Votive offering
A votive deposit or votive offering is one or more objects displayed or deposited, without the intention of recovery or use, in a sacred place for broadly religious purposes. Such items are a feature of modern and ancient societies and are made in order to gain favor with supernatural forces. In buddhism Votive offerings as construction of stupas was a prevalent and holy practice in ancient india which can be observed in ruins of vikramshila university, the modern construction practice called topping out can be considered as an example of a votive practice that has very ancient roots. In Europe, votive deposits are known from as early as the Neolithic, with polished axe hoards, high status artifacts such as armor and weaponry and cult symbols, various treasures and animals were common offerings in antiquity. The votive offerings were sacrificed and buried or more commonly cast into bodies of water or peat bogs, in certain cases entire ships have been sacrificed, as in the Danish bog Nydam Mose.
Often all the objects in a ritual hoard are broken, possibly killing the objects to put even further beyond utilitarian use before deposition. The purposeful discarding of valuable items such as swords and spearheads is thought to have had ritual overtones, the items have since been discovered in rivers and present or former wetlands by construction workers, peat diggers, metal-detectorists, members of the public and archaeologists. In Mesoamerica, votive deposits have been recovered from the Olmec site of El Manati, in archaeology, votive deposits differ from hoards in that although they may contain similar items, votive deposits were not intended for recovery. Some archaeologists have recovered some votive offerings in ancient Sparta from the 5th century BC and these votive offerings give evidence to the presence of literacy in Spartan culture. One piece of pottery was found that may have had measurement signs on it and this would indicate an everyday literacy among the Spartans if this is true.
Unfortunately, scholars have not recovered any other piece of pottery with an inscription to support that single find. The 13 Ancient Votive Stones of Pesaro were unearthed in 1737 on a local Pesaro farm in the Province of Pesaro e Urbino and they are inscribed with the names of various Roman gods such as APOLLO, MAT-MATVTA, SALVS, FIDE, and IVNONII. A curse tablet or defixio is a sheet of tin or lead on which a message wishing misfortune upon someone else was inscribed. The two largest concentrations are from the springs at Aquae Sulis, where 130 examples are recorded, and at Uley. The usual form of divine invocation was through prayer, many unrecovered ancient votive offerings are threatened in todays world, especially those submerged in wetlands or other bodies of water. Wetlands and other aquatic sites often protect and preserve materials for thousands of years, therefore many remaining objects are in danger of oxidation and eventual rapid deterioration. The Torah makes provision for free-will offerings which may be made by any individual.
These are different from votive offerings which are linked to a vow. cf Leviticus 22.23 where the Hebrew root letters for an offering are נדב
Curse tablet
These texts were typically scratched on very thin sheets of lead in tiny letters, often rolled, folded, or pierced with nails. Tablets were used for spells and, when used in this manner they were placed inside the home of the desired target. They are sometimes discovered along with dolls or figurines, which may be pierced by nails. The figurines resembled the target and often had both their feet and hands bound, Curse tablets included hair or pieces of clothing. This is especially the case in love spells, which calls for “hair from the head of the love target. ”Some love spells have even been discovered “folded around some hair, ” probably to bind the spell itself. The texts on curse tablets are typically addressed to infernal or liminal gods such as Pluto, Charon and Persephone, sometimes via the mediation of a dead person. Some texts do not invoke the gods, but merely list the targets of the curse, some tablets are inscribed with nothing more than the names of the targets, leading to the supposition that an oral spell may have accompanied the manufacture of the curse.
The texts on the tablets were not always curses, tablets were used to help the dead. Many of those discovered at Athens refer to cases and curse the opposing litigant, asking that he botch his performance in court, forget his words, become dizzy. Others include erotic binding-spells, spells ranged against thieves, and business, in 1979/1980, the Bath curse tablets were found at the site of Aquae Sulis. The curses in the 130 tablets mostly concerned the theft of clothes whilst the victim was bathing, voces mysticae are words not immediately recognizable as belonging to any known language, and are commonly associated with curse tablets. Anthropologist Stanely J. Tambiah proposed in 1968 that such words were intended to represent the language that demons can understand, Scholars from antiquity, like Christian philosopher Clement of Alexandria, believed that human language was not appropriate for addressing the gods. Therefore, some of the inscriptions of these tablets are not easily translatable, because they were invocations.
