Gordian III - Roman Emperor: 238-244 A.D. -
Bronze 23mm (7.49 grams) of Deultum in Trace 238-244 A.D.
Reference: Moushmov 3718v
IMP C GORDIANVS PIVS AVG, radiate, draped and cuirassed bust right.
COL FL PAC DEVLT, Marsyas holding a wineskin, standing right and holding right hand up, based on the statue in the forum in Rome.

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In Greek mythology , a satyr  is one of a troop of male companions of Pan and Dionysus with goat-like (caprine) features, including a goat-tail, goat-like ears, and sometimes a goat-like phallus. In Roman Mythology there is a similar concept with goat-like features, the faun being half-man, half-goat. Greek-speaking Romans often use the Greek term saturos when referring to the Latin faunus, and eventually syncretize the two. The female "Satyresses" were a late invention of poets — that roamed the woods and mountains. In myths they are often associated with pipe-playing.

The satyrs' chief was Silenus , a minor deity associated (like Hermes and Priapus ) with fertility. These characters can be found in the only complete remaining satyr play , Cyclops, by Euripides , and the fragments of Sophocles ' Ichneutae (Tracking Satyrs). The satyr play was a short, lighthearted tailpiece performed after each trilogy of tragedies in Athenian festivals honoring Dionysus . There is not enough evidence to determine whether the satyr play regularly drew on the same myths as those dramatized in the tragedies that preceded. The groundbreaking tragic playwright Aeschylus is said to have been especially loved for his satyr plays, but none of them have survived.

Attic painted vases depict mature satyrs as being strongly built with flat noses, large pointed ears, long curly hair, and full beards , with wreaths of vine or ivy circling their balding heads. Satyrs often carry the thyrsus : the rod of Dionysus tipped with a pine cone.

Satyrs acquired their goat-like aspect through later Roman conflation with Faunus , a carefree Italic nature spirit of similar characteristics and identified with the Greek god Pan . Hence satyrs are most commonly described in Latin literature as having the upper half of a man and the lower half of a goat, with a goat's tail in place of the Greek tradition of horse-tailed satyrs; therefore, satyrs became nearly identical with fauns. Mature satyrs are often depicted in Roman art with goat's horns , while juveniles are often shown with bony nubs on their foreheads.

About Satyrs, Praxiteles gives a new interpretation on the subject of free and carefree life. Instead of an elf with pointed ears and repulsive goat hooves, we face a child of nature, pure, but tame and fearless and brutal instincts necessary to enable it to defend itself against threats, and survives even without the help of modern civilization . Above all though, the Satyr with flute has a small companion for him, shows the deep connection with nature, the soft whistle of the wind, the sound of gurgling water of the crystal spring, the birds singing, or perhaps the singing a melody of a human soul that feeds higher feelings. As Dionysiac creatures they are lovers of wine and women, and they are ready for every physical pleasure. They roam to the music of pipes (auloi), cymbals , castanets , and bagpipes , and they love to dance with the nymphs (with whom they are obsessed, and whom they often pursue), and have a special form of dance called sikinnis . Because of their love of wine, they are often represented holding wine cups, and they appear often in the decorations on wine cups.

In Greek mythology , the satyr Marsyas (Ancient Greek: Μαρσύας) is a central figure in two stories involving death: in one, he picked up the double flute (aulos) that had been abandoned by Athena and played it; in the other, he challenged Apollo to a contest of music and lost his hide and life. In Antiquity , literary sources often emphasise the hubris of Marsyas and the justice of his punishment.

Marsyas under Apollo's punishment; İstanbul Archaeology Museum .

In one conjunction Rhea /Cybele, and his episodes are situated by the mythographers in Celaenae (or Kelainai) in Phrygia (today, the town of Dinar in Turkey ), at the main source of the Meander (the river Menderes ).

When a genealogy was applied to him, Marsyas was the son of Olympus (son of Heracles and Euboea , daughter of Thespius ), or of Oeagrus , or of Hyagnis. Olympus was, alternatively, said to be Marsyas' son or pupil.

The finding of the aulos

Marsyas was an expert player on the double-piped reed instrument known as the aulos . In the anecdotal account, he found the instrument on the ground where it had been tossed aside with a curse by its inventor, Athena , after the other gods made sport of how her cheeks bulged when she played. The 5th-century poet Telestes doubted that virginal Athena could have been motivated by such vanity, but in the 2nd century AD, on the Acropolis of Athens itself, the voyager Pausanias saw "a statue of Athena striking Marsyas the Silenos for taking up the flutes that the goddess wished to be cast away for good."

