Paian (god)

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Paian ( Greek  Παιάν ) or Paion ( Παιών or Πάων ), epically also Paieon ( Παιήων ) is a healing god of Greek mythology .

Whether Paian was originally the personification of the exclamation ie paian ( ἰὴ παιάν ) occurring in the song genre Paian , or whether the exclamation was derived from him, whether there is any relationship between God and song, cannot ultimately be decided.

The oldest evidence of Paian is a linear B tablet from Knossos on which the god's name Pa-ja-wo-ne ( Mycenaean Greek ???? ) is recorded.

With Homer , Paian appears as the doctor of the gods who heals the wounds of Hades and Ares sustained in the Trojan War . Hades was hit in the shoulder by an arrow from Heracles , which Paian is supplying with herbs to relieve pain. Ares, who had been injured by Diomedes , is treated with a balm by him at the behest of Zeus .

Paian also appears as an individual god in a fragment by Hesiod and Solon , who traces the knowledge of the medical arts back to Paian's teaching. Nevertheless, it was already discussed in antiquity whether he should be regarded as an independent deity or not rather to be identified with the healing god Apollon , who was also worshiped as Apollon Paian with the epiclesis Paian . While Aristarchus of Samothrace assumed an independent god, Zenodotus of Mallos , for example , strongly advocated the equation with Apollo.

literature

Web links

  • Paion in the Theoi Project (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lutz Käppel : Paian. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 9, Metzler, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-476-01479-7 , Sp. 147-179.
  2. ↑ KN V 52.
  3. ↑ Homer , Iliad 5: 401-402.
  4. ↑ Homer, Iliad 5, 899-904.
  5. ↑ Hesiod , fragment 307.
  6. ↑ Solon , Fragment 13, 57.
  7. ↑ Aristarchus of Samothrace , Scholion on Homer's Iliad E 808.
  8. ↑ in Eustathios of Thessalonike , commentary on Homer's Iliad 1014, 60.