200 out of 410 days: The Personification of Drunkenness

Image

 

This little silenos figure on a lid of cista no. 45 in the Pierpont Morgan Library collection is labelled EBRIOS.  Ebrius is the Latin adjective meaning ‘drunk’.   Think English inebriation.  Not an inappropriate name for a dionysiac character.  I wonder if there is any relation to the river name where Ovid says the Bacchic throng discovered honey (Fasti, book 3):

liba deo fiunt, sucis quia dulcibus idem               735
     gaudet, et a Baccho mella reperta ferunt.
ibat harenoso satyris comitatus ab Hebro
     (non habet ingratos fabula nostra iocos);
iamque erat ad Rhodopen Pangaeaque florida ventum:
     aeriferae comitum concrepuere manus.               740
ecce novae coeunt volucres tinnitibus actae,
     quosque movent sonitus aera, sequuntur apes;
colligit errantes et in arbore claudit inani
     Liber, et inventi praemia mellis habet.