Marsyas and Apollo

In the contest between Apollo and Marsyas, the terms stated that the winner could treat the defeated party any way he wanted. Since the contest was judged by the Muses , Marsyas naturally lost and was flayed alive in a cave near Celaenae for his hubris to challenge a god. Apollo then nailed Marsyas' skin to a pine tree, near Lake Aulocrene (the Turkish Karakuyu Gölü), which Strabo noted was full of the reeds from which the pipes were fashioned. Diodorus Siculus felt that Apollo must have repented this "excessive" deed, and said that he had laid aside his lyre for a while, but Karl Kerenyi observes of the flaying of Marsyas' "shaggy hide: a penalty which will not seem especially cruel if one assumes that Marsyas' animal guise was merely a masquerade." Classical Greeks were unaware of such shamanistic overtones, and the Flaying of Marsyas became a theme for painting and sculpture. His brothers, nymphs, gods and goddesses mourned his death, and their tears, according to Ovid's Metamorphoses , were the source of the river Marsyas in Phrygia , which joins the Meander near Celaenae, where Herodotus reported that the flayed skin of Marsyas was still to be seen, and Ptolemy Hephaestion recorded a "festival of Apollo, where the skins of all those victims one has flayed are offered to the god." Plato was of the opinion that it had been made into a wineskin .

There are alternative sources of this story which state that it wasn't actually Marsyas who challenged Apollo but Apollo who challenged Marsyas because of his jealousy of the satyr's ability to play the flute. Therefore, hubris would not necessarily be a theme in this tale; rather the capricious weakness of the Gods and their equally weak nature in comparison to humans.

There are several versions of the contest; according to Hyginus, Marsyas was departing as victor after the first round, when Apollo, turning his lyre upside down, played the same tune. This was something that Marsyas could not do with his flute. According to another version Marsyas was defeated when Apollo added his voice to the sound of the lyre. Marsyas protested, arguing that the skill with the instrument was to be compared, not the voice. However, Apollo replied that when Marsyas blew into the pipes, he was doing almost the same thing himself. The Muses supported Apollo's claim, leading to his victory.

Ovid touches upon the theme of Marsyas twice, very briefly telling the tale in Metamorphoses vi.383-400, where he concentrates on the tears shed into the river Marsyas, and making an allusion in Fasti , vi.649-710, where Ovid's primary focus is on the aulos and the roles of flute-players rather than Marsyas, whose name is not actually mentioned.

The wise Marsyas

The hubristic Marsyas in surviving literary sources eclipses the figure of the wise Marsyas suggested in a few words by the Hellenistic historian Diodorus Siculus , who refers to Marsyas as admired for his intelligence (sunesis) and self-control (sophrosune), not qualities found by Greeks in ordinary satyrs. In Plato 's Symposium, when Alcibiades likens Socrates to Marsyas, it is this aspect of the wise satyr that is intended. Jocelyn Small identifies in Marsyas an artist great enough to challenge a god, who can only be defeated through a ruse. A prominent statue of Marsyas as a wise old silenus stood near the Roman Forum .

This is the Marsyas of the journal Marsyas: Studies in the History of Art, published since 1941 by students of the Institute of Art, New York University .

Prophecy and free speech at Rome

Among the Romans, Marsyas was cast as the inventor of augury and a proponent of free speech (the philosophical concept παρρησία, "parrhesia") and "speaking truth to power." The earliest known representation of Marsyas at Rome stood for at least 300 years in the Roman Forum near or in the comitium , the space for political activity. He was depicted as a silen , carrying a wineskin on his left shoulder and raising his right arm. The statue was regarded as an indicium libertatis, a symbol of liberty, and was associated with demonstrations of the plebs , or common people. It often served as a sort of kiosk upon which invective verse was posted.

Marsyas served as a minister for Dionysus or Bacchus, who was identified by the Romans with their Father Liber , one of three deities in the Aventine Triad , along with Ceres and Libera (identified with Persephone ). These gods were regarded as concerning themselves specially with the welfare of the plebs. The freedom that the ecstasies of Dionysian worship represented took on a political meaning in Rome as the libertas that distinguished the free from the enslaved. The Liberalia , celebrated March 17 in honor of Liber, was a time of speaking freely, as the poet and playwright Gnaeus Naevius declared: "At the Liberalia games we enjoy free speech." Naevius, however, was arrested for his invectives against the powerful.

