coins of his period, and Smyth tells us that it was "the very pet of all the constellations with astrologers."
The Arabians also considered Capricornus with great favour, and called it "Al-Jady," meaning "the goat."
Burritt states that Capricornus is identical with Pan or Bacchus, who with some other deities were one day feasting near the bank of the river Nile, when suddenly the dreadful giant Typhon came upon them, and compelled them all to assume a different shape in order to escape his fury. Pan took the lead and plunged into the river, and the part of his body which was under the water assumed the form of a fish, and that above water the form of a goat. To preserve the memory of the fable, Jupiter made Pan into a constellation, in his metamorphosed shape.
The Greeks sometimes called the constellation simply "Pan." From this word we get our word "panic," which is the sort of fear that is born of the imagination, and Pan was said to terrorise people by the mere thought of his presence.
In spite of Pan's evil nature of inciting panics, he was regarded as the god of rural scenery, shepherds, and huntsmen, and also as the god of plenty. The emblem of plenty, the cornucopia or "horn of plenty," is connected with the mythological history of Capricornus.
The legend relates that the father of the gods gave one of the goat's horns to the nymphs who had nursed Jupiter in his infancy as a reward for their kind services, and that this horn was endowed with a wonderful virtue. It provided whatever the holder desired, and hence was known as "the horn of plenty." The real sense of this fable, divested of poetical embellishment, appears to be this: "There was in Crete, some say Lybia, a small territory shaped very much like a bullock's horn, and exceedingly fertile, which the king presented to his daughter Amalthea, whom the poets claim was the nurse of the infant Jupiter" (Burritt).
