Satyrs
In classical Athens, satyrs made up the chorus in a genre of play known as a "satyr play", which was a parody of tragedy and known for its bawdy and obscene humor. The only complete surviving play of this genre is Cyclops by Euripides, although a significant portion of Sophocles's Ichneutae has also survived. In mythology, the satyr Marsyas is said to have challenged the god Apollo to a musical contest and been flayed alive for his hubris. Although superficially ridiculous, satyrs were also thought to possess useful knowledge, if they could be coaxed into revealing it. The satyr Silenus was the tutor of the young Dionysus and a story from Ionia told of a silenos who gave sound advice when captured.
Over the course of Greek history, satyrs gradually became portrayed as more human and less bestial. They also began to acquire goat-like characteristics in some depictions as a result of conflation with the Pans, plural forms of the god Pan with the legs and horns of goats. The Romans identified satyrs with their native nature spirits, fauns. Eventually the distinction between the two was lost entirely. Since the Renaissance, satyrs have been most often represented with the legs and horns of goats. Representations of satyrs cavorting with nymphs have been common in western art, with many famous artists creating works on the theme. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, satyrs have generally lost much of their characteristic obscenity, becoming more tame and domestic figures. They commonly appear in works of fantasy and children's literature, in which they are most often referred to as "fauns".
Terminology
The etymology of the term satyr (Ancient Greek: σάτυρος, romanized: sátyros) is unclear, and several different etymologies have been proposed for it, including a possible Pre-Greek origin. Some scholars have linked the second part of name to the root of the Greek word θηρίον, thēríon, meaning 'wild animal'. This proposal may be supported by the fact that at one point Euripides refers to satyrs as theres. Another proposed etymology derives the name from an ancient Peloponnesian word meaning 'the full ones', alluding to their permanent state of sexual arousal. Eric Partridge suggested that the name may be related to the root sat-, meaning 'to sow', which has also been proposed as the root of the name of the Roman god Saturn. Satyrs are usually indistinguishable from sileni, whose iconography is virtually identical. According to Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, the name 'satyr' is sometimes derogatorily applied to a "brutish or lustful man". The term satyriasis refers to a medical condition in males characterized by excessive sexual desire. It is the male equivalent of nymphomania.
Origin hypotheses
Indo-European
According to classicist Martin Litchfield West, satyrs and silenoi in Greek mythology are similar to a number of other entities appearing in other Indo-European mythologies, indicating that they probably go back, in some vague form, to Proto-Indo-European mythology. Like satyrs, these other Indo-European nature spirits are often human-animal hybrids, frequently bearing specifically equine or asinine features. Human-animal hybrids known as Kiṃpuruṣas or Kiṃnaras are mentioned in the Rāmāyaṇa, an Indian epic poem written in Sanskrit. According to Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD) and others, the ancient Celts believed in dusii, which were hairy demons believed to occasionally take human form and seduce mortal women. Later figures in Celtic folklore, including the Irish bocánach, the Scottish ùruisg and glaistig, and the Manx goayr heddagh, are part human and part goat. The lexicographer Hesychius of Alexandria (fifth or sixth century AD) records that the Illyrians believed in satyr-like creatures called Deuadai. The Slavic leshy also bears similarities to satyrs, since he is described as being covered in hair and having "goat's horns, ears, feet, and long clawlike fingernails."
Like satyrs, these similar creatures in other Indo-European mythologies are often also tricksters, mischief-makers, and dancers. The leshy was believed to trick travelers into losing their way. The Armenian Pay(n) were a group of male spirits said to dance in the woods. In Germanic mythology, elves were also said to dance in woodland clearings and leave behind fairy rings. They were also thought to play pranks, steal horses, tie knots in people's hair, and steal children and replace them with changelings. West notes that satyrs, elves, and other nature spirits of this variety are a "motley crew" and that it is difficult to reconstruct a prototype behind them. Nonetheless, he concludes that "we can recognize recurrent traits" and that they can probably be traced back to the Proto-Indo-Europeans in some form.