Magic was used by the people of the Greco-Roman society to control the natural world, all members of society, regardless of economic or class status, used such magic. There have been roughly 1600 curse tablets discovered, mostly written in Greek, of those tablets,220 were located in Attica. The first set of tablets to be discovered came from the city of Selinus in Sicily. A total of twenty-two tablets were found, mostly coming from the fifth century. When research first began on the topic of curse tablets, there was doubt that these types of artifacts truly came from ancient Greek society
Pan (god)
In Greek religion and mythology, Pan is the god of the wild and flocks, nature of mountain wilds and rustic music, and companion of the nymphs. His name originates within the ancient Greek language, from the word paein, meaning to pasture and he has the hindquarters and horns of a goat, in the same manner as a faun or satyr. With his homeland in rustic Arcadia, he is recognized as the god of fields and wooded glens, because of this, Pan is connected to fertility. The ancient Greeks considered Pan to be the god of theatrical criticism, in the 18th and 19th centuries, Pan became a significant figure in the Romantic movement of western Europe and in the 20th-century Neopagan movement. Many modern scholars consider Pan to be derived from the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European god *Péh2usōn, the Hindu god Pushan is believed to be a cognate of Pan. The connection between Pan and Pushan was first identified in 1924 by the German scholar Hermann Collitz, the name Pan is probably a cognate with the Greek word πάειν, meaning to pasture, which shares an origin with the modern English word pasture.
In his earliest appearance in literature, Pindars Pythian Ode iii,78, Pan is associated with a mother goddess, perhaps Rhea or Cybele, Pindar refers to virgins worshipping Cybele and Pan near the poets house in Boeotia. In some early sources such as Pindar, his father is Apollo via Penelope, Cicero and Hyginus all make Hermes and Penelope his parents. Pausanias 8.12.5 records the story that Penelope had in fact been unfaithful to her husband, other sources report that Penelope slept with all 108 suitors in Odysseus absence, and gave birth to Pan as a result. This myth reflects the folk etymology that equates Pans name with the Greek word for all, in the mystery cults of the highly syncretic Hellenistic era, Pan is made cognate with Phanes/Protogonos, Zeus and Eros. Accounts of Pans genealogy are so varied that it must lie buried deep in mythic time, like other nature spirits, Pan appears to be older than the Olympians, if it is true that he gave Artemis her hunting dogs and taught the secret of prophecy to Apollo.
Pan might be multiplied as the Pans or the Paniskoi, Kerenyi notes from scholia that Aeschylus in Rhesus distinguished between two Pans, one the son of Zeus and twin of Arcas, and one a son of Cronus. In the retinue of Dionysos, or in depictions of landscapes, there appeared not only a great Pan, but little Pans, Paniskoi. The worship of Pan began in Arcadia which was always the seat of his worship. Arcadia was a district of people, culturally separated from other Greeks. Greek hunters used to scourge the statue of the god if they had been disappointed in the chase. Being a rustic god, Pan was not worshipped in temples or other built edifices and these are often referred to as the Cave of Pan. In the 4th century BC Pan was depicted on the coinage of Pantikapaion, the goat-god Aegipan was nurtured by Amalthea with the infant Zeus in Athens
Dessert spoon
A dessert spoon is a spoon designed specifically for eating dessert and sometimes used for soup or cereals. Similar in size to a soup spoon but with an rather than round bowl. In most traditional table settings, the spoon is placed above the plate or bowl, separated from the rest of the cutlery. As a unit of measure, a level dessertspoon equals two teaspoons, or 10 milliliters, whereas a tablespoon is three teaspoons,15 milliliters or one half ounce. In Australia a tablespoon is two dessertspoons, or 20 milliliters, which is the old British standard, for dry ingredients, a rounded or heaped teaspoonful is often specified instead. As a unit of Apothecary measure, the dessert-spoon was an unofficial, in the USA and pre-1824 England, the fluid ounce was 1⁄128 of a Queen Anne wine gallon thus making the dessert-spoon approximately 7.39 cc. In both the British and American variants of the Apothecaries system, two tea-spoons make a dessert-spoon, while two make a table-spoon. In pharmaceutical Latin, the Apothecaries dessert-spoon is known as cochleare medium, med. or less frequently coch. med. as opposed to the tea-spoon and table-spoon.
