Sexual life in ancient Greece : with thirty-two full-page plates
RELIGION AND EROTIC
they gradually became ever more youthful, pleasant, and beautiful, so that the satyrs of the classical period are included also among the male ideals of art forms, and are combined with nymphs and bacchantes into magnificent groups.
Silenus is often named as the earliest of the satyrs, and when the form was multiplied the older satyrs appear as Sileni. Sileni and satyrs are to be distinguished however, though common to them both is their delight in wine and their ever wakeful sensuality. The old Silenus is a highly amusing figure ; originally the educator of Dionysus, he becomes his most enthusiastic worshipper : that is, he is generally drunk, so that he can hardly stand on his feet and hence always rides on an ass, ever in danger of falling under it; or he rides in a car drawn by goats, and the satyrs have trouble enough to hold him upright. The nature of the Sileni, who were originally the spirits of the flowing, fertilizing water, became gradually more and more sensualized, so that also in their special animal, the ass, only lasciviousness and strong sexual potency was recognized as the symbol of the Sileni. The old poets had many amusing little stories to relate concerning this animal. ‘Thus we are told by Ovid+ that preparations were once being made to celebrate the festival of Dionysus, which took place every other year at the time of the winter solstice and at which all the spirits who formed the retinue of the god—satyrs, nymphs, Pan, Priapus, Silenus, and others—took part. ‘The festival is going on merrily. Dionysus pours out the wine, which flows in streams and is presented by charming half-naked naiads. The wine and the sight of the large supply of women’s flesh sets free monstrous licentiousness on every side, and everyone rejoices at nightfall that, after the carousal is ended, they may let their passions
1 Fasti, i, 391 ff.; also vi, 319 ff., where the story is told with trifling alterations. The festival is a festival of Ceres, and Vesta (not a nymph) excites the lust of Priapus ; Hyginus, Poet. astron., 11, 23 ; Lactantius, Instit. Div., 1, 21, 25.
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