Near Eastern
On the other hand, a number of commentators have noted that satyrs are also similar to beings in the beliefs of ancient Near Eastern cultures. Various demons of the desert are mentioned in ancient Near Eastern texts, although the iconography of these beings is poorly-attested. Beings possibly similar to satyrs called śě'îrîm are mentioned several times in the Hebrew Bible. Śĕ'îr was the standard Hebrew word for 'he-goat', but it could also apparently sometimes refer to demons in the forms of goats. They were evidently subjects of veneration, because Leviticus 17:7 forbids Israelites from making sacrificial offerings to them and 2 Chronicles 11:15 mentions that a special cult was established for the śě'îrîm of Jeroboam I. Like satyrs, they were associated with desolate places and with some variety of dancing. Isaiah 13:21 predicts, in Karen L. Edwards's translation: "But wild animals [ziim] will lie down there, and its houses will be full of howling creatures [ohim]; there ostriches will live, and there goat-demons [śĕ'îr] will dance." Similarly, Isaiah 34:14 declares: "Wildcats [ziim] shall meet with hyenas [iim], goat-demons [śĕ'îr] shall call to each other; there too Lilith [lilit] shall repose and find a place to rest." Śě'îrîm were understood by at least some ancient commentators to be goat-like demons of the wilderness. In the Latin Vulgate translation of the Old Testament, śĕ'îr is translated as pilosus, which also means 'hairy'. Jerome, the translator of the Vulgate, equated these figures with satyrs. Both satyrs and śě'îrîm have also been compared to the jinn of Pre-Islamic Arabia, who were envisioned as hairy demons in the forms of animals who could sometimes change into other forms, including human-like ones.
In archaic and classical Greece
Physical appearance
In archaic and classical Greek art, satyrs are shown with the ears and tails of horses. They walk upright on two legs, like human beings. They are usually shown with bestial faces, snub noses, and manelike hair. They are often bearded and balding. Like other Greek nature spirits, satyrs are always depicted nude. Sometimes they also have the legs of horses, but, in ancient art, including both vase paintings and in sculptures, satyrs are most often represented with human legs and feet.
Satyrs' genitals are always depicted as either erect or at least extremely large. Their erect phalli represent their association with wine and women, which were the two major aspects of their god Dionysus's domain. In some cases, satyrs are portrayed as very human-like, lacking manes or tails. As time progressed, this became the general trend, with satyrs losing aspects of their original bestial appearance over the course of Greek history and gradually becoming more and more human. In the most common depictions, satyrs are shown drinking wine, dancing, playing flutes, chasing nymphs, or consorting with Dionysus. They are also frequently shown masturbating or copulating with animals. In scenes from ceramic paintings depicting satyrs engaging in orgies, satyrs standing by and watching are often shown masturbating.
Behavior
One of the earliest written sources for satyrs is the Catalogue of Women, which is attributed to the Boeotian poet Hesiod. Here satyrs are born alongside the nymphs and Kouretes and are described as "good-for-nothing, prankster Satyrs". Satyrs were widely seen as mischief-makers who routinely played tricks on people and interfered with their personal property. They had insatiable sexual appetites and often sought to seduce or ravish both nymphs and mortal women alike, though these attempts were not always successful. Satyrs almost always appear in artwork alongside female companions of some variety. These female companions may be clothed or nude, but the satyrs always treat them as mere sexual objects. A single elderly satyr named Silenus was believed to have been the tutor of Dionysus on Mount Nysa. After Dionysus grew to maturity, Silenus became one of his most devout followers, remaining perpetually drunk.
This image was reflected in the classical Athenian satyr play. Satyr plays were a genre of plays defined by the fact that their choruses were invariably made up of satyrs. These satyrs are always led by Silenus, who is their "father". According to Carl A. Shaw, the chorus of satyrs in a satyr play were "always trying to get a laugh with their animalistic, playfully rowdy, and, above all, sexual behavior." The satyrs play an important role in driving the plot of the production, without any of them actually being the lead role, which was always reserved for a god or tragic hero. Many satyr plays are named for the activity in which the chorus of satyrs engage during the production, such as Δικτυουλκοί, Diktyoulkoí, 'Net-Haulers', Θεωροὶ ἢ Ἰσθμιασταί, Theōroì ē Isthmiastaí, 'Spectators or Competitors at the Isthmian Games', and Ἰχνευταί, Ichneutaí, 'Searchers'. Like tragedies, but unlike comedies, satyr plays were set in the distant past and dealt with mythological subjects. The third or second-century BC philosopher Demetrius of Phalerum famously characterized the satiric genre in his treatise De Elocutione as the middle ground between tragedy and comedy: a "playful tragedy" (τραγῳδία παίζουσα, tragōdía paízdousa).
The only complete extant satyr play is Euripides's Cyclops, which is a burlesque of a scene from the eighth-century BC epic poem, the Odyssey, in which Odysseus is captured by the Cyclops Polyphemus in a cave. In the play, Polyphemus has captured a tribe of satyrs led by Silenus, who is described as their "Father", and forced them to work for him as his slaves. After Polyphemus captures Odysseus, Silenus attempts to play Odysseus and Polyphemus off each other for his own benefit, primarily by tricking them into giving him wine. As in the original scene, Odysseus manages to blind Polyphemus and escape. Approximately 450 lines, most of which are fragmentary, have survived of Sophocles's satyr play Ichneutae (Tracking Satyrs). In the surviving portion of the play, the chorus of satyrs are described as "lying on the ground like hedgehogs in a bush, or like a monkey bending over to fart at someone." The character Cyllene scolds them: "All you [satyrs] do you do for the sake of fun!... Cease to expand your smooth phallus with delight. You should not make silly jokes and chatter, so that the gods will make you shed tears to make me laugh."