Silver place settings, from Butlers Guild
Ichthys
The ichthys or ichthus, from the Greek ikhthýs is a symbol consisting of two intersecting arcs, the ends of the right side extending beyond the meeting point so as to resemble the profile of a fish. Now known colloquially as the sign of the fish or the Jesus fish, the first appearances of the ichthys symbol in Christian art and literature date to the 2nd century AD. The symbols use among Christians had become popular by the late 2nd century, the symbolism of the fish itself may have its origins in pre-Christian religious imagery. For example, Orpheus was depicted as a fisher of men as early as the 3rd or fourth century BC, the fish was used as a symbol in a number of other near-eastern religions as well, often as a sacred food. The fish was sacred to the goddess Atargatis, for example, Fish were only allowed to be eaten by priests during rituals devoted to Atargatis, in the belief that they represented her body. ΙΧΘΥΣ, or ΙΧΘΥC with lunate sigma is a backronym/acrostic for Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, Θεοῦ Υἱός, Σωτήρ, contemporary Koine, iota is the first letter of Iēsous, Greek for Jesus.
Chi is the first letter of Christos, Greek for anointed, theta is the first letter of Theou, Greek for Gods, the genitive case of Θεóς, Greek for God. Upsilon is the first letter of yios, Greek for Son, sigma is the first letter of sōtēr, Greek for Savior. Augustine quotes an ancient text from the Sibylline oracles whose verses are an acrostic of the generating sentence, a fourth century A. D. adaptation of ichthys as a wheel contains the letters ΙΧΘΥΣ superimposed such that the result resembles an eight-spoked wheel. Fish are mentioned and given symbolic meaning several times in the Gospels, several of Jesus twelve Apostles were fishermen. He commissions them with the words I will make you fishers of men, having resurrected, Jesus is offered some grilled fish and honeycomb in Luke 24, 41-43. At the feeding of the five thousand, a boy is brought to Jesus with five small loaves, the question is asked, But what are they, among so many. Jesus multiplies the loaves and fish to feed the multitude, in John 21,11, it is related that the disciples fished all night but caught nothing.
Jesus instructed them to cast the nets on the side of the boat. In Matthew 17, 24-27, upon being asked if his Teacher pays the temple tax, Christ tells Peter to go to the water and cast a line, saying that a coin sufficient for both of them will be found in the fishs mouth. Peter does this and finds the coin, the fish is used by Jesus to describe the Sign of Jonah. This is symbolic of the resurrection of Christ upon which the entire Christian faith is based, if the stranger drew the other arc, both believers knew they were in good company. Current bumper-sticker and business-card uses of the fish back to this practice
Apotropaic magic
Apotropaic magic is a type of magic intended to turn away harm or evil influences, as in deflecting misfortune or averting the evil eye. Apotropaic observances may be practiced out of superstition or out of tradition, as in good luck charm, amulets. The Greeks made offerings to the gods, chthonic deities and heroes who grant safety. Apotropaic magical rituals were practiced throughout the ancient Near East and Egypt, fearsome deities were invoked via ritual in order to protect individuals by warding away evil spirits. In ancient Egypt, these rituals were embodied by the deity who personified magic itself. The two gods most frequently invoked in these rituals were the hippopotamusiform fertility goddess, objects were often used in these rituals in order to facilitate communication with the gods. One of the most commonly found magical objects, the ivory apotropaic wand and these wands were used to protect expectant mothers and children from malevolent forces, and were adorned with processions of apotropaic solar deities.
