Page:Greek and Roman Mythology.djvu/73

 THE GREEK GODS 59 ' skillful '), who is probably to be considered as the repre- sentative of a brook that did not produce devastation. He dwelt in a cave on Mount Pelion, and was celebrated as a physician and prophet. (Cf. 'the old man of the sea/ 69.) So he became the friend and tutor of the heroes Achilles, Jason, and Aesculapius, just as Silenus, the genius of the fountain, cared for the young Dionysus. 79. The Sileni were Ionian-Phrygian gods of rivers and springs. Their bodies, like those of the Centaurs, were originally half man and half horse. As their chief representative appears the Silenus Marsyas, the god of the river rising at Celaenae in Phrygia. As the inventor of the Phrygian art of playing on the flute he was said to have challenged Apollo, the player of the lyre, to a contest, and, when vanquished by him, to have been flayed alive for his presumption. His skin was said to have been then inflated and hung up near his spring in Celaenae. Yet, as skins served as vessels for water, perhaps the skin was originally attributed to him, as the urn was to the river gods, only as a symbol of his character ; and so possibly the story of this contest is to be regarded as a later invention to explain the attribute. In Athens the Sileni accompany- ing Dionysus were confused with the Peloponnesian Satyrs. The latter had the form of a goat, and about the time of Pisistratus had been introduced from Cor- inth as a feature of the festal songs and dances of the greater Dionysia. 80. The animating force of water was represented par- ticularly by the Nymphae ('Nymphs'), who, being pic- tured to the imagination as young maidens or women, lightly clad, freely giving fruitfulness of all kinds,