"Silenus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would be mainly with practical things; and at first sight, as delineators of their common master, Plato and Xenophon might seem scarcely reconcilable. But then, as Alcibiades alleges of him in the Symposium, Socrates had been ever in all respects a two-sided being; like some rude figure of Silenus, he suggests, by way of an outer case for the image of a god within. By a mind, of the compass Plato himself supposes, two quite different impressions may well have been made on two typically different observers. The speaker, to Xenophon so simple, almost homely, ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... swarthy, short-nosed, round-eyed satyr, With the wide nostrils and Silenus' aspect, The splay feet and low stature![214] I had better 220 Remain ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... would furnish substantial matter, on which volumes might be written. The Franklin is one who keeps open table, who is the genius of eating and drinking, the Bacchus; as the Doctor of Physic is the Aesculapius, the Host is the Silenus, the Squire is the Apollo, the Miller is the Hercules, &c. Chaucer's characters are a description of the eternal Principles that exist in all ages. The Franklin is voluptuousness itself, most ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... played at the same time the cymbals and the big bass-drum a desperate accompaniment to three measures of a polka, always the same, which were murdered by a blind clarionet player; and the ringmaster, a sort of Hercules with the face of a galley-slave, a Silenus in scarlet drawers, roared out his furious appeal in a loud voice. Mixed with the crowd of loafers, soldiers, and women, I regarded the abject spectacle with disgust—the last vestige of ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... and luxury. But what a delicate monster he is, and what a ravishing lyric strain he is master of! The pleasure that Milton forswore was a young god, the companion of Love and Youth, not an aged Silenus among the wine-skins. He viewed and described one whole realm of pagan loveliness, and then he turned his face the other way, and never looked back. Love is of the valley, and he lifted his eyes to the hills. His guiding star was not Christianity, which in its most characteristic ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... pike with ivy-leaves twisted round it; had drums, horns, pipes, and other instruments calculated to make a great noise; and wore upon their heads wreaths of ivy and vine-branches, and of other trees sacred to Bacchus. Some represented Silenus, some Pan, others the Satyrs, all drest in suitable masquerade. Many of them were mounted on asses; others dragged goats(59) along for sacrifices. Men and women, ridiculously dressed in this manner, appeared night and day in public; and imitating drunkenness, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... were either to have their throats cut, or be republicanized by means of singing, dancing, and revolutionary Pans and Silenus's, already beheld their property devastated by pillage or conflagration, and were in danger of a pestilence from the unburied bodies of their families.—Let the reader, who has seen Lequinio's pamphlet, compare ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... Varia Historia (lib. iii. ch. xviii.), states that Theopompus (400 B.C.) recorded an interview between the King of Phrygia and Silenus, in which the latter referred to the existence of a great continent beyond the Atlantic, larger than Asia, ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... the Cyclops of Euripides, the only specimen extant, we have feasting and wine drinking, the chorus tells Polyphemus he may swallow any milk he pleases so that he does not swallow them—which the Cyclops says he would not do because they might be dancing in his stomach—and Silenus recommends the Cyclops to eat Ulysses' tongue, as it will ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... and his court were sitting in the solemn state that Midas required, there rode into their midst, tipsily swaying on the back of a gentle full-fed old grey ass, ivy-crowned, jovial and foolish, the satyr Silenus, guardian of the young ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... tribe Hodail) supposing it to have been an astronomical talisman in the figure of a gnat:—and Le Clerc, who takes this idol for the Sun, from Comosha, a root, in the same tongue, signifying to be swift. There is the same variety of sentiment about Silenus, the companion of Bacchus. [476]Bochart derives his name from Silan, [Hebrew: SHYLN], and supposes him to have been the same as Shiloh, the Messias. Sandford makes him to be Balaam, the false prophet. [477]Huetius maintains that he was assuredly ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... and Pompeii, present us with specimens of the richer and more remarkable class, which attract admiration both by the beauty of the workmanship, and the whimsical variety of their designs. We may enumerate a few which occur in a work now before us, "Antiquites d'Herculanum," in which we find a Silenus, with the usual peculiarities of figure ascribed to the jolly god rather exaggerated, and an owl sitting upon his head between two huge horns, which support stands for lamps. Another represents a flower-stalk, growing out of a circular plinth, with snail-shells ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... dye-stuffs; so Jourdan shut his madder shop, and has risen, for he was the man to do it. The tile-beard of Jourdan is shaven off; his fat visage has got coppered and studded with black carbuncles; the Silenus trunk is swollen with drink and high living: he wears blue National uniform with epaulettes, 'an enormous sabre, two horse-pistols crossed in his belt, and other two smaller, sticking from his pockets;' styles himself General, and is the tyrant of men. (Dampmartin, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... The old Silenus Came, lolling in the sunshine, From the dewy forest-coverts, This way, at noon. Sitting by me, while his Fauns Down at the water-side