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227-507: In Greek mythology , a satyr ( ‹See Tfd› Greek : σάτυρος , translit.   sátyros , pronounced [sátyros] ), also known as a silenus or silenos ( ‹See Tfd› Greek : σειληνός , translit.   seilēnós [seːlɛːnós] ), and sileni (plural), is a male nature spirit with ears and a tail resembling those of a horse, as well as a permanent, exaggerated erection . Early artistic representations sometimes include horse-like legs, but, by

454-579: A pederastic light . Alexandrian poets at first, then more generally literary mythographers in the early Roman Empire, often re-adapted stories of Greek mythological characters in this fashion. The achievement of epic poetry was to create story-cycles and, as a result, to develop a new sense of mythological chronology. Thus, Greek mythology unfolds as a phase in the development of the world and of humans. While self-contradictions in these stories make an absolute timeline impossible, an approximate chronology may be discerned. The resulting mythological "history of

681-505: A "troupe of Fauns and Satyrs far away Within the wood were dancing in a round." Although Satyrs are often negatively characterized in Greek and Roman mythology, the Satyrs in this poem are docile, helpful creatures. This is evident by the way they help protect Una from Sansloy. Sylvanus , the leader, and the rest of the Satyrs become enamored by Una's beauty and begin to worship her as if she is

908-677: A Christian moralizing perspective. The discovery of the Mycenaean civilization by the German amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann in the nineteenth century, and the discovery of the Minoan civilization in Crete by the British archaeologist Arthur Evans in the twentieth century, helped to explain many existing questions about Homer's epics and provided archaeological evidence for many of

1135-596: A bookshelf with works such as The Life and Letters of Silenus , Nymphs and their Ways , and Is Man a Myth? . The satyr has appeared in all five editions of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, having been introduced in 1976 in the earliest edition, in Supplement IV: Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes (1976), then in the first edition of the Monster Manual (1977), where it is described as

1362-505: A brief time by a Catalan corsair. When the population drove him out, they obtained the consent of Thomas to submit to the Pope's protection before the end of 1460. The Mani Peninsula at the south end of the Morea resisted under a loose coalition of the local clans, and that area then came under Venice 's rule. The last holdout was Salmeniko , in the Morea's northwest. Graitzas Palaiologos was

1589-585: A collection of epic poems , starts with the events leading up to the war: Eris and the golden apple of Kallisti , the Judgement of Paris , the abduction of Helen , the sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis . To recover Helen, the Greeks launched a great expedition under the overall command of Menelaus 's brother, Agamemnon, king of Argos, or Mycenae , but the Trojans refused to return Helen. The Iliad , which

1816-492: A combination of their name and epithets , that identify them by these distinctions from other manifestations of themselves (e.g., Apollo Musagetes is " Apollo , [as] leader of the Muses "). Alternatively, the epithet may identify a particular and localized aspect of the god, sometimes thought to be already ancient during the classical epoch of Greece. Most gods were associated with specific aspects of life. For example, Aphrodite

2043-543: A commission at Andravida consisted of Latin bishops, two bannerets and five Greek magnates and chaired by himself, to assess the land and divide it, according to Latin practice, in fiefs . The result was divide the country into twelve baronies , mostly centred around a newly constructed castle—a testament to the fact that the Franks were a military elite amidst a potentially hostile Greek population. The twelve temporal barons were joined by seven ecclesiastic lords, headed by

2270-695: 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. Fasti Many names of

2497-525: A convenient framework into which to fit their own courtly and chivalric ideals. Twelfth-century authors, such as Benoît de Sainte-Maure ( Roman de Troie [Romance of Troy, 1154–60]) and Joseph of Exeter ( De Bello Troiano [On the Trojan War, 1183]) describe the war while rewriting the standard version they found in Dictys and Dares . They thus follow Horace 's advice and Virgil's example: they rewrite

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2724-543: A deity. However, the Satyrs prove to be simple-minded creatures because they begin to worship the donkey she was riding. In the seventeenth century, satyrs became identified with great apes . In 1699, the English anatomist Edward Tyson (1651–1708) published an account of his dissection of a creature which scholars have now identified as chimpanzee . In this account, Tyson argued that stories of satyrs, wild men, and other hybrid mythological creatures had all originated from

2951-581: 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

3178-489: A flat disk afloat on the river of Oceanus and overlooked by a hemispherical sky with sun, moon, and stars. The Sun ( Helios ) traversed the heavens as a charioteer and sailed around the Earth in a golden bowl at night. Sun, earth, heaven, rivers, and winds could be addressed in prayers and called to witness oaths. Natural fissures were popularly regarded as entrances to the subterranean house of Hades and his predecessors, home of

3405-844: 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

3632-558: A god "greater than he", Zeus swallowed her. She was already pregnant with Athena , however, and she burst forth from his head—fully-grown and dressed for war. The earliest Greek thought about poetry considered the theogonies to be the prototypical poetic genre—the prototypical mythos —and imputed almost magical powers to it. Orpheus , the archetypal poet, also was the archetypal singer of theogonies, which he uses to calm seas and storms in Apollonius' Argonautica , and to move

3859-403: 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

4086-552: A legendary incident in his Life of Sulla , in which the soldiers of the Roman general Sulla are reported to have captured a satyr sleeping during a military campaign in Greece in 89 BC. Sulla's men brought the satyr to him and he attempted to interrogate it, but it spoke only in an unintelligible sound: a cross between the neighing of a horse and the bleating of a goat. The second-century Greek travel writer Pausanias reports having seen

4313-513: A limited number of gods, who were the focus of large pan-Hellenic cults. It was, however, common for individual regions and villages to devote their own cults to minor gods. Many cities also honored the more well-known gods with unusual local rites and associated strange myths with them that were unknown elsewhere. During the heroic age, the cult of heroes (or demigods) supplemented that of the gods. "The origins of humanity [were] ascribed to various figures, including Zeus and Prometheus ." Bridging

4540-553: A means of representing sexuality without offending Victorian moral sensibilities . In the novel The Marble Faun (1860) by the American author Nathaniel Hawthorne , the Italian count Donatello is described as bearing a remarkable resemblance to one of Praxiteles's marble satyr statues. Like the satyrs of Greek legend, Donatello has a carefree nature. His association with satyrs is further cemented by his intense sexual attraction to

4767-455: A metaphor for a phenomenon extending far beyond the original narrative purposes in which they had served during earlier periods of Greek history. Some variants on this theme represent a satyr being rebuffed by a hermaphrodite , who, from the satyr's perspective, appears to be a beautiful, young girl. These sculptures may have been intended as kind of sophisticated erotic joke. The Athenian sculptor Praxiteles 's statue Pouring Satyr represented

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4994-828: A mountainous interior, although extensive lowlands are also found in the west, in the Evrotas Valley in the south, and in the Argolid Peninsula in the northeast. The Peloponnese possesses four south-pointing peninsulas, the Messenian , the Mani , the Cape Malea (also known as Epidaurus Limera), and the Argolid in the far northeast of the Peloponnese. Mount Taygetus in the south is the highest mountain in

5221-405: A musical contest with Apollo . Ian Morris considers Prometheus' adventures as "a place between the history of the gods and that of man." An anonymous papyrus fragment, dated to the third century, vividly portrays Dionysus ' punishment of the king of Thrace , Lycurgus , whose recognition of the new god came too late, resulting in horrific penalties that extended into the afterlife. The story of

5448-458: A number of local legends became attached. The story of Medea , in particular, caught the imagination of the tragic poets. In between the Argo and the Trojan War, there was a generation known chiefly for its horrific crimes. This includes the doings of Atreus and Thyestes at Argos. Behind the myth of the house of Atreus (one of the two principal heroic dynasties with the house of Labdacus ) lies

5675-581: A personal fief of the Villehardouins. The barons retained considerable powers and privileges, so that the Prince was not an absolute sovereign but rather a "first among equals" among them. Thus they had the right to construct a castle without the Prince's permission, or to decree capital punishment . Since Salic Law was not adopted in Achaea, women could also inherit the fiefs. Frankish supremacy in

5902-635: 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. 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

6129-607: 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

6356-480: A place to live, so he gives them a home in the forests, woodlands, and mountains, where they will be safe. Ovid also retells the story of Marsyas's hubris. He describes a musical contest between Marsyas, playing the aulos, and the god Apollo, playing the lyre. Marsyas loses and Apollo flays him as punishment. The Roman naturalist and encyclopedist Pliny the Elder conflated satyrs with gibbons , which he describes using

6583-640: 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

6810-534: A poem of Troy instead of telling something completely new. Peloponnese The peninsula is divided among three administrative regions : most belongs to the Peloponnese region, with smaller parts belonging to the West Greece and Attica regions. The Peloponnese is a peninsula located at the southern tip of the mainland, 21,549.6 square kilometres (8,320.3 sq mi) in area, and constitutes

7037-684: A prisoner of the Ottomans and his younger brother Thomas fled. By the end of the summer the Ottomans had achieved the submission of virtually all cities possessed by the Greeks . Ottoman incursions into the Morea resumed under Turahan Bey after 1423. Despite the reconstruction of the Hexamilion wall at the Isthmus of Corinth, the Ottomans under Murad II breached it in 1446, forcing the Despots of

