The problem is that someone 3, 000 years ago wouldn’t see any *difference *between the two, so they wouldn’t give it a different name. Both are humans with the hindlegs of an hoofed animal. Whether the animal was goat or horse or deer made no real difference to people prior to 100 years ago. That’s why unicorns variously have the body of a goat, horse or deer, or sphinxes can have two legs or six.
Look at it this way. If you found a statue from classical Greece with the body of a human and the legs of hoofed animal, what would you call it? Now you took closely and the hooves are solid. Does that mean that it’s no longer satyr because it has horse’s hooves? It’s simply not a distinction that anybody would make.
I wonder if were talking the classical descriptions too literally. When ancient naturalists tried to describe or depict real animals unfamiliar to their audience (often based only on second-hand accounts) they often compared them to various familiar animals and their parts. Instead of imagining the classical images and descriptions coming to life, imagine what sort of creature if it really existed might end up being described that way. You would hardly expect different observers describing a real species with its own unique anatomy to be consistent in describing its legs as horse-like or goat-like, and you wouldn’t expect either description to be completely accurate.
I also wonder whether it was depicted often enough to have a name? The “standing erect” (heh) goat, like cats and dogs and other smaller animals, can happen because the animal is relatively flexible at the hips that it can almost stand erect when supported; and small and light enough that this is not difficult or hard on the hips. A full-sized horse would rarely stand on two legs except when rearing to fight. It is far too heavy to stand on two legs for any length of time. It seems to me even in that situation, the hips are not flexible enough to allow anything close to an upright posture, much of the “upright” also involves curving the spine. (because of the weight, the hips are built for the necessary support and don’t seem to be that flexible.) A “horse-man” or “hemi-centaur” in an upright posture would have very unnatural looking hips. (You have to add a large erection to distract from the unnatural posture, I assume).
And Greeks, Romans, and other such cultures would be around horses enough to recognize the awkwardness of the upright pose.
No, that confirms it’s a satyr, since they’re often depicted as having horse features. The conflation of satyr and faun looks like a later syncretism, postClassical or Roman.
Well, the classical four-legged centaur has similar problems with the human part. In fact, the four-legged centaur has all sorts of severe problems. But it works because of really good artists.
Really good artists can make the impossible look good. Maybe not plausible, but good. Here is a NSFW link. Warning: toplessness and pubic hair. A Half-Horse by Hajime Sorayama
At first, I thought the Esquilax was one of the combination animals from “Quirks,” the old Eon Games evolution game, where you combined the head/body/hindparts from three decks of cards, to make up a life-form that had differing survival qualities in different environmental regimes. Fun game! (“Intelligence” was only moderately advantageous!)
Interesting link - but Sorayama has definitely “exaggerated”, and the transition to human shaping definitely starts with far more human than horse “thighs”.
Similarly this satyr from 6th century BC has pretty much human hips and legs up until the horse hooves. (and appears circumcised… which brings up the topic, presumably satyrs are not kosher?)
With that level of erection, you really can’t tell if it’s circumcised or not. Plus, I think that’s the same statue ** Blake** linked to in post #21 (though a different image of it).
Occasionally, you’ll see it referred to as a Silenos, although that’s usually referring to an individual, “sileni” was occasionally used to refer to a type of creature in Latin.
