PAN Good day to you, Hermes, Daddy mine. HERMES And a bad day to you. But how am I your daddy? PAN Aren’t you Hermes of Cyllene? HERMES Yes. How, then, are you my son? PAN I’m your bastard boy, your love-child. HERMES Oh quite so, when some billy-goat, I suppose, led
a nanny astray! How could you be mine, you with
your horns and ugly snout and shaggy beard and a
goat’s cloven hooves and a tail over your behind? PAN When you jeer at me, daddy, you’re mocking your
own son, or rather yourself for producing such
creatures as your children. It’s not my fault. HERMES Who do you say your mother was? Perhaps
I led a nanny astray without knowing it. PAN No, not a nanny. But try to remember if you
ever forced your attentions on a freeborn girl in
Arcadia. Why are you biting your nails and
thinking so hard? Why so puzzled? I’m speaking
of Icarius’ girl, Penelope.
 Lucian (with Cicero, De Natura Deorum , III, 22) follows Herodotus, II, 145 in making Pan the son of Penelope. There are other versions of his birth, of which the most important is the Homeric Hymn to Pan 34, where his mother is the daughter of Dryops. 
 HERMES Then what possessed her to produce in you a child
not like me but like a goat? PAN I’ll tell you what she said herself. When she was
packing me off to Arcadia, she said, “My boy, I,
Penelope, a true blue Spartan, am your mother, but
your father, let me tell you, is a god, Hermes, son
of Maia and Zeus. Don’t worry because you have
horns and a goat’s shanks, for when your father
came courting me, he made himself into a goat so
that no one would notice him. That’s why you’ve
turned out like the goat.” HERMES Ah, yes. I do remember doing something like
that. Am I, then, to be called your father? I, who
am so proud of my good looks! I, who’ve still got a
smooth chin! Am I to be laughed at by all for
having such a bonny boy?