Mendes

, a city of Egypt, near Lycopolis, on one of the mouths of the Nile, called the Men desi an mouth. Pan, under the form of a goat, was worshipped there with the greatest solemnity. It was unlawful to kill one of these animals, with which the Egyptians were not ashamed to have public commerce, to the disgrace of human nature, from the superstitious notion that such embraces had given birth to the greatest heroes of antiquity, as Alexander, Scipio, . Hero dot us , bk. 2 , chs. 42 & 46.— Strabo , bk. 17 .— Diodorus , bk. 1 .