Likewise, protective amulets bearing the likenesses of gods and goddesses like Taweret were commonly worn, water came to be used frequently in ritual as well, wherein libation vessels in the shape of Taweret were used to pour healing water over an individual. The full figure of the Gorgon holds the apex of the oldest remaining Greek temple where she is flanked by two lionesses, the Gorgon head was mounted on the aegis and shield of Athena. Eyes were often painted to ward off the evil eye, an exaggerated apotropaic eye or a pair of eyes were painted on Greek drinking vessels called kylikes from the 6th century BC. The exaggerated eyes may have prevented evil spirits from entering the mouth while drinking, fishing boats in some parts of the Mediterranean region still have stylised eyes painted on the bows. A Turkish budget airline, Fly Havayolu Taşımacılık A. Ş. had adopted the symbol as a motif for the vertical stabilizer of its aeroplanes. The Yiddish expression, Kain ein horeh is apotropaic in nature, people believed that the doorways and windows of buildings were particularly vulnerable to the entry or passage of evil.
On churches and castles, gargoyles or other grotesque faces and figures such as sheela na gigs and hunky punks were carved to frighten away witches, figures may have been carved at fireplaces or chimneys, in some cases, simple geometric or letter carvings were used for these. When a wooden post was used to support a chimney opening, to discourage witchcraft, rowan wood may have been chosen for the post or mantel. Similarly the grotesque faces carved into pumpkin lanterns at Halloween are meant to avert evil, this season was Samhain, as a time between times, it was believed to be a period when souls of the dead and other dangerous spirits walked the earth. Many European peoples had such associations with the following the harvest in the fall. Mirrors and other objects were believed to deflect the evil eye
Thetford
Thetford is a market town and civil parish in the Breckland district of Norfolk, England. It is on the A11 road between Norwich and London, just south of Thetford Forest, after World War II Thetford became an ‘overspill town’ taking people from London, as a result of which its population increased substantially. The civil parish, covering an area of 29.55 km2, has a population of 24,340, the Iceni were a Celtic tribe living in Norfolk and parts of Cambridgeshire. Archaeological evidence suggests that Thetford was an important tribal centre during the late Iron Age, a ceremonial grove was uncovered there during excavations. In 1979, a hoard of Romano-British metalwork, known as the Thetford treasure was located just outside Thetford and they are currently on display and under curation at the British Museum. Thetford, an important crossing of the River Little Ouse, draws its name from the Anglo-Saxon Theodford or peoples ford, the nearby River Thet was named after the town. On 20 November 869, Edmund the Martyr – the last native King of the East Angles – was killed in East Anglia by Vikings, for a time Edmund was England’s patron saint.
The Domesday Book lists William of Bello Fargo as the Bishop of Thetford in 1085, Castle Hill, to the south-east of the town centre, is a Norman motte though no trace remains of the castle which once surmounted it. The mound is open to the public, and provides excellent views of the town from its summit and it is in a public park, near the Three Nuns Bridges and close to the town centre overlooking the rivers. Thetford contains the ruins of a 12th-century Cluniac priory, Thetford Priory, open to the public, was closed during the Reformation. Both the Priory and the Bell Inn, in Thetford, were featured for their alleged hauntings on the television series Ghosthunters, the Black Horse public house dates from the mid 18th century, and is grade II listed. The Norfolk Lent Assizes were held at Thetford from 1264 because there was only one Assize for both Norfolk and Suffolk, being close to the border between the two, was convenient for both. However, after pressure, an Act of Parliament was passed in 1832 to transfer them to Norwich.
