and ninety-six essays, appeared in or presented scores of television and radio programmes, and sits on the editorial boards of six journals concerned with the history of religion and magic.

He is currently working on the third volume of his biography of Oliver Cromwell.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/god-pan

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The Great God Pan: Lord of the Wild - Ronald Hutton

Gresham College Lectures

The Great God Pan: Lord of the Wild - Ronald Hutton