Excerpta Vaticana (11-15)

Polyaenus, in his Stratagems [1.2], says that Pan was the first to invent a military formation and that he named it a ‘phalanx’. He arranged the wings [lit. ‘horns’] on the right and left, and so they depict him with horns. Furthermore, he was the first to instil fear in enemy forces, using cunning skill. After learning from sentries that a great force of enemy soldiers was attacking him, Dionysus was terrified. Pan, however, was not afraid: by night he signalled to Dionysus’ army to raise a great war cry. They sounded the trumpet and yelled, and the rocks and valleys echoed it back. Stricken with fear, the enemy fled. And so, honouring Pan’s stratagem, we sing of his beloved Echo, and call the empty, night-time fears of armies ‘panics’.

Endymion was the first to devote himself to examining the stars and so he would stay awake the entire night and mostly sleep during the day. Because of this, he has been called Selene’s lover, from his attachment to her for that purpose. So says Plato.

Likewise, it is said that Phaethon was the son of Helius. But here is how it was. Phaethon calculated the course of the sun, as Endymion did with the moon, but these calculations were not precise and he died leaving his account incomplete.

Bellerophon’s horse was not winged, as in the myth. Rather, by pursuing astronomy, turning his thoughts to higher things and wandering amongst the stars he went up to the heavens not on a horse but by using his mind.

Icarus, in the grip of youthful impetuosity and recklessness, seeking unreasonable things, and being excitable in his mind, lost hold of reality, came adrift from all reason, and was carried down into a sea of unfathomable affairs. The Greeks tell this story in another way and create the Icarian Gulf from it.