Dionysus and the Satyr Marsyas:
The ‘New Music’

Dionysus (Διώνυσος) is the son of Zeus and Semele, daughter of Cadmus (king of Thebes) and Harmonia. As the result of one of Zeus’ many adulteries, Dionysus was struck by the wrath of Hera even before he was born: according to one version of the myth, Semele was in fact persuaded by the goddess to ask Zeus to show himself to her in the same way as he appeared to his wife. Semele was thus doomed to die, while Zeus saved his son by carrying his development inside his own thigh. Dionysus was then usually raised first by Ino and Athamas and then by the nymphs of Mount Nisa or by a hero named Nisus (hence the name Dionysus: e.g. in one of Hyginus’ Fabulae). The tale is frequent both in mythographers and in various literary reworkings: for example, one can read passages from Ovid and Lucian on these events (tab 1). He travelled to Egypt and Syria, went to Phrygia to the goddess Cybele, and spread the knowledge of her rites from Thrace to India until he arrived in Greece. In Naxos he met Ariadne abandoned by Theseus.
God of wine, theatre and ecstasy, he embodies the multiform human nature (male and female, animal and divine, tragic and comic). His attributes are the kantharos, the vine and the thyrsus; the animals dear to him are the panther and the goat, emblems of the wild life that his followers seek through Dionysian invasion (mania).
Companions of Dionysus, along with the maenads, are the satyrs or silenes. Depicted as human beings with beards and long hair, with ears, horns, tail and goat’s paws, they are usually shown naked or wearing panther skin (pardalis) or deer skin (nebris). They are devoted to wine, music and the wild dance they practise in Dionysian processions (tab 2).
Satyrs love the aulos, which they play on many occasions (tab 3); but they can also play string instruments, such as the kithara, the lyra and the barbiton. Dionysus, on the other hand, is not usually depicted playing a musical instrument, with a few exceptions (tab 4).
The aulos is the instrument was the protagonist of the great musical changes that took place between the 5th and 4th centuries BC, the most important of which was the invention of a polymodal variant of the aulos (i.e. capable of modulating, moving from one scale to another without changing pipes). The invevtion of this kind of instrument is attributed to the Theban aulete Pronomos (tab 5) and it is harshly criticised by Plato, who called the instrument “panharmonic” (i.e. “capable of playing all scales/harmoniai”).

According to the version of the myth followed by Euripides in the Bacchae (as narrated in the prologue by the god in the first person), Semele was incinerated by Zeus’ thunderbolts, while Dionysus, in his mother’s womb, was saved by his father who sewed him into her thigh from which he was born a second time (cf. e.g. Euripides, Hippolitus 560, where the god is said δίγονος, or Ovid, Metamorphoses 3, 317: bis genitus). Hermes then handed the infant Dionysus over to the nymphs of Mount Nisa, although the myth passes on many variants on the god’s childhood: for instance, the Library of Pseudo Apollodorus offers an interesting summary account. Representations of the infant Dionysus are widespread in ceramics, reliefs and in statuary groups.

Dionysus on his travels is accompanied by a procession (thiasos) consisting of satyrs (e.g. Pseudo Apollodorus) and Silenes, maenads (e.g. Iliad) and nymphs (cf. Homeric hymn), who play and dance frantically. Maenads generally play the tympanon (cf. Euripides, Bacchae) or the krotala, while satyrs have the aulos (see again Euripides, Bacchae) or sometimes a stringed instrument (lyra, kithara or, among the string instruments, especially the barbiton). Many – and belonging to different eras and literary genres – are the versions of the god’s movements: they are interwoven with the variants relating to the characters that make up his retinue and the instruments preferably used in the rituals dedicated to him (instruments entrusted with the task of arousing religious enthousiasmos).
On 6th- and 5th-century BC Attic vases, the procession appears very animated and may accompany Hephaestus to Olympus, cheer a banquet or the wedding of Dionysus and Ariadne.
Towards the end of the 5th and in the 4th century BC the episodes become more varied: Eros or Pan may also participate in the procession; the representation of Ariadne’s wedding with the god also becomes more frequent. Some scenes from the end of the 4th century depict the god riding a panther or a griffin, followed by a bustling procession. In some cases Dionysus appears dressed in oriental clothing and is therefore worshipped as Sabazio (Σαβάζιος), a divinity of Thracian origin associated with agrarian and orgiastic rites similar to those of Cybele and Attis: the first evidence in Greece dates back at least to the 5th century BC, as is shown in several passages of the play Aristophanes (see Lysistrata and Birds).
In Roman art, processions and episodes involving the god Bacchus are frequent, especially on mosaics and sarcophagi.