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7264-478: A result of an initial "flood" of Slavic invasions, and many appear to have been mediated by speakers of Greek, or in mixed Slavic-Greek compounds. Fewer Slavic toponyms appear on the eastern coast, which remained in Byzantine hands and was included in the thema of Hellas , established by Justinian II c.  690 . While traditional historiography has dated the arrival of Slavs to southern Greece to

7491-671: 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

7718-507: A spirit to every aspect of nature. Eventually, these vague spirits assumed human forms and entered the local mythology as gods. When tribes from the north of the Balkan Peninsula invaded, they brought with them a new pantheon of gods, based on conquest, force, prowess in battle, and violent heroism. Other older gods of the agricultural world fused with those of the more powerful invaders or else faded into insignificance. After

7945-432: A staggering minimum temperature of 35.9°C, which is the highest minimum temperature ever recorded in mainland Greece and Continental Europe . The peninsula has been inhabited since prehistoric times . Its modern name derives from ancient Greek mythology , specifically the legend of the hero Pelops , who was said to have conquered the entire region. The name Peloponnesos means Island or Peninsula (archaic meaning of

8172-688: A sylvan woodland inhabitant primarily interested in sport such as frolicking, piping, and chasing wood nymphs . The life history of satyrs was further detailed in Dragon No. 155 (March 1990), in "The Ecology of the Satyr". The satyr was later detailed as a playable character race in The Complete Book of Humanoids (1993), and is later presented as a playable character race again in Player's Option: Skills & Powers (1995). The satyr appears in

8399-435: A trap for it with wine, knowing that, after drinking it, the ghost-satyr would fall asleep forever. The wine diminished from the container before the onlookers' eyes, but the ghost-satyr himself remained invisible. Once all the wine had vanished, the ghost-satyr fell asleep and never bothered the villagers again. Amira El-Zein notes similarities between this story and later Arabic accounts of jinn . The treatise Saturnalia by

8626-516: A turning point. Rivalries among the insurgents eventually erupted into civil war in 1824, which enabled the Ottoman Egyptian vassal Ibrahim Pasha to land in the peninsula in 1825. The Peloponnese peninsula was the scene of fierce fighting and extensive devastation following the arrival of Ibrahim's Egyptian troops. Partly as a result of the atrocities committed by Ibrahim, the UK, France, and

8853-503: 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. 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

9080-598: Is earthquake-prone and has been the site of many earthquakes in the past. The longest river is the Alfeios in the west (110 km or 68 mi), followed by the Evrotas in the south (82 km or 51 mi), and also the Pineios , also in the west (70 km or 43 mi). The Peloponnese, with its indented coasts, is home to numerous spectacular beaches, which are a major tourist draw. Two groups of islands lie off

9307-481: Is especially true in Mani and Tsakonia , where Slavic incursions were minimal, or non-existent. Being agriculturalists, the Slavs probably traded with the Greeks, who remained in the towns, while Greek villages continued to exist in the interior, governing themselves, possibly paying tribute to the Slavs. The first attempt by the Byzantine imperial government to re-assert its control over the independent Slavic tribes of

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9534-471: Is given human legs, but is exceptionally hairy. The seduction element is removed altogether; the satyr simply extends his arms towards the nymph, who lies on the ground, defeated. Penny Florence writes that the "generic scene displays little sensuality" and that the main factor distinguishing it is its tone, because "[i]t does not seem convincing as a rape, despite the nymph's reluctance." In 1912, Vaslav Nijinsky choreographed Debussy's symphonic poem Prelude to

9761-461: Is portrayed as a sacrificer, mentioned as a founder of altars, and imagined as a voracious eater himself; it is in this role that he appears in comedy. While his tragic end provided much material for tragedy— Heracles is regarded by Thalia Papadopoulou as "a play of great significance in examination of other Euripidean dramas." In art and literature, Heracles was represented as an enormously strong man of moderate height; his characteristic weapon

9988-619: Is set in the tenth year of the war, tells of the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles, who was the finest Greek warrior, and the consequent deaths in battle of Achilles' beloved comrade Patroclus and Priam 's eldest son, Hector . After Hector's death, the Trojans were joined by two exotic allies, Penthesilea , queen of the Amazons , and Memnon , king of the Ethiopians and son of the dawn-goddess, Eos . Achilles killed both of these, but Paris then managed to kill Achilles with an arrow in

10215-476: Is that "the Greek gods are persons, not abstractions, ideas or concepts." Regardless of their underlying forms, the Ancient Greek gods have many fantastic abilities; most significantly, the gods are not affected by disease and can be wounded only under highly unusual circumstances. The Greeks considered immortality as the distinctive characteristic of their gods; this immortality, as well as unfading youth,

10442-420: 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

10669-452: 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

10896-833: 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

11123-597: 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

11350-680: The Iliad and the Odyssey . Other poets completed the Epic Cycle , but these later and lesser poems now are lost almost entirely. Despite their traditional name, the Homeric Hymns have no direct connection with Homer. The oldest are choral hymns from the earlier part of the so-called Lyric age . Hesiod , a possible contemporary with Homer, offers in his Theogony ( Origin of the Gods )

11577-559: The Theogony and the Works and Days , contain accounts of the genesis of the world, the succession of divine rulers, the succession of human ages, the origin of human woes, and the origin of sacrificial practices. Myths are also preserved in the Homeric Hymns , in fragments of epic poems of the Epic Cycle , in lyric poems , in the works of the tragedians and comedians of the fifth century BC, in writings of scholars and poets of

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11804-589: The Chimera and Medusa . Bellerophon's adventures are commonplace types, similar to the adventures of Heracles and Theseus. Sending a hero to his presumed death is also a recurrent theme of this early heroic tradition, used in the cases of Perseus and Bellerophon. The only surviving Hellenistic epic, the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes (epic poet, scholar, and director of the Library of Alexandria ) tells

12031-476: The Derveni Papyrus now proves that at least in the fifth-century BC a theogonic-cosmogonic poem of Orpheus was in existence. The first philosophical cosmologists reacted against, or sometimes built upon, popular mythical conceptions that had existed in the Greek world for some time. Some of these popular conceptions can be gleaned from the poetry of Homer and Hesiod. In Homer, the Earth was viewed as

12258-472: The Greek Dark Ages , is marked by an absence of written records. In 776 BC, the first Olympic Games were held at Olympia , in the western Peloponnese and this date is sometimes used to denote the beginning of the classical period of Greek antiquity. During classical antiquity , the Peloponnese was at the heart of the affairs of ancient Greece , possessed some of its most powerful city-states, and

12485-504: The Gulf of Corinth has a hot semi-arid climate ( Köppen climate classification : BSh ). Rainfall is higher in the west coasts, while the east of the peninsula is significantly drier. Average annual temperatures can reach up to 20.3 °C (68.5 °F) while summer highs reach over 36.0 °C (96.8 °F) in Sparta , within the Evrotas Valley . On 27 June 2007, Monemvasia registered

12712-539: The Hellenistic and Roman ages was primarily composed as a literary rather than cultic exercise. Nevertheless, it contains many important details that would otherwise be lost. This category includes the works of: Prose writers from the same periods who make reference to myths include Apuleius , Petronius , Lollianus , and Heliodorus . Two other important non-poetical sources are the Fabulae and Astronomica of

12939-562: The Hellenistic Age , and in texts from the time of the Roman Empire by writers such as Plutarch and Pausanias . Aside from this narrative deposit in ancient Greek literature , pictorial representations of gods, heroes, and mythic episodes featured prominently in ancient vase paintings and the decoration of votive gifts and many other artifacts. Geometric designs on pottery of the eighth century BC depict scenes from

13166-464: 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

13393-430: The Isthmus of Corinth . His attack opened the peninsula to invasion, though Murad died before he could exploit this. His successor Mehmed II "the Conqueror" captured the Byzantine capital Constantinople in 1453. The despots, Demetrios Palaiologos and Thomas Palaiologos , brothers of the last emperor, failed to send him any aid, as Morea was recovering from a recent Ottoman attack. Their own incompetence resulted in

13620-404: The Latin Archbishop of Patras . Each of the latter was granted a number of estates as knightly fiefs, with the Archbishop receiving eight, the other bishops four each, and likewise four granted to each of the military orders : the Templars , Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights . Shortly after 1260, a thirteenth barony, that of Arcadia (modern Kyparissia ) was established, which was also

13847-434: The Morea revolt of 1453–1454 led by Manuel Kantakouzenos against them, during which they invited in Ottoman troops to help them put down the revolt. At this time, the Greek archons made peace with Mehmed. After more years of incompetent rule by the despots, their failure to pay their annual tribute to the Sultan, and finally their own revolt against Ottoman rule, Mehmed came into the Morea in May 1460. Demetrios ended up

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14074-417: The Ottoman Turks on 31 May 1460, Mystras was the residence of a Despot who ruled over the Byzantine Morea, known as the " Despotate of the Morea ". For the larger portion of his reign, Manuel maintained peaceful relations with his Latin neighbors and secured a long period of prosperity for the area. Greco-Latin cooperation included an alliance to contain the raids of the Ottoman Sultan Murad I into Morea in

14301-468: The Pan pipes or syrinx . The poet Virgil , who flourished during the early years of the Roman Empire , recounts a story in his sixth Eclogue about two boys who tied up the satyr Silenus while he was in a drunken stupor and forced him to sing them a song about the beginning of the universe. The first-century AD Roman poet Ovid makes Jupiter , the king of the gods, express worry that the viciousness of humans will leave fauns, nymphs, and satyrs without