There had been pressure to do so for many years, from the 1950s Thetford became a London overspill town. In 1953 the Thetford Borough Council approached the London County Council to become part of the expansion scheme. An agreement was signed in 1957 and work began on new housing estates to accommodate 5,000 Londoners, in 1960 another 5,000 Londoners moved to Thetford increasing the population to about 17,000 people. An additional 1,500 houses were built by 1965, development shifted to the Abbey Farm estate to the north of the river, construction of which started in 1967, with 1,000 houses, public open spaces and footpaths. The British Trust for Ornithology moved its headquarters into the former Nunnery, south of the town centre, Thetford was the birthplace of Thomas Paine and his statue stands on King Street, holding a quill and his book Rights of Man, upside down
Greeks
The Greeks or Hellenes are an ethnic group native to Greece, southern Albania, Sicily, Egypt and, to a lesser extent, other countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. They form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world, many of these regions coincided to a large extent with the borders of the Byzantine Empire of the late 11th century and the Eastern Mediterranean areas of ancient Greek colonization. The cultural centers of the Greeks have included Athens, Alexandria, most ethnic Greeks live nowadays within the borders of the modern Greek state and Cyprus. The Greek genocide and population exchange between Greece and Turkey nearly ended the three millennia-old Greek presence in Asia Minor, other longstanding Greek populations can be found from southern Italy to the Caucasus and southern Russia and Ukraine and in the Greek diaspora communities in a number of other countries. Today, most Greeks are officially registered as members of the Greek Orthodox Church, the Greeks speak the Greek language, which forms its own unique branch within the Indo-European family of languages, the Hellenic.
They are part of a group of ethnicities, described by Anthony D. Smith as an archetypal diaspora people. Both migrations occur at incisive periods, the Mycenaean at the transition to the Late Bronze Age, the Mycenaeans quickly penetrated the Aegean Sea and, by the 15th century BC, had reached Rhodes, Crete and the shores of Asia Minor. Around 1200 BC, the Dorians, another Greek-speaking people, followed from Epirus, the Dorian invasion was followed by a poorly attested period of migrations, appropriately called the Greek Dark Ages, but by 800 BC the landscape of Archaic and Classical Greece was discernible. The Greeks of classical antiquity idealized their Mycenaean ancestors and the Mycenaean period as an era of heroes, closeness of the gods. The Homeric Epics were especially and generally accepted as part of the Greek past, as part of the Mycenaean heritage that survived, the names of the gods and goddesses of Mycenaean Greece became major figures of the Olympian Pantheon of antiquity. The ethnogenesis of the Greek nation is linked to the development of Pan-Hellenism in the 8th century BC, the works of Homer and Hesiod were written in the 8th century BC, becoming the basis of the national religion, ethos and mythology.
The Oracle of Apollo at Delphi was established in this period, the classical period of Greek civilization covers a time spanning from the early 5th century BC to the death of Alexander the Great, in 323 BC. It is so named because it set the standards by which Greek civilization would be judged in eras, the Peloponnesian War, the large scale civil war between the two most powerful Greek city-states Athens and Sparta and their allies, left both greatly weakened. Many Greeks settled in Hellenistic cities like Alexandria and Seleucia, two thousand years later, there are still communities in Pakistan and Afghanistan, like the Kalash, who claim to be descended from Greek settlers. The Hellenistic civilization was the period of Greek civilization, the beginnings of which are usually placed at Alexanders death. This Hellenistic age, so called because it saw the partial Hellenization of many non-Greek cultures and this age saw the Greeks move towards larger cities and a reduction in the importance of the city-state.
These larger cities were parts of the still larger Kingdoms of the Diadochi, however, remained aware of their past, chiefly through the study of the works of Homer and the classical authors. An important factor in maintaining Greek identity was contact with barbarian peoples and this led to a strong desire among Greeks to organize the transmission of the Hellenic paideia to the next generation
Hoxne Hoard
The objects are now in the British Museum in London, where the most important pieces and a selection of the rest are on permanent display. In 1993, the Treasure Valuation Committee valued the hoard at £1.75 million. The hoard was buried as an oak box or small chest filled with items in metal, sorted mostly by type with some in smaller wooden boxes. Remnants of the chest, and of such as hinges. The coins of the date it after AD407, which coincides with the end of Britain as a Roman province. The owners and reasons for burial of the hoard are unknown, but it was carefully packed and the contents appear consistent with what a single very wealthy family might have owned. Given the lack of large silver serving vessels and of some of the most common types of jewellery, the Hoxne Hoard contains several rare and important objects, including a gold body-chain and silver-gilt pepper-pots, including the Empress pepper pot. The Hoxne Hoard is of archaeological significance because it was excavated by professional archaeologists with the items largely undisturbed.
