Editing Silenus (section)

==Classical tradition==
{{Main article|Classical tradition}}

===In art===
In the [[Renaissance]], a [[court dwarf]] posed for the Silenus-like figure astride a tortoise at the entrance to the [[Boboli Gardens]], Florence. [[Peter Paul Rubens|Rubens]] painted [[:Image:Rubens Der trunkene Silen.jpg|''The Drunken Silenus'']] (1616–17), now conserved in the [[Alte Pinakothek]], Munich – the subject was also treated by [[Drunken Silenus (van Dyck)|van Dyck]] and [[Drunken Silenus (Ribera)|Ribera]].

During the late 19th century in Germany and Vienna, symbolism from ancient Greece was reinterpreted through a new [[Sigmund Freud|Freudian]] prism. Around the same time, [[Vienna Secession]] artist [[Gustav Klimt]] uses the irreverent, chubby-faced Silenus as a motif in several works to represent "buried instinctual forces".<ref>[[Carl Emil Schorske|Carl Schorske]] ''[[Fin-de-Siècle Vienna|Fin-de-Siècle Vienna – Politics and Culture]]'', 1980, page 221</ref>

<gallery mode="packed" heights="180">
Piero di Cosimo - Bacco scoperto miele.jpg|[[Piero di Cosimo]]: ''[[The Discovery of Honey by Bacchus]]'', {{circa|1499}} ([[Worcester Art Museum]], [[Worcester, Massachusetts]])
Piero di cosimo, disavventure di sileno.jpg|Piero di Cosimo: ''The Misfortunes of Silenus'', {{circa|1500}} ([[Fogg Museum]], [[Harvard University]])
Peter Paul Rubens - Sleeping Silenus.jpg|[[Peter Paul Rubens]] and [[David Rijckaert II]]: ''Sleeping Silenus'', {{circa|1611}} ([[Academy of Fine Arts Vienna]])
File:Jusepe de Ribera Drunken Silenus.jpg|[[Jusepe de Ribera]]: ''[[Drunken Silenus (Ribera)|Drunken Silenus]]'', 1626 ([[Museo di Capodimonte]], [[Naples]])
File:Boudard Gruppo del Sileno.jpg|Jean-Baptiste Boudard: ''Group of the Silen'', marble sculpture in the Ducal Park, [[Parma]], 1766
File:Dalou Triomphe de Silène CP.jpg|[[Jules Dalou]]: ''Triomphe de Silène'', bronze sculpture, [[Jardin du Luxembourg]], Paris, 1897
Silenius with Some Perfect Ladies of Phrygia Gave a Cocktail Party.jpg|Rupert Bunny: ''Silenus with Some Perfect Ladies of Phrygia Gave a Cocktail Party'', {{circa|1938}}
</gallery>

[[File:Silenus Braccio Nuovo Inv2292.jpg|thumb|Silenus with the child Dionysos, marble statue, Roman copy of the middle 2nd century AD after a Greek original by Lysippos ({{circa|300 BC}})]]

===In literature===
In ''[[Gargantua and Pantagruel]]'', [[Rabelais]] referred to Silenus as the foster father of Bacchus. In 1884 [[Thomas Woolner]] published a long narrative poem about Silenus. In [[Oscar Wilde]]'s 1890 novel ''[[The Picture of Dorian Gray]]'', Lord Henry Wooton turns praise of folly into a philosophy which mocks "slow Silenus" for being sober. In [[Brian Hooker (poet)|Brian Hooker]]'s 1923 English translation of [[Edmond Rostand]]'s ''[[Cyrano de Bergerac (play)|Cyrano de Bergerac]]'', Cyrano disparagingly refers to the ham actor Montfleury as "That Silenus who cannot hold his belly in his arms."

Professor Silenus is a character in [[Evelyn Waugh]]'s first novel, ''[[Decline and Fall]]''. He features as the disaffected architect of King's Thursday and provides the novel with one of its primary motifs. In the prophetic style of the traditional Greek Silenus he informs the protagonist that life is

<blockquote>a great disc of polished wood that revolves quickly. At first you sit down and watch the others. They are all trying to sit in the wheel, and they keep getting flung off, and that makes them laugh, and you laugh too. It's great fun... Of course at the very centre there's a point completely at rest, if one could only find it.... Lots of people just enjoy scrambling on and being whisked off and scrambling on again.... But the whole point about the wheel is that you needn't get on it at all.... People get hold of ideas about life, and that makes them think they've got to join in the game, even if they don't enjoy it. It doesn't suit everyone...<ref>Michael Gorra (Summer, 1988). [https://www.jstor.org/pss/1208437 "Through Comedy toward Catholicism: A Reading of Evelyn Waugh's Early Novels"]. ''Contemporary Literature'' '''29''' (2): 201–220.</ref></blockquote>

Silenus is one of the two main characters in [[Tony Harrison]]'s 1990 [[satyr play]] ''[[The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus]]'', partly based on [[Sophocles]]' play ''[[Ichneutae]]'' (5th century BC).