14528-430: The Parthenon depicting the sack of Troy); this artistic preference for themes deriving from the Trojan Cycle indicates its importance to the Ancient Greek civilization. The same mythological cycle also inspired a series of posterior European literary writings. For instance, Trojan Medieval European writers, unacquainted with Homer at first hand, found in the Troy legend a rich source of heroic and romantic storytelling and

14755-571: The Peloponnesian kingdoms of Mycenae , Sparta and Argos , claiming, according to legend, a right to rule them through their ancestor. Their rise to dominance is frequently called the " Dorian invasion ". The Lydian and later the Macedonian kings, as rulers of the same rank, also became Heracleidae. Other members of this earliest generation of heroes such as Perseus, Deucalion , Theseus and Bellerophon , have many traits in common with Heracles. Like him, their exploits are solitary, fantastic and border on fairy tale , as they slay monsters such as

14982-433: The Roman culture because of the story of Aeneas , a Trojan hero whose journey from Troy led to the founding of the city that would one day become Rome, as recounted in Virgil's Aeneid (Book II of Virgil's Aeneid contains the best-known account of the sack of Troy). Finally there are two pseudo-chronicles written in Latin that passed under the names of Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius . The Trojan War cycle ,

15209-584: 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

15436-413: The klephts ' activities. With the outbreak of the " Great Turkish War " in 1683, the Venetians under Francesco Morosini occupied the entire peninsula by 1687, and received recognition by the Ottomans in the Treaty of Karlowitz (1699). The Venetians established their province as the " Kingdom of the Morea " (It. Regno di Morea ), but their rule proved unpopular, and when the Ottomans invaded

15663-426: The 1360s. The rival Palaiologos dynasty seized the Morea after Manuel's death in 1380, with Theodore I Palaiologos becoming despot in 1383. Theodore I ruled until 1407, consolidating Byzantine rule and coming to terms with his more powerful neighbours—particularly the expansionist Ottoman Empire , whose suzerainty he recognised. Subsequent despots were the sons of the Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos , brother of

15890-422: The Afternoon of a Faun as a ballet and danced in it as the lead role of the faun. The choreography of the ballet and Nijinsky's performance were both highly erotic and sexually charged, causing widespread scandal among upper-class Parisians. In the 1980 biographical film Nijinsky , directed by Herbert Ross , Nijinsky, who is played by George de la Peña , is portrayed as actually masturbating on stage in front of

16117-403: The Afternoon of a Faun ), which was first performed in 1894. The late nineteenth-century German Existentialist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was either unaware of or chose to ignore the fact that, in all the earliest representations, satyrs are depicted as horse-like. He accordingly defined a satyr as a "bearded" creature "who derived his name and attributes from the goat." Nietzsche excluded

16344-655: The American woman Miriam. Satyrs and nymphs provided a classical pretext which allowed sexual depictions of them to be seen as objects of high art rather than mere pornography. The French emperor Napoleon III awarded the Academic painter Alexandre Cabanel the Legion of Honour , partly on account of his painting Nymph Abducted by a Faun . In 1873, another French Academicist William-Adolphe Bouguereau painted Nymphs and Satyr , which depicts four nude nymphs dancing around "an unusually submissive satyr", gently coaxing him into

16571-473: The Ancient Greek pantheon, poets composed the Homeric Hymns (a group of thirty-three songs). Gregory Nagy (1992) regards "the larger Homeric Hymns as simple preludes (compared with Theogony ), each of which invokes one god." The gods of Greek mythology are described as having essentially corporeal but ideal bodies. According to Walter Burkert , the defining characteristic of Greek anthropomorphism

16798-410: The Byzantine governor of Corinth went to war with the Slavs, exterminated them, and allowed the original inhabitants to claim their lands. They regained control of the city of Patras and the region was re-settled with Greeks. Many Slavs were transported to Asia Minor , and many Asian, Sicilian and Calabrian Greeks were resettled in the Peloponnese. By the turn of the 9th century, the entire Peloponnese

17025-589: The Devil". In other cases, satyrs are usually shown nude, with enlarged phalli to emphasize their sexual nature. In the Second-Family Bestiary , the name "satyr" is used as the name of a species of ape , which is described as having a "very agreeable face, restless, however, in its twitching movements." During the Renaissance , satyrs and fauns began to reappear in works of European art. During

17252-487: The Epic Cycle as well as the adventures of Heracles . In the succeeding Archaic , Classical , and Hellenistic periods, Homeric and various other mythological scenes appear, supplementing the existing literary evidence. Greek mythology has had an extensive influence on the culture, arts, and literature of Western civilization and remains part of Western heritage and language. Poets and artists from ancient times to

17479-610: The Greek leaders (including the wanderings of Odysseus and Aeneas (the Aeneid ), and the murder of Agamemnon) were told in two epics, the Returns (the lost Nostoi ) and Homer's Odyssey . The Trojan cycle also includes the adventures of the children of the Trojan generation (e.g., Orestes and Telemachus ). The Trojan War provided a variety of themes and became a main source of inspiration for Ancient Greek artists (e.g. metopes on

17706-472: The Greek world and noted the stories they heard, supplied numerous local myths and legends, often giving little-known alternative versions. Herodotus in particular, searched the various traditions he encountered and found the historical or mythological roots in the confrontation between Greece and the East. Herodotus attempted to reconcile origins and the blending of differing cultural concepts. The poetry of

17933-479: The King James Version's translation of this phrase and others like it was intended to reduce the strangeness and unfamiliarity of the creatures described in the original Hebrew text by rendering them as names of familiar entities. Edmund Spenser refers to a group of woodland creatures as Satyrs in his epic poem The Faerie Queene . In Canto VI, Una is wandering through the forest when she stumbles upon

18160-530: The Monster Manual for the 3.0 edition. Savage Species (2003) presented the satyr as both a race and a playable class. The satyr appears in the revised Monster Manual for version 3.5 and also appears in the Monster Manual for the 4th edition, and as a playable character race in the Heroes of the Feywild sourcebook (2011). Matthew Barney 's art video Drawing Restraint 7 (1993) includes two satyrs wrestling in

18387-510: The Morea to re-acknowledge Ottoman suzerainty, and again under Turahan in 1452 and 1456. Following the occupation of the Duchy of Athens in 1456, the Ottomans occupied a third of the Peloponnese in 1458, and Sultan Mehmed II extinguished the remnants of the Despotate in 1460. A few holdouts remained for a time. The rocky peninsula of Monemvasia refused to surrender, and it was first ruled for

18614-553: The Olympians, the Greeks worshipped various gods of the countryside, the satyr-god Pan , Nymphs (spirits of rivers), Naiads (who dwelled in springs), Dryads (who were spirits of the trees), Nereids (who inhabited the sea), river gods, Satyrs , and others. In addition, there were the dark powers of the underworld, such as the Erinyes (or Furies), said to pursue those guilty of crimes against blood-relatives. In order to honor

18841-540: The Pan pipes and, like traditional satyrs and fauns, are portrayed as mischievous. One young faun plays hide-and-seek with a unicorn and imitates a statue of a faun atop a pedestal. Though the fauns are not portrayed as overtly sexual, they do assist the Cupids in pairing the centaurs into couples. A drunken Bacchus appears in the same scene. A faun named Mr. Tumnus appears in the classic juvenile fantasy novel The Lion,

19068-587: The Peloponnese has been divided into seven major regions: Achaea (north), Corinthia (northeast), Argolis (east), Arcadia (center), Laconia (southeast), Messenia (southwest), and Elis (west). Each of these regions is headed by a city. The largest city is Patras (pop. 170,000) in Achaia, followed by Kalamata (pop. 55,000) in Messenia. Peloponnese for the most part enjoys a hot-summer Mediterranean climate ( Köppen climate classification : Csa ), while

19295-541: The Peloponnese occurred in 783, with the logothete Staurakios ' overland campaign from Constantinople into Greece and the Peloponnese, which according to Theophanes the Confessor made many prisoners and forced the Slavs to pay tribute. From the mid-9th century, following a Slavic revolt and attack on Patras , a determined Hellenization process was carried out. According to the Chronicle of Monemvasia , in 805

19522-527: The Peloponnese rose against the Ottomans with Russian aid during the so-called " Orlov Revolt " of 1770, but it was swiftly and brutally suppressed by bands of Muslim Albanian mercenaries hired by the Ottomans. Referred to by the local Greek populace as " Turk-Albanians ", those forces had also destroyed many cities and towns in Epirus during the 1769–70 revolt there. The Peloponnese suffered more than any other Greek inhabited area by irregular Albanian gangs during

19749-662: The Peloponnese to continue their military service under the Republic of Venice or the Kingdom of Naples . At the end of the Ottoman–Venetian wars, a large number of Albanians had fled from the Peloponnese to Sicily. A demographic census by Alfred Philippson , based on fieldwork between 1887 and 1889, found that out of the approximately 730,000 inhabitants of the Peloponnese, and the three neighboring islands of Poros , Hydra and Spetses , Arvanites numbered 90,253, or 12.3% of

