Of the many traits inherited by the Callicantzari from the Satyrs
and Sileni, the usual comrades of Dionysus, I have already spoken.
So far as outward appearance is concerned, the Satyrs as they came
to be pourtrayed in the later Greek art are clearly responsible for
the goat-type so common in the description of the Callicantzari,
while a reminiscence of the Sileni may perhaps be traced in the rarer
bald-headed type. But as regards their manner of life, which as I have
shown bears many resemblances to that of the Satyrs--their boisterous
merriment and rioting, their love of wine, their violence, and their
lewdness--these traits cannot of course be referred to the Satyrs any
more than to the hippocentaurs or for that matter to the onocentaurs
who were probably no more sober or chaste than their kindred. Rather it
was the common possession of these qualities by the several types of
half-human and half-bestial monsters that allowed them to be grouped
together under the single name of Callicantzari.
Thus the conclusion drawn from an historical survey of those ancient
festivals which are now represented by the Twelve Days, namely that the
Callicantzari are the modern representatives of Dionysus’ monstrous
comrades, is both corroborated and amplified by the etymological
identification of the Callicantzari (or in the simple and unadorned
form, the σκατζάρια) with the Centaurs, of whom the Satyrs and the
Sileni are species.
The remaining modern name on which I have to touch readily explains
itself in the light of what has already been said. If the word
κάντζαρος is the modern form of κένταυρος, and if by the name ‘Centaur’
was denoted a being half-human and half-animal both in shape and
in character, then the name λυκοκάντζαρος clearly should mean a
creature half-man half-wolf, such as the ancients might have called
a lycocentaur, but did actually name λυκάνθρωπος. Lycocantzaros then
etymologically should mean the werewolf--a man transformed either by
his own power or by some external influence into a wolf.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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