Silenus was one of the satyrs, the wild spirits of the countryside who followed Dionysus with flutes and thyrsi, but he was older and greater than the rest. Some said he was the son of Pan, the goat-footed god of the wild, and a nymph; others that he was born from the earth itself in the age before the Olympians. When Dionysus was born from the thigh of Zeus, the king of the gods who rules from Olympus, Hera, the queen of the gods and Zeus's wife, threatened the infant's life. To protect him, Zeus entrusted the child to Hermes, the messenger god with the golden wand, who carried him to the nymphs of Mount Nysa in Thrace. There, Silenus became the child's foster father and tutor, teaching him the secrets of the vine, the art of the dance, and the music of the flute. When Dionysus grew to manhood and set out to conquer the world with wine and ecstasy, Silenus rode beside him on a donkey, for he was too old and too drunk to walk.

The most famous tale of Silenus begins in Phrygia, where King Midas ruled. One day, the king's servants found Silenus sleeping in the royal rose garden, snoring among the thorns with wine dripping from his beard. They bound him with garlands of flowers and brought him before the king. Midas, a follower of Dionysus who had been granted the gift of turning all he touched to gold, recognised the old satyr at once. Rather than punish him, Midas entertained Silenus for ten days and nights with feasts, music, and endless wine. On the eleventh day, Midas led the satyr back to Dionysus, who had been searching frantically for his lost companion. The god was so grateful that he offered Midas any reward he desired. Midas asked that everything he touched be turned to gold -- a gift that became a curse when his food, his drink, and even his daughter turned to metal in his hands.

Silenus was not merely a drunkard. When the wine cleared from his head, he possessed a prophetic wisdom that rivalled the oracles. Once, when captured by Phrygian peasants and brought before their king, he was asked what is the best thing for mankind. His answer was bleak: the best thing is never to have been born at all, and the second best is to die as soon as possible. This saying, called the Wisdom of Silenus, was recorded by Aristotle and quoted by Nietzsche two thousand years later. It expressed a pessimism at the heart of Greek thought, the belief that life is suffering and that consciousness itself is a burden. Yet Silenus also knew the remedy: wine, music, and the ecstatic abandonment of the self in the Bacchic revel. He taught that if life must be endured, it should be endured in divine madness, dancing until the self dissolves into the god.

In vase paintings, Silenus is shown dancing with his legs bent, his belly shaking, his bald head gleaming with sweat, and a wineskin slung over his shoulder. He is the comic foil to the god's divine majesty, the earthly counterweight to Dionysus's transcendence. When Euripides wrote The Bacchae, the old satyr needed no introduction. His image became a staple of Greek comedy and Roman satire, the fat drunk whose wisdom is hidden beneath wine. In Renaissance art, he appears in the paintings of Rubens and Titian, a gross and glorious figure of earthly pleasure. Every drunkard who speaks truth, every fool who turns out to be a prophet, and every philosophy that finds meaning in oblivion carries some trace of the old satyr who rode a donkey beside the god of wine.