The find helped to improve the relationship between metal detectorists and archaeologists, and influenced a change in English law regarding finds of treasure. The hoard was discovered in a field of a farm, about 2.4 kilometres southwest of the village of Hoxne in Suffolk, on 16 November 1992. Peter Whatling, the tenant farmer, had lost a hammer and asked his friend Eric Lawes, while searching the field with his metal detector, Lawes discovered silver spoons, gold jewellery and numerous gold and silver coins. After retrieving a few items, he and Whatling notified the landowners, the following day, a team of archaeologists from the Suffolk Archaeological Unit carried out an emergency excavation of the site. The entire hoard was excavated in a day, with the removal of several large blocks of unbroken material for laboratory excavation. The area within a radius of 30 metres from the spot was searched using metal detectors. Peter Whatlings missing hammer was recovered and donated to the British Museum, the hoard was concentrated in a single location, within the completely decayed remains of a wooden chest.
Some items had been disturbed by burrowing animals and ploughing, the excavated hoard was taken to the British Museum. The discovery was leaked to the press, and on 19 November, although the full contents of the hoard and its value were still unknown, the newspaper article claimed that the hoard was worth £10 million. In response to the publicity, the British Museum held a press conference at the museum on 20 November to announce the discovery
Chalcedony
Chalcedony is a cryptocrystalline form of silica, composed of very fine intergrowths of quartz and moganite. These are both silica minerals, but they differ in that quartz has a crystal structure, while moganite is monoclinic. Chalcedonys standard chemical structure is SiO2, Chalcedony has a waxy luster, and may be semitransparent or translucent. It can assume a range of colors, but those most commonly seen are white to gray. The color of chalcedony sold commercially is often enhanced by dyeing or heating, the name chalcedony comes from the Latin chalcedonius. The name appears in Pliny the Elders Naturalis Historia as a term for a kind of Jaspis. The name is derived from the town Chalcedon in Asia Minor. The Greek word khalkedon appears in the Book of Revelation and it is a hapax legomenon so it is hard to tell whether the precious gem mentioned in the Bible is the same mineral known by this name today. Chalcedony occurs in a range of varieties. Many semi-precious gemstones are in forms of chalcedony.
The more notable varieties of chalcedony are as follows, Agate is a variety of chalcedony characterized by either transparency or color patterns, opaque varieties are sometimes referred to as jasper. Fire agate shows iridescent phenomena on a background, iris agate shows exceptional iridescence when light is shone through the stone. Landscape agate is chalcedony with a number of different mineral impurities making the stone resemble landscapes, aventurine is a form of quartz, characterised by its translucency and the presence of platy mineral inclusions that give a shimmering or glistening effect termed aventurescence. Chrome-bearing fuchsite is the inclusion, and gives a silvery green or blue sheen. Oranges and browns are attributed to hematite or goethite, carnelian is a clear-to-translucent reddish-brown variety of chalcedony. Its hue may vary from an orange, to an intense almost-black coloration. Similar to carnelian is sard, which is rather than red. Chrysoprase is a variety of chalcedony, which has been colored by nickel oxide
Leopard
The leopard /ˈlɛpərd/ is one of the five big cats in the genus Panthera. It is a member of the family Felidae with a range in sub-Saharan Africa. Fossil records suggest that in the Late Pleistocene it occurred in Europe, compared to other members of Felidae, the leopard has relatively short legs and a long body with a large skull. It is similar in appearance to the jaguar, but has a smaller, lighter physique. Its fur is marked with similar to those of the jaguar, but the leopards rosettes are smaller and more densely packed. Both leopards and jaguars that are melanistic are known as black panthers, the leopard is listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List because leopard populations are threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation, and are declining in large parts of the global range. In Hong Kong, Kuwait, Libya and most likely in Morocco, leopards are hunted illegally, and their body parts are smuggled in the wildlife trade for medicinal practices and decoration. The common name leopard /ˈlɛ.
