SATISFACTION 



SATYRS 



171 



Satisfaction. See ATONEMENT. 



Satrap was the governor of a province in the 

 ancieut Persian monarchy. Their duties and posi- 

 tion were clearly defined by Darius I. in the 6th 

 century B.C., although there had been satraps 

 before lib day. They enjoyed the right to com- 

 mand the royal army in the province ( though not 

 the troops in the fortresses), to levy mercenaries, 

 and to coin money. Alexander in the 4th century 

 greatly curtailed their power. When the Persian 

 monarchy began to decline some of the satraps 

 founded independent kingdoms, the most famous 

 being that of Pontus. 



Sat Mima. See JAPAN, Vol. VI. p. 284; 

 POTTERY, Vol. VIII. p. 368. 



Saturn, an ancient Italian divinity, who pre- 

 sided over agriculture. His name, from the same 

 root as Saturn (sero, 'I sow'), indicates what was 

 probably one of the earliest personifications in the 

 Italian religion Saturn being the god who blessed 

 the labours of the sower. His identification with 

 the Greek Kronos by the later Grsecising myth- 

 mongers was a peculiarly infelicitous blunder, the 

 two naving absolute! v nothing in common except 

 their antiquity. The Greek Demeter (Ceres) 

 approaches far more closely to the Italian con- 

 ception of the character of Saturn. The process of 

 amalgamation in the case of Kronos and Saturn is 

 visible enough. First, there is the Greek myth. 

 Kronos, son of Uranos ('Heaven') and Gsea 

 ('Earth'), is there the youngest of the Titans. 

 He married Rhea, by whom he had several children, 

 all of whom he devoured at birth except the last, 

 Zeus (Jupiter), whom lii- mother saved by a strat- 

 agem. The motive of Kronos was his hope of 

 frustrating a prophecy which declared that hia 

 children wonlu one day deprive him of his sove- 

 reignty, as he himself had done in the case of his 

 father Uranos ; bnt fate is stronger even than the 

 gods, and when Zeus had grown up he began a 

 ten years' war against Kronos ana the Titans, 

 which ended in the complete discomfiture of the 

 latter, who were hurled down to Tartarus, and 

 there imprisoned. So ran the common myth. But 

 other myths added that after his banishment from 

 heaven Kronos fled to Italy, where he was received 

 hospitably by Janus, who shared his sovereignty 

 with him. At this point the Greek myth coalesced 

 with the Italian. Saturn, the old homely deity of 

 the Latin husbandmen, was transformed into a 

 divine king, who ruled the happy aborigines of the 

 Italian peninsula with paternal mildness and be- 

 neficence, taught them agriculture and the usages of 

 a simple and innocent civilisation. Hence the 

 whole land received from him the name of Saturnia, 

 or ' land of plenty,' and his reign was that 'golden 

 age ' of which later poets sang as the ideal of earthly 

 happiness. At the foot of the Capitoline, where 

 the fugitive god had formed his first settlement, 

 there stood in historical times a temple dedicated 

 to his worship. Ancient artiste represented him 

 as an old man, with long, straight hair, the back 

 of his head covered, his feet swathed in woollen 

 riblmns, a priming-knife or sickle-shaped harp in 

 his hand. Other attributes are of later invention. 

 For the planet Saturn, see PLANETS. 



The SATURNALIA was most probably an ancient 

 Italian rural festival of the old Italian husl>and- 

 men, commemorative of the ingathering of the 

 harvest, and therefore of immemorial antiquity. 

 Its characteristic cessation from toil and its self- 

 abandoning mirth were expressive of the labouring 

 man's delight that the work of the year was over, 

 and not of an artificial enthusiasm for a ' golden 

 age ' that never had been. Daring the festival the 

 distinctions of rank disappeared or were reversed. 

 Slaves were permitted to wear the pileus, usually 



the mark of freedom, and sat down to banquets in 

 their master's clothes, while the latter waited on 

 them at table. Crowds of people filled the streets, 

 and roamed about the city in a peculiar dress, 

 shouting 'Io Satiiriialtfi !' sacrifices were offered 

 with uncovered head ; friends sent presents to each 

 other ; all business was suspended ; the law-courts 

 were closed ; schoolboys got a holiday ; and no wai 

 could be begun. During the Republic the Satur- 

 nalia proper occupied only one day the 19th of 

 December (xiv. Kal. Jan.). The reformation of 

 the calendar by Julius Caesar caused the festival to 

 fall on the 17th (xvi. Kal. Jan.), a change which 

 produced much confusion, in consequence of which 

 the Emperor Augustus ordained that the Satur- 

 nalia should embrace the whole three days 17th, 

 18th, and 19th of December. Subsequently the 

 numlier was extended to five, and even seven ; 

 but even in the times before the Empire it would 

 appear that the amusements often lasted for 

 several days. But while the whole week was 

 regarded in a general sense as devoted to the 

 Saturnalia, three distinct festivals were really 

 celebrated the Saturnalia proper; the Opalm, in 

 honour of Ops, the wife of Saturn, and the goddess 

 of field -labour (from opus, 'a work'); and the 

 Sigillaria, in which sigilla, or little earthenware 

 figures, were exposed for sale, and purchased as 

 children's toys. The modern Italian carnival 

 would serin in lie only the old pagan Saturnalia 

 baptised into < 'hiistiiuiity. 



Satlirilian Verse, the name given by the 

 Romans to that species of verse in which their 

 oldest national poetry was composed. In the 

 usage of the later poets and grammarians the 

 phrase has two different significations. It is 

 applied in a general way to denote the rude and 

 nnlixril measures of the ancient Latin liallail and 

 song, and perhaps derived its name from being 

 originally employed by the 'Latin husbandmen in 

 their harvest-songs in honour of the god Saturn 

 (q.v.). It is also applied to the measure used by 

 Ncevius, and a common opinion, sanctioned by 

 Bentley, is that it was a Greek metre introduced 

 by him into Italy. But most scholars now main- 

 tain that the measure of Nsevius is of Italian 

 ( Hermann even thinks of Etruscan) origin, and 

 that it merely improved on the primitive Saturn- 

 ian verse. According to Hermann, the basis of 

 the verse is contained in the following schema : 



which, as Macaulay points out, corresponds exactly 

 to the nursery rhyme, 



The quen WM In her parlour | Sating brtnA and hdney, 

 and is frequently found in the Spanish poem of 

 the ''/'/. the Nibelungenlied, and almost all speci- 

 mens of early poetry ; but in the treatment of it a 

 wide and arbitrary freedom was taken by the old 

 Roman poete, as is proved by the extant fragments 

 of N:>-vius, Livius Andronicus, Ennius, and the old 

 inscriptionary tables in the Capitol. 



Sat>riasis is a phase of insanity in man of 

 which the characteristic is ungovernable sensuality. 

 The term has also sometimes been applied to Leprosy 

 (q.v. ), on account of the disfigurement of the face to 

 which it leads. See SATYRS. 



Satyrs, in Greek Mythology, were a race of 

 woodland deities, half human, half animal in their 

 attributes. They are generally described as roam- 

 ing the hills in the train of Dionysus ( Bacchus ). 

 In appearance they were at once grotesque and 

 repulsive, like all old woodland demons. They are 

 described as robust in frame, with broad snub 

 noses, large pointed ears like those of animals 

 ( whence they are sometimes called theres, ' wild 

 ' ), bristly and shaggy hair, rough skin, little 