19976-615: The Peloponnese was culturally and administratively Greek again, except for a few small Slavic tribes in the mountains such as the Melingoi and Ezeritai . Although they were to remain relatively autonomous until Ottoman times, such tribes were the exception rather than the rule. Even the Melingoi and Ezeritai, however, could speak Greek and appear to have been Christian. The success of the Hellenization campaign also shows that

20203-444: The Peloponnese, at 2,407 metres (7,897 ft). Οther important mountains include Cyllene in the northeast (2,376 m or 7,795 ft), Aroania in the north (2,355 m or 7,726 ft), Erymanthos (2,224 m or 7,297 ft) and Panachaikon in the northwest (1,926 m or 6,319 ft), Mainalon in the center (1,981 m or 6,499 ft), and Parnon in the southeast (1,935 m or 6,348 ft). The entire peninsula

20430-725: The Peloponnesian coast: the Argo-Saronic Islands to the east, and the Ionian to the west. The island of Kythira , off the Epidaurus Limeira peninsula to the south of the Peloponnese, is considered to be part of the Ionian Islands. The island of Elafonisos used to be part of the peninsula but was separated following the major quake of 365 AD . Since antiquity, and continuing to the present day,

20657-572: The Persian Empire. Along with the rest of Greece, the Peloponnese fell to the expanding Roman Republic in 146 BC, when the Romans razed the city of Corinth and massacred its inhabitants. The Romans created the province of Achaea comprising the Peloponnese and central Greece. During the Roman period , the peninsula remained prosperous but became a provincial backwater, relatively cut off from

20884-580: The Principality of Achaea were beaten back in the battles of Prinitsa and Makryplagi , but the Byzantines were firmly ensconced in Laconia. Warfare became endemic, and the Byzantines slowly pushed the Franks back. The insecurity engendered by the raids and counter-raids caused the inhabitants of Lacedaemon to abandon their exposed city and settle at Mystras, in a new town built under the shadow of

21111-750: The Renaissance, no distinction was made between satyrs and fauns and both were usually given human and goat-like features in whatever proportion the artist deemed appropriate. A goat-legged satyr appears at the base of Michelangelo 's statue Bacchus (1497). Renaissance satyrs still sometimes appear in scenes of drunken revelry like those from antiquity, but they also sometimes appear in family scenes, alongside female and infant or child satyrs. This trend towards more familial, domestic satyrs may have resulted from conflation with wild men, who, especially in Renaissance depictions from Germany, were often portrayed as living relatively peaceful lives with their families in

21338-660: The Roman writer styled as Pseudo- Hyginus , the Imagines of Philostratus the Elder and Philostratus the Younger , and the Descriptions of Callistratus . Finally, several Byzantine Greek writers provide important details of myth, much derived from earlier now lost Greek works. These preservers of myth include Arnobius , Hesychius , the author of the Suda , John Tzetzes , and Eustathius . They often treat mythology from

21565-533: The Russian Empire decided to intervene in favor of the Greeks. The decisive naval Battle of Navarino was fought in 1827 off Pylos on the west coast of the Peloponnese, where a combined British, French and Russian fleet decisively defeated the Turko-Egyptian fleet. Subsequently, a French expeditionary corps cleared the last Turko-Egyptian forces from the peninsula in 1828. The city of Nafplion, on

21792-547: The Slavs had settled among many Greeks, in contrast to areas further north in what is now Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia, as those areas could not be Hellenized when they were recovered by the Byzantines in the early 11th century. A human genetics study in 2017 showed that the Peloponnesians have little admixture with populations of the Slavic homeland and are much closer to Sicilians and southern Italians. Apart from

22019-519: The Trojan cycle, as well as the adventures of Heracles. These visual representations of myths are important for two reasons. Firstly, many Greek myths are attested on vases earlier than in literary sources: of the twelve labors of Heracles, for example, only the Cerberus adventure occurs in a contemporary literary text. Secondly, visual sources sometimes represent myths or mythical scenes that are not attested in any extant literary source. In some cases,

22246-500: The United States. In 1876, Stéphane Mallarmé wrote "The Afternoon of a Faun", a first-person narrative poem about a faun who attempts to kiss two beautiful nymphs while they are sleeping together. He accidentally wakes them up. Startled, they transform into white water birds and fly away, leaving the faun to play his pan pipes alone. Claude Debussy composed a symphonic poem Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune ( Prelude to

22473-514: The Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) by C. S. Lewis . Mr. Tumnus has goat legs and horns, but also a tail long enough for him to carry it draped over his arm to prevent it from dragging in the snow. He is a domesticated figure who lacks the bawdiness and hypersexuality that characterized classical satyrs and fauns. Instead, Mr. Tumnus wears a scarf and carries an umbrella and lives in a cozy cave with

22700-608: The affairs of the wider Roman world . After the partition of the Empire in 395, the Peloponnese became a part of the East Roman or Byzantine Empire . The devastation of Alaric 's raid in 396–397 led to the construction of the Hexamilion wall across the Isthmus of Corinth. Through most of late antiquity , the peninsula retained its urbanized character: in the 6th century, Hierocles counted 26 cities in his Synecdemus . By

22927-456: The age when gods lived alone and the age when divine interference in human affairs was limited was a transitional age in which gods and mortals moved together. These were the early days of the world when the groups mingled more freely than they did later. Most of these tales were later told by Ovid's Metamorphoses and they are often divided into two thematic groups: tales of love, and tales of punishment. Tales of love often involve incest, or

23154-481: The appropriation or invention of some important cultural artifact, as when Prometheus steals fire from the gods, when Tantalus steals nectar and ambrosia from Zeus' table and gives it to his subjects—revealing to them the secrets of the gods, when Prometheus or Lycaon invents sacrifice, when Demeter teaches agriculture and the Mysteries to Triptolemus , or when Marsyas invents the aulos and enters into

23381-681: The army of the dead." Another important difference between the hero cult and the cult of gods is that the hero becomes the centre of local group identity. The monumental events of Heracles are regarded as the dawn of the age of heroes. To the Heroic Age are also ascribed three great events: the Argonautic expedition, the Theban Cycle , and the Trojan War . Some scholars believe that behind Heracles' complicated mythology there

23608-454: The arrival of Dionysus to establish his cult in Thrace was also the subject of an Aeschylean trilogy. In another tragedy, Euripides' The Bacchae , the king of Thebes , Pentheus , is punished by Dionysus, because he disrespected the god and spied on his Maenads , the female worshippers of the god. In another story, based on an old folktale-motif, and echoing a similar theme, Demeter

23835-583: The association Greek satyrs had with secret wisdom. Unlike classical Greek satyrs, fauns were unambiguously goat-like; they had the upper bodies of men, but the legs, hooves, tail, and horns of goats. The first-century BC Roman poet Lucretius mentions in his lengthy poem De rerum natura that people of his time believed in "goat-legged" ( capripedes ) satyrs, along with nymphs who lived in the mountains and fauns who played rustic music on stringed instruments and pipes. In Roman-era depictions, satyrs and fauns are both often associated with music and depicted playing

24062-593: The aulos. The maenads that often accompany satyrs in Archaic and Classical representations are often replaced in Hellenistic portrayals with wood nymphs. Artists also began to widely represent scenes of nymphs repelling the unwanted advances of amorous satyrs. Scenes of this variety were used to express the dark, beastly side of human sexuality at a remove by attributing that sexuality to satyrs, who were part human and part animal. In this way, satyrs became vehicles of

24289-407: The backseat of a moving limousine . A satyr named Grover Underwood appears in the young adult fantasy novel The Lightning Thief (2005) by American author Rick Riordan , as well as in subsequent novels in the series Percy Jackson & the Olympians . Though consistently referred to as a "satyr", Grover is described as having goat legs, pointed ears, and horns. Grover is not portrayed with

24516-409: The beginnings of the universe in human language. The most widely accepted version at the time, although a philosophical account of the beginning of things, is reported by Hesiod , in his Theogony . He begins with Chaos , a yawning nothingness. Next comes Gaia (Earth), "the ever-sure foundation of all", and then Tartarus , "in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth", and Eros (Love), "fairest among

24743-452: The broader designation of classical mythology . These stories concern the ancient Greek religion 's view of the origin and nature of the world ; the lives and activities of deities , heroes , and mythological creatures ; and the origins and significance of the ancient Greeks' cult and ritual practices. Modern scholars study the myths to shed light on the religious and political institutions of ancient Greece, and to better understand

24970-557: 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

25197-640: The clergy officially disapproved of them. In this form, satyrs are sometimes described and represented in medieval bestiaries , where a satyr is often shown dressed in an animal skin, carrying a club and a serpent. In the Aberdeen Bestiary , the Ashmole Bestiary , and MS Harley 3244, a satyr is shown as a nude man holding a wand resembling a jester 's club and leaning back, crossing his legs. Satyrs are sometimes juxtaposed with apes, which are characterized as "physically disgusting and akin to

25424-470: The coast such as Navarino and Coron , which they retained into the 15th century. The Franks popularized the name Morea for the peninsula, which first appears as the name of a small bishopric in Elis during the 10th century. Its etymology is disputed, but it is most commonly held to be derived from the mulberry tree ( morea ), whose leaves are similar in shape to the peninsula. In 1208, William I founded

