Story of Capricorn

THE MYTH OF CAPRICORN

The myth of Capricorn is connected to Pan, the god of the wild, shepherds and flocks, nature of mountain wilds and rustic music. He had goat legs and the musical instrument he played, the panpipes, telling a special love story of a woman who feared her courtier, running away from his compliments. One of the stories of Pan speaks of a gathering of gods that was interrupted by Typhon, the monstrous giant. Out of fear, all of the gods changed shape, while Pan jumped into the river Nile, turning his legs into a tail of the fish, and his torso to a goat, to confuse the monster and scare it away with his appearance.

The important story hidden behind Capricorn is the one in which Zeus was helped by a goat that invented the scary horn called “panikos”, on his mission to defeat the Titans. The horn was discovered in the sea, and this explains the fishtail that was given to the goat, while the horn must have been a shell that made a sound to force all the Titans to scatter, panicked. When Titans were finally defeated by the Olympians and sent to the Underworld, each day as the night fell, there was a sense of fear that the Titans will rise on the horizon.