Sleeping Silenos

Silenus, an old satyr who tutored Dionysus, is sleeping off the effects of a wine-drinking party. This Roman marble sculpture was adapted from a Greek original of c. 200 BC and used as a fountain. The Romans knew Dionysus, the god of wine, as Bacchus. Although initially worshipped in Rome, his cult was banned in 186 BC, because it was considered too promiscuous. However, a more respectable Bacchus reappeared about three hundred years later as the god of a mystery cult that promised his adherents eternal life after death. Roman artists copied and adapted Greek representations of Dionysus and his wild entourage for their own purposes, which ranged from religious cult statues to purely decorative garden sculpture.