Banias - Pagan Associations

Pagan Associations

Paneas was first settled in the Hellenistic period following Alexander the Great's conquest of the east. The Ptolemaic kings, in the 3rd century BC, built a cult centre there.

Panias is a spring, known also as Fanium, named for the Arcadian Pan, the Greek god, a goat-footed god of victory in battle, isolated rural areas, music, goat herds, hunting, herding, and of sexual and spiritual possession. It lies close to the fabled 'way of the sea' mentioned by Isaiah. along which many armies of Antiquity marched. Paneas was certainly an ancient place of great sanctity, and when Hellenised religious influences began to overlay the region, the cult of its local numen gave place to the worship of Pan, to whom the cave was therefore dedicated. The pre-Hellenic deity associated with the site was variously called Ba'al-gad or Ba'al-hermon.

In extant sections of the Greek historian Polybius's history of 'The Rise of the Roman Empire', a Battle of Panium is mentioned. This battle was fought in 198 BC between the Macedonian armies of Ptolemaic Egypt and the Seleucid Greeks of Coele-Syria, led by Antiochus III. Antiochus's victory cemented Seleucid control over Phoenicia, Galilee, Samaria, and Judea until the Maccabean revolt. It was these hellenised Seleucids who built a pagan temple dedicated to Pan at Paneas.