Caesarea Philippi: The city was adjacent to a spring, grotto, and related shrines dedicated to the Greek god Pan, which is the origin of its Greek name, Paneas. Later on the city’s name became Caesarea Paneas.
Paneas was an ancient place of great sanctity and, when Hellenised religious influences were overlaid on the region, the cult of its local numen gave place to the worship of Pan, to whom the cave was dedicated and from which the copious spring rose, feeding the Hula marshes and ultimately supplying the Jordan River. The pre-Hellenic deities that have been associated with the site are Ba’al-gad or Ba’al-hermon.
The Battle of Panium is mentioned in extant sections of Greek historian Polybius’s history of “The Rise of the Roman Empire”. The battle of Panium occurred in 198 BC between the Macedonian armies of Ptolemaic Egypt and the Seleucid Greeks of Coele-Syria, led by Antiochus III. Antiochus’s victory cemented Seleucid control over Phoenicia, Galilee, Samaria, and Judea until the Maccabean Revolt. The Hellenised Sellucids built a pagan temple dedicated to Pan, creator of panic in the enemy, at Paneas.