Marsyas was sometimes considered a king and contemporary of Faunus , portrayed by Vergil as a native Italian ruler at the time of Aeneas . Servius , in his commentary on the Aeneid , says that Marsyas sent Faunus envoys who showed techniques of augury to the Italians. The plebeian gens of the Marcii claimed that they were descended from Marsyas. Gaius Marcius Rutilus , who rose to power from the plebs , is credited with having dedicated the statue that stood in the Roman forum, most likely in 294 BC, when he became the first plebeian censor and added the cognomen Censorinus to the family name . Marcius Rutilus was also among the first plebeian augurs, co-opted into their college in 300, and so the mythical teacher of augury was an apt figure to represent him.^[28]

The Torment of Marsyas (Le Supplice de Marsyas), Louvre Museum , Paris .

In 213 BC, two years after suffering one of the worst military defeats in its history at the Battle of Cannae , Rome was in the grip of a reactionary fear that led to excessive religiosity . The senate , alarmed that its authority was being undermined by "prophets and sacrificers" in the forum, began a program of suppression. Among the literature confiscated was an "authentic" prophecy calling for the institution of games in the Greek manner for Apollo , which the senate and elected officials would control. The prophecy was attributed to Gnaeus Marcius, reputed to be a descendant of Marsyas. The games were duly carried out, but the Romans failed to bring the continuing wars with the Carthaginians to a victorious conclusion until they heeded a second prophecy and imported the worship of the Phrygian Great Mother , whose song Marsyas was said to have composed; the song had further relevance in that it was also credited by the Phrygians with protecting them from invaders. The power relations between Marsyas and Apollo reflected the continuing Struggle of the Orders between the elite and the common people, expressed in political terms by optimates and populares . The arrest of Naevius for exercising free speech also took place during this period.

Another descendant of Marcius Rutilus, L. Marcius Censorinus , issued coins depicting the statue of Marsyas, at a time when the augural college was the subject of political controversy during the Sullan civil wars of the 80s BC On the coin, Marsyas wears a Phrygian cap or pilleus , an emblem of liberty. This Marcius Censorinus was killed by Sulla and his head displayed outside Praeneste . Sulla's legislative program attempted to curtail power invested in the people, particularly restricting the powers of the plebeian tribunes , and to restore the dominance of the senate and the privileges of patricians .

Marsyas was also claimed as the eponym of the Marsi , one of the ancient peoples of Italy.^[34] The Social War of 91–88 BC , in which the Italian peoples fought to advance their status as citizens under Roman rule, is sometimes called the Marsic War from the leadership of the Marsi. The Roman coloniae Paestum and Alba Fucens , along with other Italian cities, set up their own statues of Marsyas as assertions of their political status.

During the Principate , Marsyas became a subversive symbol in opposition to Augustus , whose propaganda systematically associated him with the silens’ torturer Apollo. Augustus's daughter Julia held nocturnal assemblies at the statue, and crowned it to defy her father. The poet Ovid, who was ultimately exiled by Augustus, twice tells the story of Marsyas's flaying by Apollo, in his epic Metamorphoses and in the Fasti , the calendrical poem left unfinished at his death. Although the immediate cause of Ovid's exile remains one of literary history's great mysteries, Ovid himself says that a "poem and transgression" were contributing factors; his poetry tests the boundaries of permissible free speech during Rome's transition from republic to imperial monarchy .

Pliny indicates that in the 1st century AD, the painting Marsyas religatus ("Marsyas Bound"), by Zeuxis of Heraclea , could be viewed at the Temple of Concordia in Rome.^[39] The goddess Concordia , like the Greek Harmonia , was a personification of both musical harmony as it was understood in antiquity , and of social order , as expressed by Cicero 's phrase concordia ordinum. The apparent incongruity of exhibiting the tortured silen in a temple devoted to harmony has been interpreted in modern scholarship as a warning against criticizing authority.

In later art

Athena and Marsyas: the discovery of the aulos in an imaginative recreation of a lost bronze by Myron (Botanic Garden, Copenhagen )

In the art of later periods, allegory is applied to gloss the somewhat ambivalent morality of the flaying of Marsyas. Marsyas is often seen with a flute , pan pipes or even bagpipes . Apollo is shown with his lyre, or sometimes a harp, viol or other stringed instrument. The contest of Apollo and Marsyas is seen as symbolizing the eternal struggle between the Apollonian and Dionysian aspects of human nature.

Paintings taking Marsyas as a subject include "Apollo and Marsyas" by Michelangelo Anselmi (c. 1492 - c.1554), "The Flaying of Marsyas" by Jusepe de Ribera (1591–1652), "The Flaying of Marsyas" by Titian (c. 1570-1576) and "Apollo and Marsyas" by Bartolomeo Manfredi (St. Louis Art Museum).