In the earliest phases, satyrs were imagined as human only in their upper body, while their lower parts could take on the appearance of a horse or a goat. These features diminished over time, while the long tail and erect limb tended to remain. (Pausanias). Literary texts offer different news about their lineage (Hesiod, Homeric hymn to Aphrodite), their characteristics and their relationship with Dionysus (Euripides) and music (Plato).
The favourite musical instrument of satyrs is certainly the aulos, which can also easily be played during a dance or a procession. Sometimes the satyr who plays the aulos is depicted alone, emphasising the importance of the relationship with the wind instrument, most often in Dionysian processions. The iconography is also known in Greece in the Hellenistic period, when however the satyr is depicted mainly while playing the kroupezion or the krotala. In Magna Graecia and the Italic world, the satyr is depicted mainly while participating in Dionysian processions with the thyrsus, a situla or crown, or sometimes a torch, more rarely with the aulos. In some Roman productions inspired by the Greek world, however, Dionysian processions return with the presence of satyrs who are playing the aulos.

In Greek iconography of the Archaic and Classical periods, Dionysus is not depicted playing a musical instrument, with the exception of the scene on an Attic kylix that shows him with the barbiton, an instrument typical of lyric poetry and the symposium, the invention of which is attributed by the historian Neante of Cyzicus to Anacreon (as reported by Athenaeus). Satyrs, on the other hand, can play not only the aulos, favoured by the Dionysian world (in Euripides’ Bacchae, for example, the aulos is associated with the tympana), but also the stringed instruments of the Apollonian world. In the Hellenistic period, the statuary type of a satyr playing the krotala is also known (cf. Euripides’ Helen; in the Euripides’ satire drama Cyclops they are juxtaposed to Dionysus; their invention is mostly linked to the god himself and to the Mother of the gods) and the kroupezai (also kroupezion or kroupeza) or scabellum (or scabillum in Rome), a very special wooden shoe, which served to beat the rhythm and give signals of various kinds.
Towards the end of the 5th, beginning of the 4th century BC, Attic and then Magna Graecia iconography instead depicted Dionysus holding a lyre, very similar in appearance to Apollo. The bearded god dressed in elaborate robes is thus replaced by a youthful Dionysus, sometimes naked, a dispenser of abundance and harmony.

In the second half of the 5th century BC, and especially in the 4th century, the virtuosity of instrumentalists and singers, who had become true professionals, became increasingly important, as shown by the spread of images of musical performances. The protagonist of such a change was above all the versatile aulos that could best adapt to the demands of the so-called “new music”, a modern label used to describe the music of the period characterised by melodic and rhythmic modulations, oriental influences and great mimetic abilities (even in purely instrumental genres such as the Pythian nomos, an auletic form that recounted Apollo’s struggle with the serpent to take possession of the oracle at Delphi without the aid of words, cf. Pollux and Strabo). These artistic demands led to the modification of musical instruments in such a way that they could express the variety and complexity of the new musical language.
The oldest specimens of aulos found in various locations in Greece (Ephesus, Delos, Corinth, Athens, Brauron, Perachora) have five holes on the front side (one of which is the so-called vent-hole) and one hole on the back side, thus positioned to be closed by the thumb. Beginning in the late 5th century BC, the auloi acquired more holes and were equipped with a system of keys that could mechanically open and close these holes, thus allowing them to modulate between the various scales/harmoniai (Plato calls the instrument ‘panharmonic’): instruments of this kind are widely attested in archaeology. Promoter of this innovation was, according to some sources (Pausanias 4 and 9, Athenaeus 4 and 14), the pipe-player Pronomos of Thebes, depicted on a large Attic crater exported to Ruvo in Apulia. Another innovation was the application to some auloi of the syrinx mechanism, a hole placed near the mouth that allowed them to switch abruptly to the high register, much used in the Pythian nomos to imitate the hissing of the dying serpent.