pərd/ is a Greek compound of λέων leōn, the name reflects the fact that in antiquity, a leopard was believed to be a hybrid of a lion and a panther. The Greek word is related to Sanskrit पृदाकु pṛdāku, and probably derives from a Mediterranean language, the name was first used in the 13th century. Other vernacular names for the leopard include graupanther and several names such as tendwa in India. The term black panther refers to leopards with melanistic genes, the scientific name of the leopard is Panthera pardus. The generic name Panthera derives from Latin via Greek πάνθηρ, the term panther, whose first recorded use dates back to the 13th century AD, generally refers to the leopard, and less often to the cougar and the jaguar. Alternative origins suggested for Panthera include an Indo-Iranian word meaning white-yellow or pale, in Sanskrit, this could have been derived from पाण्डर pāṇḍara, which in turn comes from पुण्डरीक puṇḍárīka. The specific name pardus is derived from the Greek πάρδος, the leopard is one of the five extant species of the genus Panthera, which includes the jaguar, the lion, the snow leopard and the tiger.
This genus, along with the genus Neofelis - which consists of the clouded leopard, the leopard was first described by Swedish zoologist Carl Linnaeus in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae. Linnaeus named the leopard as Felis pardus, placing it in the genus Felis along with the cat, the jaguar, the Eurasian lynx, the lion, the ocelot. In the 18th and 19th centuries, most naturalists and taxonomists followed his example, in 1816, Lorenz Oken proposed a definition of the genus Panthera, with a subgenus Panthera using F. pardus as a type species. Okens classification, was not widely accepted, and until the early 20th century continued using Felis or Leopardus when describing leopard subspecies, in 1916, British zoologist Reginald Innes Pocock accorded Panthera generic rank defining Panthera pardus as species
Satyr
In Greek mythology, a satyr is one of a troop of ithyphallic male companions of Dionysus with goat-like features and often permanent erection. Early artistic representations sometimes include horse-like legs, but in 6th-century BC black-figure pottery human legs are the most common, in Roman Mythology there is a concept similar to satyrs, with goat-like features, the faun, being half-man, half-goat, who roamed the woods and mountains. In myths they are associated with pipe-playing. Greek-speaking Romans often used the Greek term saturos when referring to the Latin faunus, the satyrs chief was Silenus, a minor deity associated with fertility. These characters can be found in the complete remaining satyr play, Cyclops, by Euripides. 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 especially loved for his satyr plays. Mature satyrs are depicted in Roman art with goats horns. As Dionysiac creatures they are lovers of wine and women, because of their love of wine, they are often represented holding wine cups, and they appear often in the decorations on wine cups. Attic painted vases depict mature satyrs as being built with flat noses, large pointed ears, long curly hair. Satyrs often carry the thyrsus, the rod of Dionysus tipped with a pine cone, in earlier Greek art, Silenos appear as old and ugly, but in art, especially in Hellenistic art, he is softened into a more youthful and graceful aspect. This transformation or humanization of the Satyr appears throughout late Greek art, another example of this shift occurs in the portrayal of Medusa and in that of the Amazon, characters who are traditionally depicted as barbaric and uncivilized. A humanized Satyr is depicted in a work of Praxiteles known as the Resting Satyr, Praxiteles gives a new direction to the satyr in art.
Although not mentioned by Homer, in a fragment of Hesiods works satyrs are called brothers of the nymphs and Kuretes. In the Dionysus cult, male followers are known as satyrs, in Attica there was a species of drama dealing with the legends of gods and heroes, and the chorus was composed of satyrs and sileni. In the Athenian satyr plays of the 5th century BC, the chorus commented on the action and this satyric drama burlesqued the serious events of the mythic past with lewd pantomime and subversive mockery. One complete satyr play from the 5th century survives, the Cyclops of Euripides, the Satyr and the Traveller, one of Aesops Fables, features the satyr as the benevolent host for a traveler in the forest in winter. The satyr is bewildered by the claim to be able to blow hot and cold with the same breath, first to warm his hands, to cool his porridge
