Silenus & the Satyrs

Silenus is the eldest of the satyrs — a fat, drunken, perpetually merry old woodland spirit who was the foster-father and tutor of Dionysus. For all his comic appearance, he was held to possess a deep and reluctant wisdom, uttering profound truths only when caught and compelled to speak. With him the Orphic hymn honours the whole Dionysian retinue: the goat-legged Satyrs and the ecstatic Bacchae, the god's wild and dancing throng.

Plato's Symposium famously likens Socrates to a Silenus-figure — ugly and absurd on the outside, like the little carved Silenus-boxes of the day, but holding images of the gods within. Hidden wisdom beneath a homely surface became, through that image, an enduring emblem of the philosopher.