Sprinkled and smoothed His drooping garland, He told me ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... great deal more—thirty, forty, perhaps, and our harmony is still unbroken, uncracked even. We have sat in awed and chastened silence before the divine meekness of the Sistine Madonna. We have turned away in disgust from Jordain's brutish "Triumphs of Silenus," and tiresome repetitions of Hercules in drink. We have admired the exuberance of St. Mary of Egypt's locks, and irreverently compared them to the effects of Mrs. Allen's "World-wide Hair Restorer." We have observed that the forehead ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... might have at least brought a donkey, only a little donkey; that courageous beast which old Silenus loved to mount. I love those old donkeys; they are the least favored animals in creation; they are not only beaten while alive, but even after they ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... skeletons, I examined their shrine; and was rather surprised to find it not only enriched with barbaric gold and pearl, but covered with cameos and intaglios of the best antique sculpture. Many an impious emperor and gross Silenus, many a wanton nymph and frantic bacchanal, figure in the same range with the statues of saints and evangelists. How St. Helena could tolerate such a mixed assembly (for the shrine was formed under her auspices) surpasses my comprehension. Perhaps you will say it is no great matter, ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... go—and why? She anxious wished to wash her sacred head. Menippus, Jove's chief taster, standing by For the disastrous Fates excuses made. They had much tow to spin, and lint to dry, And they were also busy baking bread. The cellarman, Silenus, kept away, To water the ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... all their representations of Dionysos, that he was a mystic and enthusiastic deity. Joyous, voluptuous, androgynous, he yet remains the god who brought strange gifts and orgiastic rites to men. His followers, Silenus, Bacchantes, Fauns, exhibit, in their self-abandonment to sensual joy, the operation of his genius. The deity descends to join their revels from his clear Olympian ether, but he is not troubled by the fumes of intoxication. Michelangelo has altered ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... chuckle, Riparian Ahabs rejoice; There's excuse in your Caliban aspect, your hoarse and ear-torturing voice, You pitiful Cockney-born Cloten, you slum-bred Silenus, 'tis you Spoil the silver-streamed Thames for Pan-lovers, ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... elephant and rhinoceros had been only a momentary backsliding, and he had sat through the whole of the Barca da Gloria, in which a King and an Emperor fared so lamentably at the hands of the modern Silenus. But he does not appear to have done anything to secure the poet's well-being. King Manuel's sister, Vicente's faithful patroness, was, however, still alive, and he had much to hope from the new king who had grown up ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... boke, but me thynkes ye haue not yet trymmed it sufficiently for all your cost ye have bestowed upon it. Poliphe. Why what lackes it? Canni. Thou shuldest haue set thyne armes upon it. Poliphemus. what armes I beseche the? Canius. Mary the heed of Silenus, an olde iolthed drunkard totynge out of a hoggeshed or a tunne, but in good ernest, wherof dothe your boke dyspose or intreate? dothe it teache the art and crafte to drynke a duetaunt? Poli. Take hede in goddes name what ye say lest ye bolt out a blasphemie before ye be ware. Canius. why bydde ...
— Two Dyaloges (c. 1549) • Desiderius Erasmus
... yet was generally respected, since it was errors rather than persons, opinions rather than vices, that he attacked; and this he did with bewitching eloquence and irresistible fascination, so that though he was poor and barefooted, a Silenus in appearance, with thick lips, upturned nose, projecting eyes, unwieldy belly, he was sought by Alcibiades and admired by Aspasia. Even Xanthippe, a beautiful young woman, very much younger than he, a woman fond of the comforts and pleasures of life, was willing ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... upraised his glowing and dripping countenance from the brook, resembled Silenus emerging from one of the rivers which Bacchus metamorphosed into wine during his campaign in India. He resorted to attrition and contrition, to maceration and laceration; he tried friction with leaves, with grass, with sedge, with his garments; he regarded ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... singers titillated the jaded senses of the guests in a manner achieved by the infamous saxophone syncopating jazz of the Barbary Coast of our times. The dinner was over. The four and one half bottles of champagne allotted to each Silenus had been consumed, and a well-defined atmosphere of bored satiety had begun to settle down when suddenly the old-fashioned lullaby "Four and Twenty Blackbirds" broke forth from the banjoists and singers. Four waiters ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... Club The Great Bear in the Sky The Great Bear and the Little Bear Castor and Pollux Minerva Boreas, the God of the North Wind Tower of the Winds at Athens Orpheus Mercury Ulysses Cover of a Drinking Cup Iris The Head of Iris Neptune A Greek Coin Silenus Holding Bacchus Aurora, the Goddess of the Dawn Latona Jason Castor, the Horse-Tamer Pollux, the Master of the Art of Boxing Daedalus and Icarus Making Their Wings Juno and Her Peacock Athena Minerva Daphne A Sibyl Ceres ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... more of the real Socrates, such as he is depicted in the Memorabilia of Xenophon, in the earliest Dialogues of Plato, and in the Apology. He is ironical, provoking, questioning, the old enemy of the Sophists, ready to put on the mask of Silenus as well as to argue seriously. But in the sixth book his enmity towards the Sophists abates; he acknowledges that they are the representatives rather than the corrupters of the world. He also becomes more ...