James Merrill based a poem, "Marsyas", on this myth; it appears in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace (1959). Zbigniew Herbert and Nadine Sabra Meyer each titled poems "Apollo and Marsyas". Following Ovid's retelling of the Apollo and Marsyas tale, the poem "The Flaying Of Marsyas" features in Robin Robertson's 1997 collection "a painted field".

In 2002, British artist Anish Kapoor created and installed an enormous sculpture in London's Tate Modern called "Marsyas". The work, consisting of three huge steel rings and a single red PVC membrane, was impossible to view as a whole because of its size, but had obvious anatomical connotations.

There is a bridge built towards the end of the Roman period on the river Marsyas that is still called by the satyr's name, Marsiyas.

Marcus Antonius Gordianus Pius (January 20, 225 – February 11 , 244 ), known in English as Gordian III, was Roman Emperor from 238 to 244. Gordian was the son of Antonia Gordiana and his father was an unnamed Roman Senator who died before 238. Antonia Gordiana was the daughter of Emperor Gordian I and younger sister of Emperor Gordian II . Very little is known on his early life before becoming Roman Emperor. Gordian had assumed the name of his maternal grandfather in 238.

Following the murder of emperor Alexander Severus in Moguntiacum (modern Mainz ), the capital of the Roman province Germania Inferior , Maximinus Thrax was acclaimed emperor, despite strong opposition of the Roman senate and the majority of the population. In response to what was considered in Rome as a rebellion, Gordian's grandfather and uncle, Gordian I and II, were proclaimed joint emperors in the Africa Province . Their revolt was suppressed within a month by Cappellianus, governor of Numidia and a loyal supporter of Maximinus Thrax. The elder Gordians died, but public opinion cherished their memory as peace loving and literate men, victims of Maximinus' oppression.

Meanwhile, Maximinus was on the verge of marching on Rome and the Senate elected Pupienus and Balbinus as joint emperors. These senators were not popular men and the population of Rome was still shocked by the elder Gordian's fate, so that the Senate decided to take the teenager Gordian, rename him Marcus Antonius Gordianus as his grandfather, and raise him to the rank of Caesar and imperial heir. Pupienus and Balbinus defeated Maximinus, mainly due to the defection of several legions , namely the Parthica II who assassinated Maximinus. But their joint reign was doomed from the start with popular riots, military discontent and even an enormous fire that consumed Rome in June 238. On July 29 , Pupienus and Balbinus were killed by the Praetorian guard and Gordian proclaimed sole emperor.

Rule

Due to Gordian's age, the imperial government was surrendered to the aristocratic families, who controlled the affairs of Rome through the senate. In 240, Sabinianus revolted in the African province, but the situation was dealt quickly. In 241, Gordian was married to Furia Sabinia Tranquillina , daughter of the newly appointed praetorian prefect, Timesitheus . As chief of the Praetorian guard and father in law of the emperor, Timesitheus quickly became the de facto ruler of the Roman empire.

In the 3rd century, the Roman frontiers weakened against the Germanic tribes across the Rhine and Danube , and the Sassanid kingdom across the Euphrates increased its own attacks. When the Persians under Shapur I invaded Mesopotamia , the young emperor opened the doors of the Temple of Janus for the last time in Roman history, and sent a huge army to the East. The Sassanids were driven back over the Euphrates and defeated in the Battle of Resaena (243). The campaign was a success and Gordian, who had joined the army, was planning an invasion of the enemy's territory, when his father-in-law died in unclear circumstances. Without Timesitheus, the campaign, and the emperor's security, were at risk.

Marcus Julius Philippus, also known as Philip the Arab , stepped in at this moment as the new Praetorian Prefect and the campaign proceeded. In the beginning of 244, the Persians counter-attacked. Persian sources claim that a battle was fought (Battle of Misiche) near modern Fallujah (Iraq) and resulted in a major Roman defeat and the death of Gordian III^[1]. Roman sources do not mention this battle and suggest that Gordian died far away, upstream of the Euphrates. Although ancient sources often described Philip, who succeeded Gordian as emperor, as having murdered Gordian at Zaitha (Qalat es Salihiyah), the cause of Gordian's death is unknown.

Gordian's youth and good nature, along with the deaths of his grandfather and uncle and his own tragic fate at the hands of another usurper, granted him the everlasting esteem of the Romans. Despite the opposition of the new emperor, Gordian was deified by the Senate after his death, in order to appease the population and avoid riots.