25651-512: The composition of the story of the Argonauts is earlier than Odyssey , which shows familiarity with the exploits of Jason (the wandering of Odysseus may have been partly founded on it). In ancient times, the expedition was regarded as a historical fact, an incident in the opening up of the Black Sea to Greek commerce and colonization. It was also extremely popular, forming a cycle to which

25878-451: The concept and ritual. The age in which the heroes lived is known as the Heroic age . The epic and genealogical poetry created cycles of stories clustered around particular heroes or events and established the family relationships between the heroes of different stories; they thus arranged the stories in sequence. According to Ken Dowden (1992), "there is even a saga effect: We can follow

26105-461: The dead. Influences from other cultures always afforded new themes. According to Classical-era mythology, after the overthrow of the Titans, the new pantheon of gods and goddesses was confirmed. Among the principal Greek gods were the Olympians, residing on Mount Olympus under the eye of Zeus. (The limitation of their number to twelve seems to have been a comparatively modern idea.) Besides

26332-514: The deathless gods". Without male assistance, Gaia gave birth to Uranus (the Sky) who then fertilized her. From that union were born first the Titans —six males: Coeus , Crius , Cronus , Hyperion , Iapetus , and Oceanus ; and six females: Mnemosyne , Phoebe , Rhea , Theia , Themis , and Tethys . After Cronus was born, Gaia and Uranus decreed no more Titans were to be born. They were followed by

26559-712: The decades following. In Patras nearly no one was left alive after the Turkish-Albanian invasion. The city of Mystras was left in ruins and the metropolitan bishop Ananias was executed despite having saved the life of several Turks during the uprising. A great number of local Greeks were killed by the Albanian groups, while children were sold to slavery. It is estimated that 20,000 local Greeks were captured during those nine years of devastation by those Albanian mercenaries and sold to slave markets. Also an additional of 50,000 Greeks left Peloponesse: around one-sixth of

26786-492: The despot Theodore: Theodore II, Constantine, Demetrios, and Thomas. As Latin power in the Peloponnese waned during the 15th century, the Despotate of the Morea expanded to incorporate the entire peninsula in 1430 with territory being acquired by dowry settlements, and the conquest of Patras by Constantine. However, in 1446 the Ottoman Sultan Murad II destroyed the Byzantine defences—the Hexamilion wall at

27013-804: The destruction of the Byzantine Empire by the forces of the Fourth Crusade , the Crusaders under William of Champlitte and Geoffrey of Villehardouin marched south through mainland Greece and conquered the Peloponnese against sporadic local Greek resistance . The Franks then founded the Principality of Achaea , nominally a vassal of the Latin Empire , while the Venetians occupied several strategically important ports around

27240-600: The distinction between humans and animals was spiritual rather than physical, it was thought that even a satyr could attain salvation. Isidore of Seville ( c. 560 – 636) records an anecdote later recounted in the Golden Legend , that Anthony the Great encountered a satyr in the desert who asked to pray with him to their common God . During the Early Middle Ages, features and characteristics of satyrs and

27467-582: 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". The etymology of

27694-624: The divine-focused Theogony and Homeric Hymns in both size and popularity. Under the influence of Homer the "hero cult" leads to a restructuring in spiritual life, expressed in the separation of the realm of the gods from the realm of the dead (heroes), of the Chthonic from the Olympian. In the Works and Days , Hesiod makes use of a scheme of Four Ages of Man (or Races): Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron. These races or ages are separate creations of

27921-773: 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

28148-406: The east coast of the peninsula, became the first capital of the independent Greek state . By the conclusion of the war, the entire Muslim population of the newly independent Greek state, including the Peloponnese, had been exterminated or had fled. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the region became relatively poor and economically isolated. A significant part of its population emigrated to

28375-526: The energetic Evrenos Bey took control. Exploiting the quarrels between Byzantines and Franks, he plundered across the peninsula and forced both the Byzantine despots and the remaining Frankish rulers to acknowledge Ottoman suzerainty and pay tribute. This situation lasted until the Ottoman defeat at the Battle of Ankara in 1402, after which Ottoman power was for a time checked. From 1349 until its surrender to

28602-444: The entire live audience during the climax of the dance. The 1917 Italian silent film Il Fauno , directed by Febo Mari , is about a statue of a faun who comes to life and falls in love with a female model. Fauns appear in the animated dramatization of Ludwig van Beethoven 's Symphony No. 6 (1808) in the 1940 Disney animated film Fantasia . Their goat-legs are portrayed as brightly colored, but their hooves are black. They play

28829-468: The eponymous satyr as very human-like. The satyr was shown as very young, in line with Praxiteles's frequent agenda of representing deities and other figures as adolescents. This tendency is also attested in the descriptions of his sculptures of Dionysus and the Archer Eros written in the third or fourth century AD by the art critic Callistratus . The original statue is widely assumed to have depicted

29056-444: The era to signify that the woman in question is of loose morals. The satyr's tongue is visible as the nymph playfully tugs on his goat beard and he strokes her chin. Even during this period, however, depictions of satyrs uncovering sleeping nymphs are still common, indicating that their traditional associations with rape and sexual violence had not been forgotten. During the nineteenth century, satyrs and nymphs came to often function as

29283-476: The evolution of their culture, of which mythology, both overtly and in its unspoken assumptions, is an index of the changes. In Greek mythology's surviving literary forms, as found mostly at the end of the progressive changes, it is inherently political, as Gilbert Cuthbertson (1975) has argued. The earlier inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula were an agricultural people who, using animism , assigned

29510-411: The existence of this corpus of data is an indication that many elements of Greek mythology have strong factual and historical roots. Mythical narration plays an important role in nearly every genre of Greek literature. Nevertheless, the only general mythographical handbook to survive from Greek antiquity was the Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus. This work attempts to reconcile the contradictory tales of

29737-405: The fates of some families in successive generations." After the rise of the hero cult, gods and heroes constitute the sacral sphere and are invoked together in oaths and prayers which are addressed to them. Burkert (2002) notes that "the roster of heroes, again in contrast to the gods, is never given fixed and final form. Great gods are no longer born, but new heroes can always be raised up from

29964-474: The fertile lands, Muslims remained a distinct minority. Christian communities retained a large measure of self-government, but the entire Ottoman period was marked by a flight of the Christian population from the plains to the mountains. This occasioned the rise of the klepht s, armed brigands and rebels, in the mountains, as well as the corresponding institution of the government-funded armatoloi to check

30191-753: The fifth-century AD Roman poet Macrobius connects both the word satyr and the name Saturn to the Greek word for "penis". Macrobius explains that this is on account of satyrs' sexual lewdness. Macrobius also equates Dionysus and Apollo as the same deity and states that a festival in honor of Bacchus is held every year atop Mount Parnassus , at which many satyrs are often seen. Starting in late antiquity, Christian writers began to portray satyrs and fauns as dark, evil, and demonic. Jerome ( c. 347 – 420 AD) described them as symbols of Satan on account of their lasciviousness. Despite this, however, satyrs were sometimes clearly distinguished from demons and sometimes even portrayed as noble. Because Christians believed that

30418-454: The first known representation of a myth in geometric art predates its first known representation in late archaic poetry, by several centuries. In the Archaic ( c.  750  – c.  500 BC ), Classical ( c.  480 –323 BC), and Hellenistic (323–146 BC) periods, Homeric and various other mythological scenes appear, supplementing the existing literary evidence. Greek mythology has changed over time to accommodate

30645-433: The forms of animals who could sometimes change into other forms, including human-like ones. 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

30872-597: The fortress. While Mystras served as the provincial capital from this time, it became a royal capital in 1349, when the first despot was appointed to rule over the Morea. The Byzantine Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos , reorganized the territory in 1349 to establish it as an appanage for his son, the Despot Manuel Kantakouzenos . Around that time, the Ottoman Turks began raiding the Peloponnese, but their raids intensified only after 1387 when

31099-406: The fortresses. The Greek insurgents made rapid progress and the entire peninsula was under Greek control within a few months, except for a few coastal forts and the main Turkish garrison at Tripolitsa . The fighting was fierce and marked by atrocities on both sides; eventually the entire Muslim population was either massacred or fled to the forts. The capture of Tripolitsa in September 1821 marked

31326-421: The full importance of satyrs in Greek culture and tradition, as Dionysian symbols of humanity's close ties to the animal kingdom. Like the Greeks, Nietzsche envisioned satyrs as essentially humans stripped down to their most basic and bestial instincts. In 1908, the French painter Henri Matisse produced his own Nymph and Satyr painting, in which the animal nature of the satyr is drastically minimized. The satyr

31553-759: The fullest account of the earliest Greek myths, dealing with the creation of the world, the origin of the gods, Titans , and Giants , as well as elaborate genealogies, folktales, and aetiological myths. Hesiod's Works and Days , a didactic poem about farming life, also includes the myths of Prometheus , Pandora , and the Five Ages . The poet advises on the best way to succeed in a dangerous world, rendered yet more dangerous by its gods. Lyrical poets often took their subjects from myth, but their treatment became gradually less narrative and more allusive. Greek lyric poets, including Pindar , Bacchylides and Simonides , and bucolic poets such as Theocritus and Bion , relate individual mythological incidents. Additionally, myth

