Panic

A sudden fright; especially, a sudden fright without real cause, or terror inspired by a trifling cause, or misapprehension of danger; as, the troops were seized with a panic; they fled in a panic. These terrors are attributed to Pan, as some say, because when Osiris was bound by Typho, Pan and the satyrs appearing, cast him into a fright; or because he frightened all the giants that waged war against Jupiter; or, as others say, that when Pan was Bacchus’s lieutenant-general in his Indian expedition, being encompa ed in a valley by an army of enemies far superior to them in number, he advised the god to order his men to give a general shout, which so surprised the enemy that they immediately fled from their camp. And hence it came to pa that all sudden fears impre ed upon men’s spirits without any just reason were, by the Greeks and Romans, called panic terrors.