Silenus

Silenus was a rustic god of winemaking and drunkenness. He is the foster-father of Dionysus. Depicted as a snub-nosed, hairy, old man with the ears and tail of a donkey. I’ve compiled a few sections from various classics encyclopedias which are particularly interesting because of the subject of Eclogue 6 (where Silenus is caught by the shepherds and he sings about various myths).

“Analogous to this contrast [the role of satyrs in public life when people dressed as satyrs at festivals and the role of satyrs in mystery cults] is the ambiguity of the satyrs as grotesque hedonists and yet the immortal companions of a god, cruder than men and yet somehow wiser, combining mischief with wisdom, lewdness with skill in music, animality with divinity. In satyric drama they are the first to sample the creation of culture out of nature in the invention of wine, of the lyre, of the pipe, and so on. Silenus is the educator of Dionysus. King Midas (1) extracted from a silen, whom he had trapped in his garden, the wisdom that for men it is best never to have been born, second best to die as soon as possible (Herodotus 8. 138; Aristotle fr. 44). And Virgil's shepherds extract from Silenus a song of great beauty and wisdom (Eclogues 6). This ambiguity is exploited in Alcibiades' famous comparison of Socrates to the musical satyr Marsyas (Plato Symposium 215).”

From: “satyrs and silens” The Oxford Classical Dictionary (3 rev. ed.) Edited by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth Publisher: Oxford University Press Print Publication Date: 2005 Print ISBN-13: 9780198606413 Published online: 2005 Current Online Version: 2005 eISBN: 9780199567386

“Eclogue 6 remains obscure to us because we know little of its literary background in the Greek and Hellenistic poetic tradition. It opens with Virgil, in the character of Tityrus, about to sing of kings and battles when Apollo tweaks his ear and tells him that sheep should be fat but poems slim. The poem does not have much to do with pastoral and bears little resemblance to Theocritus. It consists of a song sung by Silenus in which he recounts the creation of the world in the style of Lucretius as a prelude to some allusively narrated myths. The narrative is interrupted by a description of Virgil's friend and fellow-poet Gallus accepting his vocation as a poet, in language reminiscent of Callimachus in the Aitia.”

From: “Eclogues” from The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature (3 ed.) Edited by M. C. Howatson Publisher: Oxford University Press Print Publication Date: 2011 Print ISBN-13: 9780199548545 Published online: 2011 Current Online Version: 2011 eISBN: 9780191739422

“Caught by Midas for his wisdom, the silen only reluctantly – probably following the model of Menelaus's questioning of Proteus (Hom. Od. 4,384-570) - speaks: "The best thing for humans is not to be born at all and if born, to die as soon as possible" (Aristot. fr. 65 Gigon = 44 Rose ; Theop. FGrH 115 F 75b; Cic. Tusc. 1,114 f.; Ov. Met. 11,85-145). This story is probably based on a tradition of a wise silen, as is implied in the rebuke of his student Olympus [14].

From: Heinze, Theodor. “Silen(s)”, in: Brill’s New Pauly. Antiquity volumes edited by: Hubert Cancik and , Helmuth Schneider, English Edition by: Christine F. Salazar. Classical Tradition volumes edited by: Manfred Landfester, English Edition by: Francis G. Gentry. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e1112800 First published online: 2006. First print edition: 9789004122598, 20110510

“[Midas] legendary king of Phrygia, a comical figure famous in Greek tradition for his interview with Silenus (see ‘Satyrs and Silens’), his golden touch, and his ass's ears (best single source: Ovid, Metamorphoses 11. 90–193). Eager to learn the secret of life, the universe, and everything, he captured the wild nature-spirit Silenus by spiking the pool at which he drank—on the borders of Macedonia, according to Herodotus 8. 138—with wine; the daimon was brought before him bound (a scene attested in Greek art from c.560 BC …) and revealed either (Theopompus, Fragmente der griechischen Historiker 115 F 75, in Aelianus Varia Historia 3. 18) the existence of a world beyond our own divided between the two races of the Blest and the Warriors, or (Aristotle fr. 65 Gigon, in Ps.-Plutarch Consolatio ad Apollonium 27) the melancholy insight, which became proverbial, that the best thing for mankind was never to be born, otherwise to leave this world as soon as possible. Virgil Eclogues 6 is a variant on this theme.

“Dionysus, grateful for Silenus' safe return to the wild, offered to grant the king any wish; Midas asked that everything he touched should turn to gold, but regretted his request when it became apparent that this made it impossible for him to eat or drink. The unwanted gift was washed off into the source of the Lydian river Pactolus, which thereafter carried gold dust down in its streams. A second divine encounter confirmed Midas' lack of judgement: invited to judge a musical contest between Apollo and Pan (or, according to Hyginus (3), Marsyas), he preferred Panegyricus, and was rewarded by the god with the ironical gift of donkey's ears. A turban hid his shame from all except his barber who, unable to contain the secret, told it to a hole in the ground; but reeds grew over the spot, and their wind-blown whispering propagates the unhappy truth for all time: ‘Midas has ass's ears.’”

From: “Midas” in The Oxford Classical Dictionary (3 rev. ed.) Edited by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth. Oxford University Press, Print Publication Date: 2005 Print ISBN-13: 9780198606413. Published online: 2005. Current Online Version: 2005 eISBN: 9780199567386

For anyone interested, I’ve also included a list from Theoi.com of literary sources referring to Silenus below. Theoi also provides a collection of quotations from the sources at the following link: https://www.theoi.com/Georgikos/Seilenos.html )

GREEK

• Pindar, Fragments - Greek Lyric C5th B.C.
• Greek Lyric II Anacreontea, Fragments - Greek Lyric C5th - 4th B.C.
• Aeschylus, Fragments - Greek Tragedy C5th B.C.
• Herodotus, Histories - Greek History C5th B.C.
• Apollodorus, The Library - Greek Mythography C2nd A.D.
• Callimachus, Fragments - Greek Poetry C3rd B.C.
• Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History - Greek History C1st B.C.
• Strabo, Geography - Greek Geography C1st B.C. - C1st A.D.
• Pausanias, Description of Greece - Greek Travelogue C2nd A.D.
• The Orphic Hymns - Greek Hymns C3rd B.C. - C2nd A.D.
• Aelian, Historical Miscellany - Greek Rhetoric C2nd - 3rd A.D.
• Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae - Greek Rhetoric C3rd A.D.
• Philostratus the Elder, Imagines - Greek Rhetoric C3rd A.D.
• Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana - Greek Biography C2nd A.D.
• Nonnus, Dionysiaca - Greek Epic C5th A.D.

ROMAN

• Hyginus, Fabulae - Latin Mythography C2nd A.D.
• Ovid, Metamorphoses - Latin Epic C1st B.C. - C1st A.D.
• Ovid, Fasti - Latin Poetry C1st B.C. - C1st A.D.
• Propertius, Elegies - Latin Elegy C1st B.C.
• Pliny the Elder, Natural History - Latin Encyclopedia C1st A.D.
• Seneca, Oedipus - Latin Tragedy C1st A.D.