31780-505: 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. One of

32007-422: The generalized withdrawal of imperial troops and administration from the Balkans. The scale of the Slavic invasion and settlement in the 7th and 8th centuries remains a matter of dispute, although it is nowadays considered much smaller than previously thought. The Slavs did occupy most of the peninsula, as evidenced by the abundance of Slavic toponyms , but these toponyms accumulated over centuries rather than as

32234-447: The god Pan , who resembled a satyr, became absorbed into traditional Christian iconography of Satan. Medieval storytellers in Western Europe also frequently conflated satyrs with wild men . Both satyrs and wild men were conceived as part human and part animal and both were believed to possess unrestrained sexual appetites. Stories of wild men during the Middle Ages often had an erotic tone and were primarily told orally by peasants, since

32461-576: 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

32688-414: The gods, the Golden Age belonging to the reign of Cronos, the subsequent races to the creation of Zeus . The presence of evil was explained by the myth of Pandora , when all of the best of human capabilities, save hope, had been spilled out of her overturned jar. In Metamorphoses , Ovid follows Hesiod's concept of the four ages. "Myths of origin" or " creation myths " represent an attempt to explain

32915-421: The groundwork for the Greek War of Independence . The Peloponnesians played a major role in the Greek War of Independence – the war began in the Peloponnese, when rebels took control of Kalamata on March 23, 1821. After the arrival of Ypsilantis's emissaries, local people rose under the leadership of Mavromichalis . Greek and Albanian insurgents organised in units of armed civilians took control of most of

33142-425: The heel. Achilles' heel was the only part of his body which was not invulnerable to damage by human weaponry. Before they could take Troy, the Greeks had to steal from the citadel the wooden image of Pallas Athena (the Palladium ). Finally, with Athena's help, they built the Trojan Horse . Despite the warnings of Priam's daughter Cassandra , the Trojans were persuaded by Sinon , a Greek who feigned desertion, to take

33369-420: 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

33596-506: The highest social prestige through his appointment as official ancestor of the Dorian kings. This probably served as a legitimation for the Dorian migrations into the Peloponnese . Hyllus , the eponymous hero of one Dorian phyle , became the son of Heracles and one of the Heracleidae or Heraclids (the numerous descendants of Heracles, especially the descendants of Hyllus —other Heracleidae included Macaria , Lamos, Manto , Bianor , Tlepolemus , and Telephus ). These Heraclids conquered

33823-420: The horse inside the walls of Troy as an offering to Athena; the priest Laocoon, who tried to have the horse destroyed, was killed by sea-serpents. At night the Greek fleet returned, and the Greeks from the horse opened the gates of Troy. In the total sack that followed, Priam and his remaining sons were slaughtered; the Trojan women passed into slavery in various cities of Greece. The adventurous homeward voyages of

34050-424: The horse-like satyrs of Greek tradition from his consideration entirely and argued that tragedy had originated from a chorus of men dressed up as satyrs or goats ( tragoi ). Thus, Nietzsche held that tragedy had begun as a Dionysian activity. Nietzsche's rejection of the early evidence for horse-like satyrs was a mistake his critics severely excoriated him for. Nonetheless, he was the first modern scholar to recognize

34277-459: 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

34504-430: The invasion by those mercenary groups the local population had to found refuge in the mountains of Peloponnese to avoid persecution. The total population decreased during this time, while the Muslim element in it increased. As such Greek resistance in the peninsula was reinforced and powerful groups of klephts were formed under the clans of Zacharias, Melios, Petmezas and Kolokotronis. Klephtic songs of that era describe

34731-402: The larger cities of Greece, especially Athens , and other countries such as the United States and Australia. It was badly affected by the Second World War and Greek Civil War , experiencing some of the worst atrocities committed in Greece during those conflicts. Living standards improved dramatically throughout Greece after the country accedes to the European Union in 1981. The Corinth Canal

34958-526: The larger groups of Albanian settlers, amounting to 10,000, settled the Peloponnese during the reign of Theodore I Palaiologos , first in Arcadia and subsequently in other regions around Messenia , Argolis , Elis and Achaia . Around 1418, a second large group arrived, possibly fleeing Aetolia , Acarnania and Arta , where Albanian political power had been defeated. The settling Albanians lived in tribes spread out into small villages, practicing nomadic lifestyles based on pastoralism and animal husbandry. By

35185-405: The last Venetian possessions on the Greek mainland were lost. Following the Ottoman conquest, the peninsula was made into a province ( sanjak ), with 109 ziamets and 342 timars . During the first period of Ottoman rule (1460–1687), the capital was first in Corinth (Turk. Gördes ), later in Leontari ( Londari ), Mystras ( Misistire ) and finally in Nauplion (Tr. Anaboli ). Sometime in

35412-406: The late 6th century, according to Florin Curta there is no evidence for a Slavic presence in the Peloponnese until after c.  700 AD , when Slavs may have been allowed to settle in specific areas that had been depopulated. Relations between the Slavs and Greeks were probably peaceful apart from intermittent uprisings. There was also a continuity of the Peloponnesian Greek population. This

35639-493: The latter part of that century, however, building activity seems to have stopped virtually everywhere except in Constantinople, Thessalonica, Corinth, and Athens. This has traditionally been attributed to calamities such as plague, earthquakes and Slavic invasions. However, more recent analysis suggests that urban decline was closely linked with the collapse of long-distance and regional commercial networks that underpinned and supported late antique urbanism in Greece, as well as with

35866-480: 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

36093-438: The mid-15th century, they formed a substantial part of the population of the Peloponnesus. Military sources of the era (1425) report about 30,000 Albanian men who could carry arms in the Peloponnese. The Greeks tended to live in large villages and cities, while Albanians in small villages. Following Ottoman conquest, many Albanians fled to Italy, settling primarily in nowadays Arbereshe villages of Calabria and Sicily . On

36320-454: The mid-17th century, the Morea became the centre of a separate eyalet , with Patras ( Ballibadra ) as its capital. Until the death of Suleiman the Magnificent in 1570, the Christian population (counted at some 42,000 families c. 1550 ) managed to retain some privileges and Islamization was slow, mostly among the Albanians or the estate owners who were integrated into the Ottoman feudal system. Although they quickly came to control most of

36547-576: The middle of the Archaic period, myths about relationships between male gods and male heroes became more and more frequent, indicating the parallel development of pedagogic pederasty ( παιδικὸς ἔρως , eros paidikos ), thought to have been introduced around 630 BC. By the end of the fifth-century  BC, poets had assigned at least one eromenos , an adolescent boy who was their sexual companion, to every important god except Ares and many legendary figures. Previously existing myths, such as those of Achilles and Patroclus , also then were cast in

36774-465: The migration and settlement of Christian Albanians to parts of Central Greece and the Peloponnese, a group that eventually became known as the Arvanites The Albanians settled in successive waves, often invited by the local rulers. They start appearing more frequently in the historical record from during the second part of the 14th century, when they were being offered arable land, pasture and favorable taxation in exchange for military service. One of

37001-406: The military commander there, stationed at Salmeniko Castle . While the town eventually surrendered, Graitzas and his garrison and some town residents held out in the castle until July 1461, when they escaped and reached Venetian territory. Only the Venetian fortresses of Modon , Coron , Navarino , Monemvasia , Argos and Nauplion escaped Ottoman control. The same period was also marked by

37228-515: The misidentification of apes or monkeys. The French materialist philosopher Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–1751) included a section titled "On savage men, called Satyrs" in his Oeuvres philosophiques , in which he describes great apes, identifying them with both satyrs and wild men. Many early accounts of the orangutan describe the males as being sexually aggressive towards human women and towards females of its own species, much like classical Greek satyrs. The first scientific name given to this ape

37455-456: The myth of the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts to retrieve the Golden Fleece from the mythical land of Colchis . In the Argonautica , Jason is impelled on his quest by king Pelias , who receives a prophecy that a man with one sandal would be his nemesis . Jason loses a sandal in a river, arrives at the court of Pelias, and the epic is set in motion. Nearly every member of the next generation of heroes, as well as Heracles, went with Jason in

37682-427: The mythological details about gods and heroes. The evidence about myths and rituals at Mycenaean and Minoan sites is entirely monumental, as the Linear B script (an ancient form of Greek found in both Crete and mainland Greece) was used mainly to record inventories, although certain names of gods and heroes have been tentatively identified. Geometric designs on pottery of the eighth-century  BC depict scenes from

37909-719: 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 . 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

38136-457: 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 ,

38363-412: The nature of mythmaking itself. The Greek myths were initially propagated in an oral-poetic tradition most likely by Minoan and Mycenaean singers starting in the 18th century BC; eventually the myths of the heroes of the Trojan War and its aftermath became part of the oral tradition of Homer 's epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey . Two poems by Homer's near contemporary Hesiod ,

38590-429: The one-eyed Cyclopes and the Hecatoncheires or Hundred-Handed Ones, who were both thrown into Tartarus by Uranus. This made Gaia furious. Cronus ("the wily, youngest and most terrible of Gaia 's children") was convinced by Gaia to castrate his father. He did this and became the ruler of the Titans with his sister-wife, Rhea, as his consort, and the other Titans became his court. A motif of father-against-son conflict

38817-404: The original statue has been lost, a representation of the pouring satyr appears in a late classical relief sculpture from Athens and twenty-nine alleged "copies" of the statue from the time of the Roman Empire have also survived. Olga Palagia and J. J. Pollitt argue that, although the Pouring Satyr is widely accepted as a genuine work of Praxiteles, it may not have been a single work at all and

