The Seba library treats Silenos in 5 passages, across 2 authors (including Kerényi, Karl, Lacan, Jacques).
A male figure is also present, and is waiting to perform his duties by the child: this is Silenos,
Kerényi identifies Silenos on ancient reliefs as a male nurse-attendant awaiting service to the infant Dionysos, placing him structurally alongside the divine female nurses in the god's upbringing.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951thesis
Silenos, 177, 179, 188, 258 Silens (Silenoi), 178, 179, 188, 219, 258, 268
The index entry for Silenos and the Silenoi in Kerényi's study confirms their recurrent presence across multiple mythological contexts, distinguishing the individual figure from his plural class.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951supporting
Silene and Hermes play the love-game with them in the corners of their pleasant grottoes.
Kerényi presents Silenos (here named Silene) as an erotic woodland deity who shares the grottos of the nymphs with Hermes, embedding the figure in a network of chthonic sexuality and nature-religion.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951supporting
it is about a position, an essential articulation too often forgotten, elided, and to which we analysts nevertheless have contributed the element, the mainspring which allows its problematic to be defined, it is on this that there should be concentrated what I have to say to you today about agalma.
Lacan's elaboration of agalma in the context of the Symposium is the theoretical axis through which the Silenos-statue comparison of Socrates becomes relevant to psychoanalytic theory, specifically the hidden object of desire within transference.
, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VIII: Transference, 2015supporting
Socrates apparently loves beautiful boys, oute ei tis kalos esti melei auto ouden, whether one or other is beautiful, melie auto ouden, does not matter a straw to him, he does not give a hang, on the contrary he despises it
Lacan's reading of Alcibiades' speech, which frames Socrates as the Silenus-figure concealing inner treasures while presenting an indifferent surface, frames the psychoanalytic problem of desire and its object.
, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VIII: Transference, 2015aside