In Dionysius I of Syracuse's fragmentary satyr play Limos (Starvation), Silenus attempts to give the hero Heracles an enema. A number of vase paintings depict scenes from satyr plays, including the Pronomos Vase, which depicts the entire cast of a victorious satyr play, dressed in costume, wearing shaggy leggings, erect phalli, and horse tails. The genre's reputation for crude humor is alluded to in other texts as well. In Aristophanes's comedy Thesmophoriazusae, the tragic poet Agathon declares that a dramatist must be able to adopt the personae of his characters in order to successfully portray them on stage. In lines 157–158, Euripides's unnamed relative retorts: "Well, let me know when you're writing satyr plays; I'll get behind you with my hard-on and show you how." This is the only extant reference to the genre of satyr plays from a work of ancient Greek comedy and, according to Shaw, it effectively characterizes satyr plays as "a genre of 'hard-ons.'"
In spite of their bawdy behavior, however, satyrs were still revered as semi-divine beings and companions of the god Dionysus. They were thought to possess their own kind of wisdom that was useful to humans if they could be convinced to share it. In Plato's Symposium, Alcibiades praises Socrates by comparing him to the famous satyr Marsyas. He resembles him physically, since he is balding and has a snub-nose, but Alcibiades contends that he resembles him mentally as well, because he is "insulting and abusive", in possession of irresistible charm, "erotically inclined to beautiful people", and "acts as if he knows nothing". Alcibiades concludes that Socrates's role as a philosopher is similar to that of the paternal satyr Silenus, because, at first, his questions seem ridiculous and laughable, but, upon closer inspection, they are revealed to be filled with much wisdom. One story, mentioned by Herodotus in his Histories and in a fragment by Aristotle, recounts that King Midas once captured a silenus, who provided him with wise philosophical advice.
Mythology
According to classicist William Hansen, although satyrs were popular in classical art, they rarely appear in surviving mythological accounts. Different classical sources present conflicting accounts of satyrs' origins. According to a fragment from the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, satyrs are sons of the five granddaughters of Phoroneus and therefore siblings of the Oreads and the Kouretes. The satyr Marsyas, however, is described by mythographers as the son of either Olympos or Oiagros. Hansen observes that "there may be more than one way to produce a satyr, as there is to produce a Cyclops or a centaur." The classical Greeks recognized that satyrs obviously could not self-reproduce since there were no female satyrs, but they seem to have been unsure whether satyrs were mortal or immortal.
Rather than appearing en masse as in satyr-plays, when satyrs appear in myths it is usually in the form of a single, famous character. The comic playwright Melanippides of Melos (c. 480–430 BC) tells the story in his lost comedy Marsyas of how, after inventing the aulos, the goddess Athena looked in the mirror while she was playing it. She saw how blowing into it puffed up her cheeks and made her look silly, so she threw the aulos away and cursed it so that whoever picked it up would meet an awful death. The aulos was picked up by the satyr Marsyas, who challenged Apollo to a musical contest. They both agreed beforehand that whoever won would be allowed to do whatever he wanted to the loser. Marsyas played the aulos and Apollo played the lyre. Apollo turned his lyre upside-down and played it. He asked Marsyas to do the same with his instrument. Since he could not, Apollo was deemed to victor. Apollo hung Marsyas from a pine tree and flayed him alive to punish him for his hubris in daring to challenge one of the gods. Later, this story became accepted as canonical and the Athenian sculptor Myron created a group of bronze sculptures based on it, which was installed before the western front of the Parthenon in around 440 BC. Surviving retellings of the legend are found in the Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus, Pausanias's Guide to Greece, and the Fabulae of Pseudo-Hyginus.
In a myth referenced in multiple classical texts, including the Bibliotheke of Pseudo-Apollodorus and the Fabulae of Pseudo-Hyginus, a satyr from Argos once attempted to rape the nymph Amymone, but she called to the god Poseidon for help and he launched his trident at the satyr, knocking him to the ground. This myth may have originated from Aeschylus's lost satyr play Amymone. Scenes of one or more satyrs chasing Amymone became a common trope in Greek vase paintings starting in the late fifth century BC. Among the earliest depictions of the scene come from a bell krater in the style of the Peleus Painter from Syracuse (PEM 10, pl. 155) and a bell krater in the style of the Dinos Painter from Vienna (DM 7).
According to one account, Satyrus was one of the many sons of Dionysus and the Bithynian nymph Nicaea, born after Dionysus tricked Nicaea into getting drunk and raped her as she laid unconscious.
