Rich Morris' Comics - YAFGC and The ComixBlog

Theres a female faun in a spyro the dragon game, 2nd one i beleive... yeah thats all i really have to contribute...


Maybe males are sayters, females are fauns, and nymphs are just the girlfreinds-freinds sayters arent supposed to be sleeping with but do anyway?

Let's start with Nymphs; they tend to be the simplest. Nymphs are, generally speaking, female spirits or minor goddesses of features, landmarks or locales. (On other words, most are linked to places or things.) Some, however were the daughters of minor gods, like Daphne. Many of them were once the local mother goddess, and were "demoted" once the main Hellenistic deities moved in, becoming the many flings of Zeus, other gods or Heroes (while others became mortal women). Some were considered the spiritual "mothers" of towns and villages, and the prominent families would claim descent from a Hero and a local Nymph, in much the same way that in many villages in Africa, the chiefs would claim descent from local gods (or Christ if missionaries had converted the local populace).

Satyrs/Sileni, on the other hand, are also nature spirits, but they are more associated with all wild places and the wildness within mankind. You would never expect to find a Satyr for a grove of trees, which would be a perfectly logical niche for a Nymph. Original depictions of Satyrs were dwarfish men with horse's tails and pointed ears. Bellingham's An Introduction to Greek Mythology uses this description, likely in keeping with the fact that hoofed depictions of Satyrs seem non-existent in the actual archeological record.

Hamilton, in Mythology, describes the Sileni as being similar to Satyrs, but having horses hooves and ears, rather than a goat's. The Element Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures seeks to split the difference, giving Sileni goat's hooves at the end of horse's legs. Hamilton says that Sileni are absent from legend, but appear on vases - see above. It seems that the main thing that Sileni were after was wine - they were followers of the drunken Silenus, or Dionysus directly. Other descriptions of Sileni relegate them to the juvenile form of Satyrs. So Boy : Man :: Silen : Satyr. In any event, if Silenus once had hooves, he lost them in artistic depictions, even though in Hamilton he is the son of Pan. Element describes him as "the oldest Satyr."

Both Pan and Silenus seem to have coalesced out of the entire groups of Satyrs and Sileni, although Pan does seem different from the older depictions of Satyrs.

Fauns were Roman nature spirits who occupied the same niche as the Hellenistic Satyrs, and thus became conflated. There is some speculation that this conflation is the source of the idea that Satyrs were hoofed. While books such as The Complete Dictionary of Symbols tend to create a 1:1 correlation between the two pantheons, as when they say that Pan and Faunus are two names for the same deity, this isn't quite the case. Faunus, according to Element, is more of a protector of the wilderness than Pan, and less interested in drinking and sex. The Romans tended to re-imagine their gods to fit the niches that already existed in Hellenic tradition, but had a number of others besides. Case in point would be Fauna. While some works list her as the wife of Faunus, others reject this - turning to Hamilton again, she is listed as the wife of Vulcan, pushing Venus out of Aphrodite's old role. Of course, if Fauna is a female counterpart to Faunus, and Faunus was the head Faun, it stands to reason that the Romans would not have had difficulty with the idea of female Fauns, as Lord_Fellgrin's mention of Apuleius' plays would indicate.

This is really interesting. Thanks for the research and sum up, Lyger.

You're quite welcome.

I wasn't researching the topic and therefore can't object to Lyger, but AFAIK in Greek mythology Pan was considered the god of wild nature and tended to avoid civilization. His companions were nymphs.
Dionysus was the god of grapes, wine and drunken orgies (hence relation to sex). Satyrs, along with menades, were his companions. Wikipedia states that satyrs accompanied Pan too, but I never heard of this before.
Anyway, the Greek mythology was never standardized and didn't last to our days as a religion, so variations between different versions may occur. By the way, it's interesting that Taidor has never shown remarkable interest in alcohol.

Well, he had a responsible job and above-average wisdom.

AFAIK, neither of the two gods was considered particularly wise or intelligent. Both of them had quite simple nature and weren't really into sciences or culture (contrast with Apollo or Athen).

Moreover, if Pan could be considered busy protecting shepherds and other rustic people, Dionysus hardly could have a "job" as he was believed to be constantly drunken and seeking for more.

Actually, Dionysus is almost never drunk. He is the God of wine and revelry but the wine is not the God of him. We have Sylenus for that .

Dionysus is mostly connected with ecstasy and primordial emotions, true, but his ways were seen as a pathway to the Gods and less as indulgence for the sake of indulgence. His festivals were quite mystical in nature and had to do with death as much as they had to do with the celebration of living.

Dionysus is a patron of the arts. Athenian theatre was associated with him. When Aristophanes decided to write a play which lamented the loss of the cities great tragedians it is Dionysus who is hte divinity who goes to Hades to collect one. The play, The Frogs, was premiered at a festival of Dionysus and the [i]Oresteia[i], the major surviving work of Aeschylus, the playwright who is eventually retrived in the play, was first performed in the Theatre of Dionysus.

Sorry, folks, Taidor isn't wasn't a god, he was a priest, he was druid...

Why to unite hum with Dionysus? And even with Pan (although to Pan Taidor was closer, imho, as a priest of some Pan-like deity of Nature).

Or don't I understand something?