TIL: panic

[timelets]

It turns out that the word "panic" can be traced back to Pan.

The Arcadian god Pan is the best known Classical example of this dangerous presence dwelling just beyond the protected zone of the village boundary.

The emotion that he instilled in human beings who by accident adventured into his domain was "panic" fear, a sudden, groundless fright. Any trifling cause then—the break of a twig, the flutter of a leaf—would flood the mind with imagined danger, and in the frantic effort to escape from his own aroused unconscious the victim expired in a flight of dread.

--- quoted from The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Note, how the ancients externalized imagination. Similarly, all Odysseus' creative ideas were whispered to him by the gods.