List of Satyrs
Name | Text | Notes |
---|---|---|
Ampelus | Nonnus' Dionysiaca, Ovid | young lover of Dionysus/Bacchus, contested in footrunning and swimming, killed by Selene for challenging her, Dionysus turned him into a star or the grape vine. |
Astraeus | Nonnus, Dionysiaca | son of Silenus and brother of Leneus and Maron; chief of the satyrs who came to join Dionysus in the Indian War |
Babys | Plutarch, Moralia | brother of Marsyas, he challenged Apollo to a music contest and lost. |
Cissus | Nonnus, Dionysiaca | turned into an ivy plant; contested in footrunning with Ampelus |
Gemon | Nonnus, Dionysiaca | one of the leaders of the satyrs who joined the army of Dionysus in his campaign against India |
Hypsicerus | Nonnus, Dionysiaca | one of the leaders of the satyrs who joined the army of Dionysus in his campaign against India; character is likely a fabrication of Nonnus' (name translates to "tall-horn") |
Iobacchus | Nonnus, Dionysiaca | |
Lamis | Nonnus, Dionysiaca | one of the leaders of the satyrs who joined the army of Dionysus in his campaign against India |
Leneus | Nonnus, Dionysiaca | son of Silenus and brother of Astraeus and Maron; a satyr who contested in footrunning with Ampelus |
Lenobius | Nonnus, Dionysiaca | one of the leaders of the satyrs who joined the army of Dionysus in his campaign against India |
Lycon | Nonnus, Dionysiaca | one of the leaders of the satyrs who joined the army of Dionysus in his campaign against India |
Lycus | Nonnus, Dionysiaca | son of Hermes and Iphthime, and brother of Pherespondus and Pronomus |
Maron | Nonnus, Dionysiaca | son of Silenus and brother of Astraeus and Leneus; charioteer of Dionysus |
Marsyas | [needs citation and text] | |
Napaeus | Nonnus, Dionysiaca | one of the leaders of the satyrs who joined the army of Dionysus in his campaign against India |
Oestrus | Nonnus, Dionysiaca | one of the leaders of the satyrs who joined the army of Dionysus in his campaign against India |
Onthyrius | Nonnus, Dionysiaca | killed by Tectaphus during the Indian War |
Orestes | Nonnus, Dionysiaca | one of the leaders of the satyrs who joined the army of Dionysus in his campaign against India; character is likely a fabrication of Nonnus' (name translates to "mountain-dweller") |
Petraeus | Nonnus, Dionysiaca | one of the leaders of the satyrs who joined the army of Dionysus in his campaign against India |
Phereus | Nonnus, Dionysiaca | one of the leaders of the satyrs who joined the army of Dionysus in his campaign against India |
Pherespondus | Nonnus, Dionysiaca | herald of Dionysus during the Indian War and son of Hermes and Iphthime, and brother of Lycus and Pronomous |
Phlegraeus | Nonnus, Dionysiaca | one of the leaders of the satyrs who joined the army of Dionysus in his campaign against India |
Pithos | Nonnus, Dionysiaca | another satyr killed by Tectaphus |
Poemenius | Nonnus, Dionysiaca | one of the leaders of the satyrs who joined the army of Dionysus in his campaign against India; character is likely a fabrication of Nonnus' (name translates to "Pastoral") |
Pronomus | Nonnus, Dionysiaca | son of Hermes and Iphthime, and brother of Lycus and Pherespondus |
Pylaieus | Nonnus, Dionysiaca | another Satyr killed by Tectaphus |
Scirtus | Nonnus, Dionysiaca | one of the leaders of the satyrs who joined the army of Dionysus in his campaign against India |
Silenus | [multiple texts; still needs citations] | |
Thiasus | Nonnus, Dionysiaca | one of the leaders of the satyrs who joined the army of Dionysus in his campaign against India; character is likely a fabrication of Nonnus' (name translates to "cult-association") |
Unnamed Satyr | Ovid,
Fasti |
father of Ampelus by a Nymph |
Many names of the satyrs that appear in Nonnos' Dionysiaca are heavily assumed to have been coined by the author, and are nothing more than plot devices with no mythological significance. Four names listed in the epic, when translated, are merely adjectives associated to the character ("Pastoral", "Cult-association", "Tall-horn", and "Mountain-dweller").
The names of the satyrs according to various vase paintings were: Babacchos, Briacchos, Dithyrambos, Demon, Dromis, Echon, Hedyoinos ("Sweet Wine"), Hybris ("Insolence"), Hedymeles, ("Sweet Song"), Komos ("Revelry"), Kissos ("Ivy"), Molkos, Oinos, Oreimachos, Simos ("Snub-nose"), Terpon and Tyrbas ("Rout").