39044-544: The other hand, in an effort to control the remaining Albanians, during the second half of the 15th century, the Ottomans adopted favorable tax policies towards them, likely in continuation of similar Byzantine practices. This policy had been discontinued by the early 16th century. Throughout the Ottoman–Venetian wars , many Albanians died or were captured in service to the Venetians; at Nafpaktos , Nafplio , Argos , Methoni , Koroni and Pylos . Furthermore, 8,000 Albanian stratioti , most of them along with their families, left

39271-418: The peninsula in 1715, most local Greeks welcomed them. The Ottoman reconquest was easy and swift, and was recognized by Venice in the Treaty of Passarowitz in 1718. The Peloponnese now became the core of the Morea Eyalet , headed by the Mora valesi , who until 1780 was a pasha of the first rank (with three horsetails ) and held the title of vizier . After 1780 and until the Greek War of Independence ,

39498-461: The peninsula, however, received a critical blow after the Battle of Pelagonia , when William II of Villehardouin was forced to cede the newly constructed fortress and palace at Mystras near ancient Sparta to a resurgent Byzantium. At this point, the emperor concluded an agreement with the captive prince: William and his men would be set free in exchange for an oath of fealty, and for the cession of Monemvasia, Grand Magne, and Mystras. The handover

39725-453: The people performing the flaying are shown calmly absorbed in their task, while Marsyas himself even displays "an unlikely patience". The painting reflects a broad continuum between the divine and the bestial. In the 1560 Geneva Bible , the word sa'ir in both of the instances in Isaiah is translated into English as 'satyr'. The 1611 King James Version follows this translation and likewise renders sa'ir as 'satyr'. Edwards states that

39952-531: 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

40179-454: The poets and provides a grand summary of traditional Greek mythology and heroic legends. Apollodorus of Athens lived from c.  180 BC to c.  125 BC and wrote on many of these topics. His writings may have formed the basis for the collection; however, the "Library" discusses events that occurred long after his death, hence the name Pseudo-Apollodorus. Among the earliest literary sources are Homer 's two epic poems,

40406-407: The population. Nevertheless, attacks by Muslim Albanian mercenaries in the region continued not only against the Greek population but also against Turks. The extensive destruction and lack of control in the Peloponnese forced the central Ottoman government to send a regular Turkish military force to suppress those Albanian troops in 1779, and eventually drive them out from Peloponnese. As a result of

40633-433: The pre-1770 population. The Ottoman government was unable to pay the wages the Albanian mercenaries demanded for their service, causing the latter to ravage the region even after revolt had been put down. 1770-1779 was a prolonged period of devastation and atrocities committed by Albanian irregulars in the Peloponnese. In 1774 the Russo-Turkish War ended with the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca which granted general amnesty to

40860-477: The present have derived inspiration from Greek mythology and have discovered contemporary significance and relevance in the themes. Greek mythology is known today primarily from Greek literature and representations on visual media dating from the Geometric period from c.  900 BC to c.  800 BC onward. In fact, literary and archaeological sources integrate, sometimes mutually supportive and sometimes in conflict; however, in many cases,

41087-404: The problem of the devolution of power and of the mode of accession to sovereignty. The twins Atreus and Thyestes with their descendants played the leading role in the tragedy of the devolution of power in Mycenae. The Theban Cycle deals with events associated especially with Cadmus , the city's founder, and later with the doings of Laius and Oedipus at Thebes; a series of stories that lead to

41314-406: The province was headed by a muhassil . The pasha of the Morea was aided by several subordinate officials, including a Christian translator ( dragoman ), who was the senior Christian official of the province. As during the first Ottoman period, the Morea was divided into 22 districts or beyliks . The capital was first at Nauplion, but after 1786 at Tripolitza (Tr. Trabliçe ). The Greeks of

41541-513: The region are still unknown. It is thought to be one of the largest environmental disasters in modern Greek history. The principal modern cities of the Peloponnese are (2011 census): The Peloponnese possesses many important archaeological sites dating from the Bronze Age through to the Middle Ages. Among the most notable are: ‡ UNESCO World Heritage Site Specialities of the region: Several notable Peloponnese wines have Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status. The Mantineia region makes

41768-406: The resistance activities. Nevertheless, through the privileges granted with the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji , especially the right for the Christians to trade under the Russian flag, led to a considerable economic flowering of the local Greeks, which, coupled with the increased cultural contacts with Western Europe ( Modern Greek Enlightenment ) and the inspiring ideals of the French Revolution , laid

41995-400: 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

42222-514: The satyr in the act of pouring an oinochoe over his head into a cup, probably a kantharos . Antonio Corso describes the satyr in this sculpture as a "gentle youth" and "a precious and gentle being" with "soft and velvety" skin. The only hints at his "feral nature" were his ears, which were slightly pointed, and his small tail. The shape of the sculpture was an S-shape , shown in three-quarter view . The satyr had short, boyish locks, derived from those of earlier Greek athletic sculpture. Although

42449-489: 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

42676-715: 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"). The iconography of satyrs

42903-450: The seduction or rape of a mortal woman by a male god, resulting in heroic offspring. The stories generally suggest that relationships between gods and mortals are something to avoid; even consenting relationships rarely have happy endings. In a few cases, a female divinity mates with a mortal man, as in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite , where the goddess lies with Anchises to produce Aeneas . The second type (tales of punishment) involves

43130-406: The sexually obscene traits that characterized classical Greek satyrs. Instead, he is the loyal protector to the main character Percy Jackson , who is the son of a mortal woman and the god Poseidon . Greek mythology Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the ancient Greeks , and a genre of ancient Greek folklore , today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into

43357-417: The ship Argo to fetch the Golden Fleece. This generation also included Theseus , who went to Crete to slay the Minotaur ; Atalanta , the female heroine, and Meleager , who once had an epic cycle of his own to rival the Iliad and Odyssey . Pindar , Apollonius and the Bibliotheca endeavor to give full lists of the Argonauts. Although Apollonius wrote his poem in the 3rd century BC,

43584-628: The sixth century BC, they were more often represented with human legs. Comically hideous, they have mane-like hair, bestial faces, and snub noses and they always are shown naked. Satyrs were characterized by their ribaldry and were known as lovers of wine, music, dancing, and women. They were companions of the god Dionysus and were believed to inhabit remote locales, such as woodlands, mountains, and pastures. They often attempted to seduce or rape nymphs and mortal women alike, usually with little success. They are sometimes shown masturbating or engaging in bestiality . In classical Athens , satyrs made up

43811-483: The society while the beliefs were held. After they ceased to become religious beliefs, few would have known the rites and rituals. Allusions often existed, however, to aspects that were quite public. Images existed on pottery and religious artwork that were interpreted and more likely, misinterpreted in many diverse myths and tales. A few fragments of these works survive in quotations by Neoplatonist philosophers and recently unearthed papyrus scraps. One of these scraps,

44038-431: The southernmost part of mainland Greece. It is connected to the mainland by the Isthmus of Corinth , where the Corinth Canal was constructed in 1893. However, it is also connected to the mainland by several bridges across the canal, including two submersible bridges at the north and the south end. Near the northern tip of the peninsula, there is another bridge, the Rio–Antirrio bridge (completed 2004). The peninsula has

44265-455: The standard representations of gods and heroes. They could be used to embody what Stephen J. Campbell calls a "monstrous double" of the category in which human beings often placed themselves. It is in this aspect that satyrs appear in Jacopo de' Barbari 's c. 1495 series of prints depicting satyrs and naked men in combat and in Piero di Cosimo 's Stories of Primitive Man , inspired by Lucretius. Satyrs became seen as "pre-human", embodying all

44492-451: The stone, which had been sitting in Cronus's stomach all this time. Zeus then challenged Cronus to war for the kingship of the gods. At last, with the help of the Cyclopes (whom Zeus freed from Tartarus), Zeus and his siblings were victorious, while Cronus and the Titans were hurled down to imprisonment in Tartarus . Zeus was plagued by the same concern, and after a prophecy that the offspring of his first wife, Metis , would give birth to

44719-406: The stony hearts of the underworld gods in his descent to Hades . When Hermes invents the lyre in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes , the first thing he does is sing about the birth of the gods. Hesiod's Theogony is not only the fullest surviving account of the gods but also the fullest surviving account of the archaic poet's function, with its long preliminary invocation to the Muses . Theogony also

44946-411: The supposed "copies" of it may merely be Roman sculptures repeating the traditional Greek motif of pouring wine at symposia . The Romans identified satyrs with their own nature spirits, fauns . Although generally similar to satyrs, fauns differed in that they were usually seen as "shy, woodland creatures" rather than the drunk and boisterous satyrs of the classical Greeks. Also, fauns generally lacked

45173-522: 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

45400-422: The tale known to us through tragedy (e.g. Sophocles' Oedipus Rex ) and later mythological accounts. Greek mythology culminates in the Trojan War, fought between Greece and Troy , and its aftermath. In Homer's works, such as the Iliad , the chief stories have already taken shape and substance, and individual themes were elaborated later, especially in Greek drama. The Trojan War also elicited great interest in

45627-473: The term satyr ( ‹See Tfd› Greek : σάτυρος , translit.   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

