SATYRS and SILENI (Σάτυροι, Σάλυοι), - Mythological figures of secondary importance, but among the most widespread in the art, literature and popular beliefs of Greece. Already among the ancients, in late antiquity, no clear distinction was made between Satyrs and Sileni; and some moderns, besides often using one term for the other, derive both from a single original type. But it seems impossible not to hold the contrary (as Pausanias already did, I, 23, 5), since besides the difference of the two names (moreover of uncertain etymology), they correspond to two quite distinct animal-like types.
The Sileni, in fact, commonly held to be of Thracian origin, are the first to appear in art (François vase, mid-6th century B.C.) and perhaps in literature (Homeric Hymn to Venus, 265); they are theriomorphic genii of a horse-like nature: broad face completely covered with beard, long shaggy hair from which horse's ears sprout, snub nose, long and thick horse's tail, uncloven hoof. All this justifies their appellation ἵπποι = horses, given them by the ancients (Orphic Hymn, 48, 4) and their assimilation to the Centaurs (also of Thracian origin). Of a lascivious nature and ithyphallic, they live chasing the nymphs "with whom they unite amorously in the depths of wondrous grottoes" (Homeric Hymn, loc. cit.), and like these, they were considered genii of the water. Already in the aforementioned François vase the Sileni appear in the retinue of Dionysus, and later, together with Satyrs, Maenads, Bacchants, etc., they will always take part in the orgiastic processions of this god. On the relations with Dionysus myth knew, one might say, an archetype: Silenus, the good-natured old man, father of the Satyrs, who had raised Dionysus in Attica; unlike the other Sileni, he was a friend of men, learned and endowed with prophetic virtue which he exercised, however, only in a state of drunkenness. Subsequently the Sileni were represented bald and became ever more humanized while their feral characteristics remained only barely hinted at.
The Satyrs appear in art around the middle of the 5th century B.C., but they were already known in literature (Hesiod, in Strabo, X, 471 makes them descend from the Argive Phoroneus together with the Nymphs and the Curetes). Also theriomorphic genii, but of a goat-like nature, they are natives of the Peloponnese, perhaps of Arcadia, homeland of the most ancient god Pan, of goat form, from whom in all probability they took their characteristics: horns, cloven hooves, small tail, dwellers in the woods, of a markedly lascivious nature and hostile to men and their herds; the ancients called them τράγοι = goats and their Doric name τίτυρος has the same meaning. The Satyrs too were associated very early with the cult of Dionysus.
The fusion of Satyrs and Sileni took place in Attic tragedy (5th century), when the equine characteristics of the Sileni were also attributed to the Satyrs; a fusion that then passed into art and became common, making the two terms synonymous (cf. Hesychius: Σάτυροι Σάλυοι), thus, for example, the famous Marsyas is now called silenus, now satyr, and even the "satyr play" was sometimes designated by "silenic play" (Plato, Conc., 215 b).