backA favourite statue of ours (love his cheeky face) in Sydney's Botanic Garden, this photograph was taken during December 2002
[Bronze cast of Frank 'Guy' Lynch's 1924 sculpture modelled from the artist's brother, whose death inspired Kenneth Slessor to write his poem 'Five Bells', 1977]
The Satyr - Mountain spirits who represented the fertility of the wilderness. They appeared as men with the ears and tail of an ass. The goat-legged satyrs were known as Panes and the elder ones as Sileni. Playboy of the Hellenic world, pursuer of wood-land nymphs, the ancient Greeks considered satyrs to be comical, clumsy, stupid, etc.
They were also considered wild, dangerous and rambunctious, prone to drunkeness and leaping at... well, almost anything that they could make love to. When the Romans came along, they took satyrs and renamed them fauns.