45854-413: The tombs of deceased silenoi in Judaea and at Pergamon . Based on these sites, Pausanias concludes that silenoi must be mortal. The third-century Greek biographer Philostratus records a legend in his Life of Apollonius of Tyana of how the ghost of an Aethiopian satyr was deeply enamored with the women from the local village and had killed two of them. Then, the philosopher Apollonius of Tyana set

46081-438: The total population. The Venetian fortresses were conquered in a series of Ottoman-Venetian Wars : the first war , lasting from 1463 to 1479, saw much fighting in the Peloponnese, resulting in the loss of Argos , while Modon and Coron fell in 1500 during the second war . Coron and Patras were captured in a crusading expedition in 1532, led by the Genoese admiral Andrea Doria , but this provoked another war in which

46308-425: The traits of savagery and barbarism associated with animals, but in human-like bodies. Satyrs also became used to question early modern humanism in ways which some scholars have seen as similar to present-day posthumanism , as in Titian 's Flaying of Marsyas ( c. 1570–1576). The Flaying of Marysas depicts the scene from Ovid's Metamorphoses in which the satyr Marysas is flayed alive. According to Campbell,

46535-416: The troubled relations with the Slavs, the coastal regions of the Peloponnese suffered greatly from repeated Arab raids following the Arab capture of Crete in the 820s and the establishment of a corsair emirate there. After the island was recovered by Byzantium in 961 however, the region entered a period of renewed prosperity, where agriculture, commerce, and urban industry flourished. In 1205, following

46762-420: The war of the Seven against Thebes and the eventual pillage of that city at the hands of the Epigoni . (It is not known whether the Seven figured in early epic.) As far as Oedipus is concerned, early epic accounts seem to have him continuing to rule at Thebes after the revelation that Iokaste was his mother, and subsequently marrying a second wife who becomes the mother of his children—markedly different from

46989-417: The water of a nearby stream. This painting was bought that same year by an American named John Wolfe, who displayed it publicly in a prominent location in the bar at the Hoffman House, a hotel he owned on Madison Square and Broadway . Despite its risqué subject, many women came to the bar to view the painting. The painting was soon mass reproduced on ceramic tiles, porcelain plates, and other luxury items in

47216-572: The wilderness. The most famous representation of a domestic satyr is Albrecht Dürer 's 1505 engraving The Satyr's Family , which has been widely reproduced and imitated. This popular portrayal of satyrs and wild men may have also helped give rise to the later European concept of the noble savage . Satyrs occupied a paradoxical, liminal space in Renaissance art, not only because they were part human and part beast, but also because they were both antique and natural. They were of classical origin, but had an iconographical canon of their own very different from

47443-446: The word nesos ) of Pelops. The Mycenaean civilization , mainland Greece's (and Europe's) first major civilization, dominated the Peloponnese in the Bronze Age from the palaces of Mycenae , Pylos and Tiryns ; among others. The Mycenaean civilization collapsed suddenly at the end of the 2nd millennium BC. Archeological research has found that many of its cities and palaces show signs of destruction. The subsequent period, known as

47670-426: The word satyrus , a Latinized form of the Greek satyros . He characterizes them as "a savage and wild people; distinct voice and speech they have none, but in steed thereof, they keep a horrible gnashing and hideous noise: rough they are and hairie all over their bodies, eies they have red like the houlets [owls] and toothed they be like dogs." The second-century Greek Middle Platonist philosopher Plutarch records

47897-434: The world" may be divided into three or four broader periods: While the age of gods often has been of more interest to contemporary students of myth, the Greek authors of the archaic and classical eras had a clear preference for the age of heroes, establishing a chronology and record of human accomplishments after the questions of how the world came into being were explained. For example, the heroic Iliad and Odyssey dwarfed

48124-414: Was Simia satyrus . Relationships between satyrs and nymphs of this period are often portrayed as consensual. This trend is exemplified by the 1623 painting Satyr and Nymph by Gerard van Honthorst , which depicts a satisfied satyr and nymph lasciviously fondling each other after engaging in obviously consensual sex. Both are smiling and the nymph is showing her teeth, a sign commonly used by painters of

48351-543: Was central to classical Athenian drama . The tragic playwrights Aeschylus , Sophocles , and Euripides took most of their plots from myths of the age of heroes and the Trojan War. Many of the great tragic stories (e.g. Agamemnon and his children, Oedipus , Jason , Medea , etc.) took on their classic form in these tragedies. The comic playwright Aristophanes also used myths, in The Birds and The Frogs . Historians Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus , and geographers Pausanias and Strabo , who traveled throughout

48578-415: Was completed in the late 19th century, linking the Aegean Sea with the Gulf of Corinth and the Ionian. In 2001, the Rio-Antirio Bridge was completed, linking the western Peloponnese to western Greece. In late August 2007, large parts of Peloponnese suffered from wildfires , which caused severe damage in villages and forests and the death of 77 people. The impact of the fires to the environment and economy of

48805-440: Was effected in 1262, and henceforth Mystras was the seat of the governor of the Byzantine territories in the Morea. Initially this governor ( kephale ) was changed every year, but after 1308 they started being appointed for longer terms. Almost immediately on his return to the Morea, William of Villehardouin renounced his oath to the emperor, and warfare broke out between Byzantines and Franks. The first Byzantine attempts to subdue

49032-408: Was formed into the new thema of Peloponnesos , with its capital at Corinth. The imposition of Byzantine rule over the Slavic enclaves may have largely been a process of Christianization and accommodation of Slavic chieftains into the Imperial fold, as literary, epigraphic and sigillographic evidence testify to Slavic archontes participating in Imperial affairs. By the end of the 9th century,

49259-457: Was gradually conflated with that of the Pans, plural forms of the god Pan , who were regularly depicted with the legs and horns of a goat. By the Hellenistic Period (323–31 BC), satyrs were beginning to sometimes be shown with goat-like features. Meanwhile, both satyrs and Pans also continued to be shown as more human and less bestial. Scenes of satyrs and centaurs were very popular during the Hellenistic Period. They often appear dancing or playing

49486-478: Was insured by the constant use of nectar and ambrosia , by which the divine blood was renewed in their veins. Each god descends from his or her own genealogy, pursues differing interests, has a certain area of expertise, and is governed by a unique personality; however, these descriptions arise from a multiplicity of archaic local variants, which do not always agree with one another. When these gods are called upon in poetry, prayer, or cult, they are referred to by

49713-412: 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

49940-592: Was probably a real man, perhaps a chieftain-vassal of the kingdom of Argos . Some scholars suggest the story of Heracles is an allegory for the sun's yearly passage through the twelve constellations of the zodiac. Others point to earlier myths from other cultures, showing the story of Heracles as a local adaptation of hero myths already well established. Traditionally, Heracles was the son of Zeus and Alcmene , granddaughter of Perseus . His fantastic solitary exploits, with their many folk-tale themes, provided much material for popular legend. According to Burkert (2002), "He

50167-511: Was repeated when Cronus was confronted by his son, Zeus . Because Cronus had betrayed his father, he feared that his offspring would do the same, and so each time Rhea gave birth, he snatched up the child and ate it. Rhea hated this and tricked him by hiding Zeus and wrapping a stone in a baby's blanket, which Cronus ate. When Zeus was full-grown, he fed Cronus a drugged drink which caused him to vomit, throwing up Rhea's other children, including Poseidon , Hades , Hestia , Demeter , and Hera , and

50394-488: Was searching for her daughter, Persephone , having taken the form of an old woman called Doso, and received a hospitable welcome from Celeus , the King of Eleusis in Attica . As a gift to Celeus, because of his hospitality, Demeter planned to make his son Demophon a god, but she was unable to complete the ritual because his mother Metanira walked in and saw her son in the fire and screamed in fright, which angered Demeter, who lamented that foolish mortals do not understand

50621-522: Was the bow but frequently also the club. Vase paintings demonstrate the unparalleled popularity of Heracles, his fight with the lion being depicted many hundreds of times. Heracles also entered Etruscan and Roman mythology and cult, and the exclamation "mehercule" became as familiar to the Romans as "Herakleis" was to the Greeks. In Italy he was worshipped as a god of merchants and traders, although others also prayed to him for his characteristic gifts of good luck or rescue from danger. Heracles attained

50848-431: Was the goddess of love and beauty, Ares was the god of war, Hades the ruler of the underworld, and Athena the goddess of wisdom and courage. Some gods, such as Apollo and Dionysus , revealed complex personalities and mixtures of functions, while others, such as Hestia (literally "hearth") and Helios (literally "sun"), were little more than personifications. The most impressive temples tended to be dedicated to

51075-435: Was the location of some of its bloodiest battles. The major cities of Sparta , Corinth , Argos and Megalopolis were all located on the Peloponnese, and it was the homeland of the Peloponnesian League . Soldiers from the peninsula fought in the Persian Wars , and it was also the scene of the Peloponnesian War of 431–404 BC. The entire Peloponnese with the notable exception of Sparta joined Alexander's expedition against

51302-450: Was the subject of many lost poems, including those attributed to Orpheus, Musaeus , Epimenides , Abaris , and other legendary seers, which were used in private ritual purifications and mystery-rites . There are indications that Plato was familiar with some version of the Orphic theogony. A silence would have been expected about religious rites and beliefs, however, and that nature of the culture would not have been reported by members of

51529-479: 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

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