Silene (mythology)

See also: Silène

In the Greek Mythology, Silène (in Greek old Σειληνός / Seilênós ) is a kind of Satyre, adoptive father and tutor of the god Dionysos, who accompanies it unceasingly.

He is moreover the god personifying Intoxication, rather near in this direction of two others minor divinities doing one and the other part of the procession of Dionysos, Comos (the good Expensive one) and Coros (the Satiété), that Hérodote gives birth to from Hybris (the Démesure).

Silene is qualified “wire of Hermes”, as it is the case most of the time for the satyrs, but of other traditions make of them the son of Pan and a nymph, or of Side and Gaïa (Earth), even, according to Nonnos, of Gaïa fertilized by the blood of Ouranos mutilated. Like Dionysos, one gives birth to it with Nysa, in Asia.

It is supposed to have taken part in the Gigantomachie. One allots to him, of par with Marsyas, the invention of the Flûte, as well as the invention of a particular dance, which one names in his honor the silene.

He is also the burlesques hero of a certain number of tales, where its leaning for the wine carries out it to saunter, drunk, among the mortals.
Ainsi, one day that he drank too much, he is mislaid in Phrygie and is collected by the king Midas. A few days afterwards, anxious Dionysos finds it at Midas and, in thanks, exaucer to him a wish offers. Midas then chooses to transform all that it touches out of gold (see Midas).

It is generally represented in the form of a jovial old man but of a great ugliness, with an impressed nose, heavy features, a bedonnant belly. Socrate has be compared with Silène by Alcibiade in Banquet of Plato in 215b (it is under these features that it is represented in a famous bust, whose copy is exposed to the Musée of Louvre, to see Socrate). This comparison which seems insulting it is not when one knows the use which it was made of Silènes in the Greek Antiquité. They were not only représentattions mockers of a ridiculous god, it contained invaluable representations of the Olympian gods, like figurines of silver Apollon or gold.

“Alcibiade: (...) I declare that it is very similar with these silenes which one sees exposed in the workshops of the sculptors, and which the artists represent a pipeau or a flute with the hand; if one opens them into two, one sees that they contain, inside, of the statues of gods. ” (Transl. Paul Vicar and Jean Laborderie ED. Budé 2002).

The note of Vicar states to us besides that Rabelais glosé much on this passage in its foreword with Gargantua , text which he will certainly have known at Érasme. It is thus not a mockery on behalf of beautiful Alcibiade which was insane in love with Socrate, but subtle a praise: if its appearance is ugly and pushing back, inside it is “similar with a god” to parody Sappho, and it is for these qualities that it likes it, of a platonic love (what empèche not sensuality).

By Antonomasia, one gives sometimes the name of silenes to the satyrs, and at the Romains, to the fauna S and the Sylvain S.

According to certain specialists, the origin of the legends on the subjects of Silène, faunas and of nymphs (cf Nymphomania) would be the memory of meetings with hominoïdes relics (see article Yéti).

See too

Satyr

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