— The Republic • Plato
... Allee du Tapis Vert (green lawn), are almost innumerable. They do not all play at the same time, so the crowd can follow them from basin to basin until Neptune with his numerous jets, the last and the greatest of them all, is reached. The Terrasse du Chateau with Silenus, Antinous, Apollo and Bacchus, after the antique, lies next to the palace. Immediately below is the Parterre d'Eau, upon whose border repose twenty-four magnificent groups in bronze, namely, eight groups ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... what a wonderful picture is that Triumph of Silenus![3] It is the very revelry of hell. Every evil passion is there that could in any way be forced into juxtaposition with joyance. Mark the lust, and, hard by, the hate. Every part is pregnant with libidinous nature without one spark of the grace of Heaven. The animal is triumphing—not ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... wine-god, Bacchus (Dionysos), for he was called Cadmus's grandson. An orphan at first, he was brought up by the nymphs and Mercury, and then became a great conqueror, going to India, and Egypt, and everywhere, carrying the vine and teaching the use of wine. He was attended by an old fat man, named Silenus, and by creatures, called Fauns and Satyrs, like men with goats' ears and legs; his crown was of ivy, and his chariot was drawn by leopards, and he was at last raised to Olympus. His feasts were called ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... swelled his eyes, As large as nuts, or larger; He gasped forth heavy sighs, Like music from Silenus' charger. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... diversion, the doctor supped every evening alone with His Majesty, and poured out intoxication and forgetfulness with a liberal hand. Wieduwillst did not spare himself, but wine had little effect on his strong brain; he would have defied Bacchus and Silenus together with Charming. While the prince, by turn noisy and silent, plunged into the extremes of joy and sadness, always restless and never happy, Wieduwillst, calm and smiling, directed his thoughts, and through pure goodness of soul took upon himself all the fatigue ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... the old man, twinkling his little black eyes like a godly Silenus, and nursing one of his fat legs with a lickerish smile, "isn't the Lord Almighty providin' for His beloved heritage jist as fast as He anyways kin? This war's a-goin' on till the biggest part o' you male Gentiles hez killed each other off, then the leetle handful that's left and comes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... the literal inelegance of Davidson had spirit enough to translate, "Where'er the god hath moved around his graceful head." The hideous figure of that ebriety, in its most disgusting stage, the ancients exposed in the bestial Silenus and his crew; and with these, rather than with the Ovidian and Virgilian deity, our own convivial ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... one of the gladiators, as he leaned against the wall of the threshold, 'the wine thou sellest us, old Silenus'—and as he spoke he slapped a portly personage on the back—'is enough to thin the best blood in ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... patriots happened to fix its quarters on the spot. Its leader, an old grotesque-looking fellow, dressed in a priest's vestments—doubtless a part of the plunder of the night—and seated on a barrel on wheels, like a Silenus, from which, at their several halts, he harangued his followers, and drank to the 'downfal of the Bourbons,' soon let me into the history of the last twelve hours. 'Brave Frenchmen,' exclaimed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... and Lady Victoria reading aloud, just as the Duke had said. He went through the passage and met the steward, or butler, whom he despatched to see if the Countess were in the ladies' cabin. The rosy-cheeked, gray-haired priest of Silenus said her ladyship was there, "alone," he added with a little emphasis. Claudius walked in, and was not disappointed. There she sat at the side of the table in her accustomed place, dark and beautiful, and his heart beat fast. She ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... is this, in the head of the canoe, just under the shark's mouth? A grinning little imp of an image; a ring in its nose; cowrie shells jingling at its ears; with an abominable leer, like that of Silenus reeling on his ass. It was taking its ease; cosily smoking a pipe; its bowl, a duodecimo edition of the face of the smoker. This image looked sternward; everlastingly ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... inexorable Nemesis, into the Tartarean abyss. The rest of the Caesars successively advanced to their seats; and as they passed, the vices, the defects, the blemishes of their respective characters, were maliciously noticed by old Silenus, a laughing moralist, who disguised the wisdom of a philosopher under the mask of a Bacchanal. As soon as the feast was ended, the voice of Mercury proclaimed the will of Jupiter, that a celestial crown should be the reward of superior merit. Julius Caesar, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... take up a poker to one of them, and heard him use language as blackguard as his action. I have seen Sheridan drunk, too, with all the world; but his intoxication was that of Bacchus, and Porson's that of Silenus. Of all the disgusting brutes, sulky, abusive, and intolerable, Porson was the most bestial, as far as the few times that I saw him went which were only at William Bankes's (the Nubian discoverer's) rooms. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 474 - Vol. XVII. No. 474., Supplementary Number • Various
