Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/256

 ape known to him, none too accurately, from some traveller's tale. The locus classicus on the subject of genuine supernatural ass-centaurs is a passage in the Septuagint translation of Isaiah : [Greek: kai synantêsousin daimonia onokentaurois kai boêthêsontai heteros pros ton heteron, ekei anapausontai onokentauroi heurontes hautois anapausin]—'And demons shall meet with ass-centaurs and they shall bring help one to another; there shall ass-centaurs find rest for themselves and be at rest.' Here our Revised Version runs:—"The wild beasts of the desert shall meet with the wolves (Heb. 'howling creatures'), and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; yea, the night-monster shall settle there." The comparison is instructive. It is clear from the context that the Septuagint translators were minded to give some Greek colouring to their rendering even at the expense of strict accuracy; for in the previous verse, where our Revised Version employs the word 'jackals,' the Septuagint introduces beings whose voices are generally supposed to have been more attractive, the Sirens. The use of the word 'ass-centaurs' cannot therefore have been prompted by any pedantic notions of literal translation. The creatures, for all the lack of other literary warranty, must have been familiar to the popular imagination. And what may be gleaned from the passage concerning their character? Apparently they are the nearest Greek equivalent for 'howling creatures' and for 'night-monsters'; and such emphasis in the Greek is laid upon the statement that they will 'find rest for themselves and be at rest,' that they must surely in general have borne a character for restlessness. These restless noisy monsters of the night, in shape half-human and half-asinine, are clearly in character no less than in form the prototypes of some modern Callicantzari.

Of the many traits inherited by the Callicantzari from the Satyrs and Sileni, the usual comrades of Dionysus, I have already spoken. So far as outward appearance is concerned, the Satyrs as they came to be pourtrayed in the later Greek art are clearly responsible for the goat-type so common in the description of the Callicantzari, while a reminiscence of the Sileni may perhaps be traced in the rarer bald-headed type. But as regards their manner of life, which as I have shown bears many resemblances to that of