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SILENI
[eye-lee'neye], or SILENOI (sing.: silenus, silenos),
a race of
half-horse, half-humans, unlike the satyrs, who were
half-goat. Sileni are
sometimes identified as older satyrs more interested in wine
than chasing nymphs. |
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Comparative
mythographer Joseph
Campbell identifies certain repeating characters
(archetypes) of the hero myth in his classic book
Hero with a Thousand Faces. Silenus is the
easiest to identify as the wise old man the
others, young hero, the shape-shifting woman, and
the shadowy nemesis, also play central parts in the
story of Dionysus. |
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Midas
and Silenus
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| Silenus and King Midas are often a
mythological pair in these early Bacchic stories. Silenus is the
talker and Midas the listener |
| Silenus also talked of the Meropes, owners
of many cities, saying that on the edge of their land there is a
place named Point of No Return, this being a chasm which is
neither dark nor light but is covered by a red haze. In this
place, Silenus continued, there are two rivers, one named
Pleasure and the other Grief with trees along the banks of both
that bear fruit of different qualities. Those that grow along
the river of Grief cause anyone who eats them to shed so many
tears that he melts into laments for the rest of his life until
he dies. But he who tastes from the trees growing by the river
Pleasure loses all his desires, forgetting even his previous
love, if he had one. Then he is slowly rejuvenated, going
through the stages of life in reverse order and dying after
becoming an infant. |
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Silenuz,
Dionysos riding a panther, a maenad, and a satyr
boy, moving
Collection:Paris, Museum du Louvre Date: ca 370 -
360 BC |
Silenus , the teacher and
faithful companion of the wine-god Dionysus. A notorious
consumer of wine, he was usually drunk and had to be
supported by satyrs or carried by a donkey. When the
Phrygian King Midas took the drunk Silenus in his house,
Dionysus handsomely rewarded Midas for his hospitality.
Silenus was thought to have much wisdom and be able to
reveal important secrets to mortals if captured and
questioned. He is considered a satyr but associated with the
stature of older men in the ritual and mentoring necessary
for initiation.
The Sileni were followers of Dionysus. They were drunks,
bald and fat with thick lips and squat noses, and the ears
and tail of a horse. They
are also very hairy. Satyrs and Siléni are always looking
for nymphs although the nymphs tease them and manage to
outsmart them making the Satyrs and Sileni quite the fools.
The Sileni is not nearly as nymph crazy as the Satyr is, he
is more interested in drinking wine and getting drunk
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Zeus saves baby Dionysus from Hera
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But the goddess was not deceived, and in her rage she drove
the aunt and uncle mad.
 Zeus acted quickly. He ordered Hermes, the divine messenger,
to transform
Dionysus
temporarily into a young goat and bring him to the beautiful
Mount Nysa. There he would be raised secretly by nymphs, the
joyous female spirits of the forests and mountains.
The nymphs loved their young charge. They housed him in a
cave and fed him on honey. Dionysus spent his childhood
gamboling freely over the mountainside, surrounded by the
glories of nature and learning the sensuous pleasures of the
earth. His teachers were many and varied: The Muses inspired
him with poetry and music. The satyrs, half-man,
 half-goat,
taught him the wonders of dance and exuberant sexuality. The sileni, part-horse, part-man, spirits of the springs and
rivers, taught him wisdom. Silenus, the intoxicated old man
who was Dionysus's predecessor, taught the young god virtue.
Dionysus passed the years happily, learning many things.
Like the grapevine, which can only grow in the sun's intense
heat and the moisture of the spring rain, Dionysus had been
born of fire and nourished by the rains of the mountain. He
understood the power of the vine perfectly, and marked his
passage from childhood to young godhood by inventing the art
of
winemaking (some say he learned it from Silenus), which
would bring humanity so much potential joy and desperation.
At last Dionysus stood revealed as a god. This was just what
the ever-vengeful Hera had been waiting for. Recognizing
Dionysus at last, she cursed him with madness.
[Ecstasy:
Understanding the Psychology of Joy by
R.A. Johnson ] |
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Silenus presiding over a gathering of Maenads
and baby Bacchus. Learn more about the orgiastic
rites of the Maenads |
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Collection: Malibu, The J. Paul Getty Museum
Painter: Attributed to the Lentini GroupDate: ca 350 - 325 BC
Period: Late Classical / Early Hellenistic |
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WordS Can Be Music
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| "Are you not a piper? Why, yes, and a
far more marvellous one than the satyr. His lips indeed had
power to entrance mankind by means of instruments; a thing still
possible today for anyone who can pipe his tunes: for the music
of Olympus' flute belonged, I may tell you, to Marsyas his
teacher. So that if anyone, whether a fine flute-player or
paltry flute-girl, can but flute his tunes, they have no equal
for exciting a ravishment, and will indicate by the divinity
that is in them who are apt recipients of the deities and their
sanctifications. You differ from him in one point only—that you
produce the same effect with simple prose unaided by
instruments." [Alcibiades to Socrates. Plato, Symposium 215c] |
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