... for the blood of his poor cousin. The Maenads are dancing in one another's arms, and their tresses are coiled and crowned with tiny serpents. One of them kneels apart, sucking a great wine-skin. And yonder, that old cupster, Silenus, that horrible old favourite, wobbles along on a donkey, and would tumble off, you may be sure, were he not upheld by two fairly sober Satyrs. But the eyes of Ariadne are fixed only on the smooth-faced god. See how he smiles back ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... article the other day, I was glad to see that I drew attention to Gay's peculiar handling of the couplet and also to his delight in every kind of old song and ballad. I quoted in this respect, however, not from "The Beggar's Opera" but from the song as sung by Silenus in Gay's Eclogues. One of these songs I have always longed to hear or to read, owing to the fascination of its title—"The grass now grows ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... And old Silenus, shaking a green stick 105 Of lilies, and the wood-gods in a crew Came, blithe, as in the olive copses thick Cicadae are, drunk with the noonday dew: And Dryope and Faunus followed quick, Teasing the God to ...
— The Witch of Atlas • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... a very late period, a large and somewhat repulsive-looking monkey, common to the Malabar coast, the Silenus veter, Linn., was, from the circumstance of his possessing a "great white beard," incorrectly assumed to be the "wanderoo" of Ceylon, described by KNOX; and under that usurped name it has figured in ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... dining-room,—preparing for the reception of his philosophical and dilettanti visitors. His myrmidon on this occasion was a little red-nosed butler, whom nature seemed to have cast in the genuine mould of an antique Silenus, and who waddled about the house after his master, wiping his forehead and panting for breath, while the latter bounced from room to room like a cracker, and was indefatigable in his requisitions for the ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... about matters of state. Mago also has just departed on a mission to Carthage. There will be no Campanians save our hosts, myself, my son, Perolla, and Jubellius Taurea, the bravest of our horsemen. Of our good allies, you shall see Hasdrubal, Maharbal, Hannibal-the-Fighter, Silenus the Sicilian, who is to write the history of the wars, Iddilcar the priest of Melkarth, ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... Mercury does not cloak his thefts? What buffoonery that Vulcan is not guilty of, while one with his polt-foot, another with his smutched muzzle, another with his impertinencies, he makes sport for the rest of the gods? As also that old Silenus with his country dances, Polyphemus footing time to his Cyclops hammers, the nymphs with their jigs, and satyrs with their antics; while Pan makes them all twitter with some coarse ballad, which yet they had rather hear than the Muses themselves, ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... rich repasts an ever welcome guest; But O ——, too long you stay, Already young Amyntor, brisk and gay, His lovely Doris o'er the plain pursues: The sparkling juice at Sylvan nymphs command Richly distils from their ambrosial hand, And old Silenus copiously bedews. ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... a small stone such as a little man can sit on, on which they say Silenus rested, when Dionysus came to the land. Silenus is the name they give to all old Satyrs. About the Satyrs I have conversed with many, wishing to know all about them. And Euphemus, a Carian, told me that sailing once ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... pieces by the Thracian women; on which, a serpent, which attacks his face, is changed into stone. The women are transformed into trees by Bacchus, who deserts Thrace, and betakes himself to Phrygia; where Midas, for his care of Silenus, receives the power of making gold. He loathes this gift; and bathing in the river Pactolus, its sands become golden. For his stupidity, his ears are changed by Apollo into those of an ass. After this, that God goes to Troy, and aids Laomedon in building its ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the shapes into which these materials were wrought up; being the only form of poetry which the Romans did not borrow from the Greeks. Wholly different from this, having no one point of contact with it in its form, its history, or its intention, is the 'satyric' drama of Greece, so called because Silenus and the 'Satyrs' supplied the chorus; and in their naive selfishness, and mere animal instincts, held up before men a mirror of what they would be, if only the divine, which is also the truly human, element of humanity, were withdrawn; what man, all that properly ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... tells us that he had seen Sheridan "drunk, with all the world; his intoxication was that of Bacchus, but Porson's that of Silenus. Of all the disgusting brutes, sulky, abusive, and intolerable, Porson was the most bestial, so far as the few times that I saw him went, which were only at William Bankes's rooms. He was tolerated in this state among the young men for ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... was one gentlerman that attracted Mlle. Cadet's special attention. He was apart from any group, but he knew everybody that arrived. This gentleman was fat, smiling, smooth-shaven, with a round, chubby, rosy face and the body of a Silenus. When he spoke he arched and lowered his eyebrows alternately, rolled his eyes, gesticulated with his fat, soft hands, and smiled ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... door open in disasters, and your Dapple will now be able to supply the want of Rozinante and carry me hence to some castle where I may be healed of my wounds. Nor shall I esteem such riding a dishonour, for I remember to have read that old Silenus, tutor and guide of the merry god of Laughter, when he entered the city of a hundred gates, rode very pleasantly, mounted ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... which were found in the lower part of Carthage, between the hill of St. Louis and the sea. They were all executed in antiquity. There are coin, types, a head of Herakles, similar to that of some silver coins attributed to Jugurtha, the fronting head of Silenus of the coins of Kyzikos, the galley of the coins of Sidon, etc., all of the purest Greek style. There are also some female heads, recalling Greek Sicilian coins; standing figures; an Athena, a Pan, a Hermes fastening his heel-pieces, a Marsyas, an amazon, a nude woman fastening her ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... a certain occasion, found his old schoolmaster and foster-father, Silenus, missing. The old man had been drinking, and in that state had wandered away, and was found by some peasants, who carried him to their king, Midas. Midas recognized him and treated him hospitably, entertaining him for ten days and nights with an unceasing round of jollity. On the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... you. I've been standing behind you fully two minutes. What were you glooming about? Old Silenus offend you?" ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... Starbottle's face during this speech would have puzzled a better physiognomist than Mr. Pyecroft. His first look of astonishment gave way to an empurpled confusion, from which a single short Silenus-like chuckle escaped, but this quickly changed again into a dull coppery indignation, and, as Pyecroft's laugh continued, faded out into a sallow rigidity in which his murky eyes alone seemed to keep what was left of his previous high color. But what was more ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... sparkle for my guests! There is still wine in the cellar, and spices and perfumes remain in the larder stores! I will invite my friends to a last feast; a saturnalia in a city of famine; a banquet of death, spread by the jovial labours of Silenus and his fauns! Though the Parcae have woven for me the destiny of a dog, it is the hand of Bacchus that ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... fancy it was I who was sneering at the practice of devotion, which Miss Sharp finds so ridiculous; that it was I who laughed good-humouredly at the reeling old Silenus of a baronet—whereas the laughter comes from one who has no reverence except for prosperity, and no eye for anything beyond success. Such people there are living and flourishing in the world—Faithless, Hopeless, Charityless: ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... some difficulties attending this line, especially in regard to the descent into Italy. 2. That Caelius Antipater certainly represented him as taking this route (Liv., xxi., 38); and as he is known to have followed the Greek history of Silenus, who is said to have accompanied Hannibal in many of his campaigns, his authority is of the greatest weight. 3. That Livy and Strabo, on the contrary, both suppose him to have crossed the Cottian Alps, or Mont Genevre. But the main argument that ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... many more which we may well divine. But should we stay to speak, noontide would come, And thwart Silenus find his goats undrawn, 90 And grudge to sing those wise and lovely songs Of Fate, and Chance, and God, and Chaos old, And Love, and the chained Titan's woful doom, And how he shall be loosed, and make the earth One brotherhood: delightful strains which cheer 95 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... a numskull was he. Thereupon, hearing this, Chiquon determined to do well by his uncle, and puzzled his understanding to appear better; but as he had a behind shaped like a pair of pumpkins, was broad shouldered, large limbed, and far from sharp, he more resembled old Silenus than a gentle Zephyr. In fact, the poor shepherd, a simple man, could not reform himself, so he remained big and fat, awaiting his inheritance ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... paper with Titianus written on it. The bit of music on the grass has Greek letters. Dancing figures are in the middle of the picture. The fauns stagger under the dark trees, carrying great sumptuous vases of agate and gold. Silenus is asleep on a sunny hill at a distance, and the white sails of the ship with Theseus gleam on the deep-blue sea. There is another called an Offering to Fecundity. It is a crowd of most lovely baby boys, wonderfully painted, frolicking on the green among flowers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... sit down and listen! From the pitcher, placed between us, How the waters laugh and glisten In the head of old Silenus! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the figure of the Roman God Silenus. He was the son of Pan, and the oldest of the satyrs, who were supposed to be half goat. Can you find the goat's horns among his curls? He was a rollicking old satyr, very fond of wine, always getting into mischief. The ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall
... implacable in her vengeance, visited Athamas, the husband of Ino, with madness, {125} and the child's life being no longer safe, he was transferred to the fostering care of the nymphs of Mount Nysa. An aged satyr named Silenus, the son of Pan, took upon himself the office of guardian and preceptor to the young god, who, in his turn, became much attached to his kind tutor; hence we see Silenus always figuring as one of the chief personages in the various ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... style is of a more commonplace character. The other poems in the volume are comparatively harmless, though it is sad to find Shakespeare's 'Bacchus with pink eyne' reappearing as 'pinky-eyed Silenus.' ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Mercury may, without discovery, go on in his thieveries, and nimble-fingered juggles; the sooty Vulcan may now renew his wonted custom of making the other gods laugh by his hopping so limpingly, and coming off with so many dry jokes, and biting repartees. Silenus, the old doting lover, to shew his activity, may now dance a frisking jig, and the nymphs be at the same sport naked. The goatish satyrs may make up a merry ball, and Pan, the blind harper may put up his bagpipes, and sing bawdy catches, to which ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... proved themselves more skilful at the lighter labours of the stage, more successful even in the secular and bloodless business of a field neither clerical nor scholastic, than any tragic rival of the opposite party to that so jovially headed by Orbilius Udall and Silenus Still. These twin pillars of church and school and stage were strong enough to support on the shoulders of their authority the first crude fabric or formless model of our comic theatre, while the tragic boards were still creaking and cracking under ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... laws as well as bad, has much that is necessary, and much that is absurd. Too good for banning, and too bad for blessing, it reminds us of a tradition of the pagan mythology, in any attempt to settle its character. "I overheard Jove,[453] one day," said Silenus,[454] "talking of destroying the earth; he said, it had failed; they were all rogues and vixens, who went from bad to worse, as fast as the days succeeded each other. Minerva said, she hoped not; they were only ridiculous little creatures, with this ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... axe-bearing Lycurgus,[13] sacrilegious {mortals}; thou didst hurl the bodies of the Etrurians into the sea. Thou controllest the neck of the lynxes yoked to thy chariot, graced with the painted reins. The Bacchanals and the Satyrs follow {thee}; the drunken old man, too, {Silenus}, who supports his reeling limbs with a staff, and sticks by no means very fast to his bending ass. And wherever thou goest, the shouts of youths, and together the voices of women, and tambourines beaten with the hands, and hollow cymbals resound, and the box-wood ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the terror that Sampson was wont to excite in the good people of Amherstburg. With Silvertail at his speed, he would gallop into the town, brandishing his cudgel, and reeling from side to side, exhibiting at one moment the joyous character of a Silenus, at another, as we have already shown—that of an inebriated Centaur. Occasionally he would make his appearance, holding his sides convulsed with laughter, as he reeled and tottered in every direction, but without ever losing his equilibrium. At other times he would utter a loud ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... him in the very dawntime of discovery, that he was almost justified in this delusion. Having caught the Proteus of the world, he tried to grasp him; but the god changed shape beneath his touch. Having surprised Silenus asleep, he begged from him a song; but the song Silenus sang was so marvellous in its variety, so subtle in its modulations, that Lionardo could do no more than recall scattered phrases. His Proteus was the spirit ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... satyrs. As a writer of satire, ye Pisos, I shall never be fond of unornamented and reigning terms: nor shall I labor to differ so widely from the complexion of tragedy, as to make no distinction, whether Davus be the speaker. And the bold Pythias, who gained a talent by gulling Simo; or Silenus, the guardian and attendant of his pupil-god [Bacchus]. I would so execute a fiction taken from a well-known story, that any body might entertain hopes of doing the same thing; but, on trial, should sweat and labor in vain. Such power has a just arrangement and connection ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... little time ago asking you an odd question about elephants, and now I am going to ask you an odder. I hope that you will not think me an intolerable bore. It is most improbable that you could get me an answer, but I ask on mere chance. Macacus silenus (455/1. Macacus silenus L., an Indian ape.) has a great mane of hair round neck, and passing into large whiskers and beard. Now what I want most especially to know is whether these monkeys, when they fight in confinement (and