Hellenes - tireless travelers, adventurers,sea robbers and merchants - had an inexhaustible imagination. They settled a low, two and a half kilometers, Mount Olympus immortal and beautiful in appearance, but essentially insidious gods, who always rejoiced if people had trouble. The Greeks surrounded their evil gods with retinues of beautiful girls — nymphs — and scary satyrs — half people, half animals. Satires and nymphs did not live on cloudless celestial distances with the highest gods, but on the ground.
Nymphs and satire - the gods of what?
The fantasy of the ancient Greeks knew no bounds, and whenduring the Renaissance, enlightened Europeans learned the myths and traditions of the Hellenes, then the ancient gods, satires and nymphs served as an inexhaustible source of inspiration for writers, artists and musicians. They learned that the spirits of the mountains were the nymphs of the oread, the forests and the trees — the dryads, the springs — the mollusks. In the meadows and valleys there lived limnadas and napies, and in the seas and oceans, the Nereids and Oceanidas. About many of them the Greeks composed interesting legends, but about this - below. Peter Paul Rubens has created a wonderful portrait of two fauns.
Their appearance is curly unkempt mattedhair with a wreath of grape leaves and horns, a flat, red nose from drunkenness and in powerful hands - a bunch of grapes from which wine is made - fully corresponds to the descriptions of the Greeks. Cannot see only the tail. Satires did not have specific habitats: forever lustful, often drunk, on their goat legs, they rode everywhere, chasing the nymphs until they were called up for the service of the god Dionysus or the god Pan. This description should give an answer to the question: “Lower deities, satires and nymphs, gods of what?” These are spirits that settled, in the opinion of the Greeks, the whole surrounding nature. Satires often haunted the nymphs with the most base motives, but beautiful girls ran away from them.
Legends of the nymphs
Satires and nymphs in myths are not alwayscoexisted. The story of the nymph Daphne tells how Eros laughed at the beautiful Phoebus, throwing an arrow at him, causing love, and at nymph Daphne - killing. So perfection itself, Phoebe, seeing Daphne, began to pursue her, begging for love. But the daughter of the river god Penea, rapidly fleeing from persecution and feeling that her strength was leaving her, prayed to her father. She asked him to help her escape and take away her earthly appearance. And immediately her slender camp began to be covered with bark, hands raised in a plea turned into branches and foliage rustled on them. The girl turned into a laurel tree. Sadly stood next to Phoebus laurel. He asked him for branches to make a wreath for himself, and the tree began to rustle with foliage and inclined the crown towards Apollo in agreement. Nymphs, peeping from the branches of trees, were the retinue of Sister Phoebe, the hunter of Artemis.
In the mountains and valleys
In the legend of satire and nymph described belownot reunited again. Nymph Echo to her misfortune met no one who loves beautiful Narcissus. She could not speak to him herself, since the goddess Hera allowed her only to respond to someone's speech. And Narcissus, punished by Aphrodite for not responding to Echo's tender feelings, fell in love with himself and died, peering into his reflection in the water.
Grape picking
Sometimes nymphs and satires meet peacefully and gather together the fruits that the earth gives them.
Dionysus and Pan
Among the retinue of the mysterious, mocking andthe terrible god Dionysus can be met not only satyrs, but also the god Pan. His father was Hermes, and his mother was the nymph Driopa. When Pan was born, the mother, throwing only one glance at the child, ran away in horror. Oh nightmare! The kid had a beard, goat legs and horns. But Hermes was delighted with his child and took it to show the Olympians. They all just had a good laugh. Pan came down to earth and began to live on it. Shady groves and mountains became his refuge. In them, Pan shepherds the flocks and plays the flute. Nymphs gather to him and drive round dances around him. The sounds of his flute are gentle and full of sadness. After all, Pan was in love with the wonderful nymph Siringu, who, in order not to respond to his love, turned into reeds on the banks of the river. The grieved Pan from the reed made himself a pipe-syring, and since then it has not parted.
Satires
They look like Pan, but do not possess his nobility. They are lazy, lecherous, drunk forever and love to sing at the same time. When satires do not accompany Dionysus, they spend time looking for nymphs.
So the Greeks perceived nature, populating it with nymphs, deities and spirits of forests, fields, mountains, water, but there was no complete serenity in it, therefore satires appeared.
