sileni

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si·le·ni

 (sī-lē′nī)
n.
Plural of silenus.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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References in classic literature
They rank neither with mortals nor with immortals: long indeed do they live, eating heavenly food and treading the lovely dance among the immortals, and with them the Sileni and the sharp-eyed Slayer of Argus mate in the depths of pleasant caves; but at their birth pines or high-topped oaks spring up with them upon the fruitful earth, beautiful, flourishing trees, towering high upon the lofty mountains (and men call them holy places of the immortals, and never mortal lops them with the axe); but when the fate of death is near at hand, first those lovely trees wither where they stand, and the bark shrivels away about them, and the twigs fall down, and at last the life of the Nymph and of the tree leave the light of the sun together.
Some Sileni of the throng sat on benches and hay-trusses by the wall; and one of them recognized her.
Riprendendo l'idea erasmiana dei Sileni di Alcibiade, Bruno specifica: i veri Sileni positivi sono Cristo, Giovan Battista; autentici Sileni alla rovescia sono San Paolo e Martin Lutero.
Bangkok, Thailand, September 26, 2017 --(PR.com)-- 137 Pillars Suites & Residences Bangkok invites all wine lovers to experience the award winning and new releases of the exceptional vintage wine selections from Sileni Estate Vineyard, located in Hawke's Bay, New Zealand's oldest wine region, together with a delicious tapas menu and a very special guest from Sileni Estate.
Confirmed individual exhibitors include Angus Dundee Distillers, Boutinot, Cognac Guy Lheraud, Hammeken Cellars, Jackson Family Wines, Sileni Estates and Villa Domizia Quattroerre Company.
As Nussbaum writes: Socrates, [Alcibiades] tells us, is like one of those toy Sileni made by craftsmen.
The theme of uncomely appearance falls into the paradigm of deceptive exterior versus valuable interior already set by Rabelais in the incipit of his prologue to Gargantua with the ugly Socrates "dissimulant son divin scavoir" ("dissembling his divine learning") and the unusual Sileni, those frivolously decorated boxes that contain precious drugs and gems (3; Frame 3).
Decorative Silenus-figures recall Bacchus's tutor and also bring to mind the ambivalent appearance of Socrates who, according to Erasmus in his "Sileni Alcibiadis" (1517), is outwardly ugly and misshapen, but who is inwardly prudent and wise.
Thomas More: Utopia, with Erasmus's The Sileni of Alcibiades.
Or qua se vedrete talvolta certi men gravi propositi, che par che debbano temere di farsi innante alla superciliosa censura di Catone, non dubitate: perche questi Catoni saranno molto ciechi e pazzi, se non sapran scuoprir quel ch'e ascosto sotto questi Sileni. Se vi occoreno tanti e diversi propositi attaccati insieme, che non par che qua sia una scienza, ma dove sa di dialogo, dove di comedia, dove di tragedia, dove di poesia, dove d'oratoria, dove lauda, dove vitupera, dove dimostra et insegna, dove ha or del fisico, or del matematico, or del morale, or del logico; in conclusione, non e sorte di scienza che non v'abbia di suoi stracci.
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