I have seen it stated that they are sometimes kept in ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... conquered a new realm of art; the phantoms of the fairy world for the first time have been endowed with a genuine and sustained dramatic interest. Small wonder that no one ventures to interrupt as the pages are turned; even at the close, only one, the Silenus-faced Ben, offers a criticism. Being well versed in classic lore, he protests against the characterisation of Theseus, Duke of Athens, saying it is too modern, and has in fact nothing of the antique or Grecian ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... SILENUS, a satyr who attended Dionysus, being his foster-father and teacher; assisted in the war of the giants, and slew Enceladus; had the gift of vaticination; is represented as mounted on an ass and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... personage's appearance; and it would not be amiss if American wine-growers should employ an American sculptor—and there are great American sculptors—to render that description into marble, and set up little Tyrker in some public place, as the Silenus ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... were neatly arranged, and splendidly bound, many of them in Russia leather, as the odour of the room testified. Between the book-cases, the wall-paper was dark crimson, and there were a few really good oil-paintings. The fireplace was of white marble, handsomely carved, with Bacchantes, and Silenus on his donkey—not very appropriate guardians of a sea-coal fire. On the mantel-piece was a massive bronze clock, with a figure of Prometheus chained to a rock on the top, and the vulture digging ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... ground-swell on the Bay of Biscay. I am not unacquainted with that fusiform, spiral-wound bundle of chopped stems and miscellaneous incombustibles, the CIGAR, so called, of the shops,—which to "draw" asks the suction-power of a nursling infant Hercules, and to relish, the leathery palate of an old Silenus. I do not advise you, young man, even if my illustration strike your fancy, to consecrate the flower of your life to painting the bowl of a pipe, for, let me assure you, the stain of a reverie-breeding narcotic may strike deeper ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... rise to view our times, Whate'er betide our silv'ry flowing rhymes, The brave we sing—Boeotian of the East Will still survive to spread the mimic feast. 'Tis said in fables that Silenus old To Midas lent the fatal gift of gold; But Terminus, the god of rogues, has giv'n Our hero gold unbless'd of man or heav'n. 'Mid all the tyrants of our age and clime, He stands alone in infamy and crime; Not e'en ...
— The American Cyclops, the Hero of New Orleans, and Spoiler of Silver Spoons • James Fairfax McLaughlin
... Behind him were the Graces, in the midst of whom came "Marital Fidelity" and presented herself to the princess. After some other minor incidents of the same kind the spectacle came to an end with a ballet in which Bacchus, Silenus, Pan and a chorus of satyrs were principal figures. This lively and comic dance, says Chalco, "brought to an end the most splendid and astonishing ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... imprisonment. The Father of the Worlds permits its chains to be broken, and has provided in the course of Nature the means of its escape. It was a doctrine of immemorial antiquity, shared alike by Egyptians, Pythagoreans, the Orphici, and by that characteristic Bacchic Sage, "the Preceptor of the Soul," Silenus, that death is far better than life; that the real death belongs to those who on earth are immersed in the Lethe of its passions and fascinations, and that the true life commences only when the soul ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... it," replied Sandy, with immense gravity. "The auld Silenus has better taste. He says there's a young lass running after him, fit to break her heart aboot him,—puir thing, she must have vera little choice o' men! He hasna quite made up his mind, though he admeets she's as fine a lass as ony man need require. He's sorely afraid she has ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... Moon's point of view, Wilsonople, a Silenus, is discerned in an arm-chair winking at a couple too plainly pouting their lips for a doubt of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "Like Silenus without the goat's hoofs," answered Euergetes. "Hand me a mirror here, Diocleides; follow the eyes of her majesty the queen, and you will be sure to find one. There is the thing! And in fact the picture ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of her ingratitude. He appears to have set himself to paint in the style of Rubens, choosing similar subjects, at any rate, and thus to have won for himself, with such work as the Young Bacchantes, now in Lord Belper's collection, or the Drunken Silenus, now in Brussels, a reputation but little inferior to his master's. Certainly at this time his work is very Flemish in character, and apparently it was not till he had been to Venice, Mantua, and Rome that the influence of Italy and the Italian masters may be really ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... not slow to admit a sort of Aristophanic humour. How a great original genius like Plato might or might not have written, what was his conception of humour, or what limits he would have prescribed to himself, if any, in drawing the picture of the Silenus Socrates, are problems which no ...
