SATYRS (SATYRI)  , in Greek mythology, spirits, half-man half-beast, that haunted the woods and mountains, companions of Pan and Dionysus . They are not mentioned in Homer; in a fragment of Hesiod they are called brothers of the mountain nymphs and Curetes, an idle and worthless race . Fancy represented them as strongly built, with flat noses, pointed ears, small horns growing out of the forehead, and the tails of horses or goats . They were a roguish but faint-hearted folk, lovers of wine and women, roaming to the music of pipes and cymbals, castanets and bagpipes, dancing with the nymphs or pursuing them and striking terror into men . They had a special form of dance calles Sikinnis . In earlier Greek art they appear as old and ugly, but in later art, especially in works of the Attic school, this savage character is softened into a more youthful and graceful aspect . There is a famous statue supposed to be a copy of a work of Praxiteles, representing a graceful satyr leaning against a tree with a flute in his hand . In Attica there was a species of drama known as the Satyric; it parodied the legends of gods and heroes, and the chorus was composed of satyrs . Euripides's play of the Cyclops is the only extant example of this kind of drama . The older satyrs were called Sileni, the younger Satyrisci . By the Roman poets they were often confounded with the Fauns . The symbol of the shy and timid satyr was the hare .

In some districts of

modern Greece the spirits known as Calicantsars offer points of resemblance to the ancient satyrs; they have goats' ears and the feet of asses or goats, are covered with hair, and love women and the dance . The herdsmen of Parnassus believe in a demon of the mountain who is lord'of hares and goats . In the Authorized Version of Isa. xiii . 21, xxxiv . 14 the word " satyr " is used to render the Hebrew se'irim, "hairy ones . A kind of demon or supernatural being known to Hebrew Satyr folk-lore as inhabiting waste places is meant; a practice mart of sacrificing to the se'irim is alluded to in Lev. xvii . 7, important. where E . V. has " devils." They correspond to the " shaggy demon of the mountain-pass " (azabb al-'akaba) of old Arab superstition .