Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

118 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
BOOK
II.
The Latin
Silanus.
Priapos.
The name of Seilenos as a water-sprite suggests to Preller
its affinity with the Italian Silanus, a word for gushing or
bubbling water ; nor is it easy to avoid a comparison with the
Seirenes, who, like Seilenos, haunt the waters. As the
dweller in the fertilising streams, he can bestow draughts of
wonderful sweetness ; and the wine which his son Evanthes
gives to Odysseus is pronounced by Polyphemos to be more
delicious than honey. As such also, he is the guardian and
teacher of Dionysos, for from the life-giving streams alone
can the grape acquire its sweetness and its power.
But this higher and more dignified aspect of Seilenos,
which led Plato to speak of Sokrates as getting wisdom from
him as well as from his scholar Marsyas, was obscured in
the folk-lore of the western tribes by the characteristics of
jollity and intemperance exhibited by the Satyrs and the
Herakles whom they cheat and tease, while his office as the
fertiliser of the vineyard brought him into close connexion
with Priapos, who exhibits the merely sensuous idea of
reproduction in its grossest form, and of whom we need only
say here that he is a son of Dionysos, Adonis, Hermes, or
Pan, while his mother is Aphrodite or the Naid Chione,
names denoting simply the relations of the waters with the
winds or the sun. 1
1 Priapos is, in short, only a coarser to come. The same idea was expressed
form of Vishnu, Proteus, Onnes and by the Latin Mutinus, JMutunus, orMutother
like beings : and as snch, he has tunus, who was represented by the
like them the power of predicting things same symbol.