— Menexenus • Plato
... my mind expresses all The allurements of the world. And once more I seem to feel On my soul, like frenzy, hurled All the passionate past.—I reel, Greek again in ancient Greece, In the Pyrrhic revelries; In the mad and Maenad dance Onward dragged with violence; Pan and old Silenus and Faunus and a Bacchant band Round me. Wild my wine-stained hand O'er tumultuous hair is lifted; While the flushed and Phallic orgies Whirl around me; and the marges Of the wood are torn and rifted With lascivious laugh and shout. And barbarian there again,— Shameless with the shameless ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... which the human figure was caricatured according to all the deformations which it underwent by vice or sensuality. All the effects of gluttony and Bacchic excess were caricatured in the figure of Silenus. The old woman fond of wine lost all modesty under the influence of wine.[2027] The leaders of the choruses, in a later time at Athens, offered reminders of primitive barbarism and of the immolation of human beings, and a representation of savage nudity, but they presented ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... frolics. The composition of demi-god with demi-beast formed an amusing contrast. We have an example in the Cyclops of the manner in which the poets proceeded in such subjects. It is not unentertaining, though the subject- matter is for the most part contained in the Odyssey; only the pranks of Silenus and his band are occasionally a little coarse. We must confess that, in our eyes, the great merit of this piece is its rarity, being the only extant specimen of its class which we possess. In the satiric dramas Aeschylus ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... forms as Cupid's one could likewise see, Phoebus Apollo, Vulcan, Lady Venus, Pluto and Proserpine and Mercury, God Bacchus and Priapus and Silenus. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... books, the chief lover, or Greek god, as he is admiringly referred to—by the way, they do not say which "Greek god" it is that the gentleman bears such a striking likeness to; it might be hump-backed Vulcan, or double-faced Janus, or even driveling Silenus, the god of abstruse mysteries. He resembles the whole family of them, however, in being a blackguard, and perhaps this is what is meant. To even the little manliness his classical prototypes possessed, though, he ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... has good laws as well as bad, has much that is necessary, and much that is absurd. Too good for banning, and too bad for blessing, it reminds us of a tradition of the pagan mythology, in any attempt to settle its character. 'I overheard Jove, one day,' said Silenus, 'talking of destroying the earth; he said it had failed; they were all rogues and vixens, who went from bad to worse, as fast as the days succeeded each other. Minerva said she hoped not; they were only ridiculous little creatures, with this odd circumstance, that they had a blur, ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Mr. and Mrs. Whiffle-Wit! They are now in state! They have really a capacious appearance! Were Rubens or Jordaens but here, we should have them painted in all the riches of oil colours, grinning in company with Silenus and his ass. Let the poor author beware; they are prodigious critics! Madam can write a farce, or even a solution to an enigma, with as little labour as any lady in the land; and her dear Mr. Whiffle-Wit can set them both to music, with no less facility and genius! ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... of the volcano; hopes extinguished beneath a profound sense of the social annihilation to which lowly birth and lack of fortune condemns so many a loftier mind. And by the side of the poor printer, who loathed a handicraft so closely allied to intellectual work, close to this Silenus, joyless, self-sustained, drinking deep draughts from the cup of knowledge and of poetry that he might forget the cares of his narrow lot in the intoxication of soul and brain, stood Lucien, graceful as some sculptured ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... too well known, Nor, stooping from the tragic height, drop down To the low level of buffoon and clown, As though pert Davus, or the saucy jade Who sacks the gold and jeers the gull she made, Were like Silenus, who, though quaint and odd, Is yet the guide and tutor of a god. A hackneyed subject I would take and treat So deftly, all should hope to do the feat, Then, having strained and struggled, should concede To do the feat were difficult indeed. So much may order and arrangement ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... for the Cordelier in question, a man who, grown grey in study, still preserved the cheerful, facile humour of a simple, unlettered countryman. He was very willing to converse; and I greatly relished his bland speech, his cultivated yet artless way of thought, his look of old Silenus purged at the baptismal font, the play of his passions at once keen and refined, the strange, alluring personality that informed the whole man. Assiduous at the library, he was also a frequent visitor to the marketplace, halting for choice in front ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... armies of France, between the ancient word "devoir," and modern word "gloire." And, again, ask yourselves what you expect your own children to be taught at your great schools and universities. Is it Christian history, or the histories of Pan and Silenus? Your present education, to all intents and purposes, denies Christ, and that ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... winged it with paradox. The praise of folly, as he went on, soared into a philosophy, and Philosophy herself became young, and catching the mad music of Pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a Bacchante over the hills of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being sober. Facts fled before her like frightened forest things. Her white feet trod the huge press at which wise Omar sits, till the seething grape-juice rose round her bare limbs in waves of ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde |
