More on Air

Today air is understandably associated with speaking; if we say someone is “full of hot air” we mean they are being untruthful or bragging. The current interpretation of the fable has to do with being consistent in your speech. However, this has always seemed an unfair interpretation of the fable to me. The Man has not lied to or even falsely flattered the Satyr. The Satyr seems cruel, under this translation, and the Man unjustly accused. Of all the ways to show Man’s hybrid nature, why would the Greeks choose air? One of the reasons is that it was a great mystery being explored by the most respected poets, scientists, and philosophers of the time.

The pre-Socratic philosophers were concerned with determining one substance from which everything was made. Anaximenes believed everything was made of air, "when it is thinned it becomes fire, while when it is condensed it becomes wind, then cloud, when still more condensed it becomes water, then earth, then stones. Everything else comes from these." Not much of Anaximenes’ writing has survived; it is through later philosophers that his theories remain accessible.

Aristotle discusses Anaximenes’ answer to the puzzle of cold and hot breath:

According to Anaximenes…the compressed and the condensed state of matter is cold, while the rarefied and relaxed (a word he himself uses) state of it is heat. Whence he says it is not strange that men breathe hot and cold out of the mouth; for the breath is cooled as it is compressed and condensed by the lips, but when the mouth is relaxed, it comes out warm by reason of its rarefaction.

Originally, those familiar with the fable were familiar with the scientific puzzle and many were familiar with Anaximenes.

The first readers of the fable would not have received it as a children’s story. The Man, placed within the framework of this prominent scientific issue, would have been revered and further contrasted with the Satyr, who in the Greek view was typically fascinated with knowledge but also feared it. Originally, the Satyr is merely being a Satyr, and the Man is misfortunate that the only help offered could not be trusted.

In the fable’s original context, nobody has to be morally culpable; the story is a snapshot of the differences between Man and Satyr and the relationship between them. The complex truth about reality is that Man is conflicted, dual in nature, and mysterious, as is the Satyr. The Man is superior because he is not afraid of this duality, and instead explores its implications. In the original Greek and Roman versions of the fable the Satyr is afraid of the Man; it is only when the fable is first translated into English that the Man begins to be described as afraid of the Satyr a tradition which continues to today with rare exceptions.

One lesson from the original fable is not to trust the sensuality and chaos that a Satyr and the Forest represent. This fable can probably be classified as a friendship fable, meaning it was meant to establish Satyr as an enemy to Man, and to explain the distrust that must exist between them. When the moral is uttered at the end of the story, it is an ironic one. The last line was quite possibly viewed with humor, as many of the original fables were; it is laughable that the Satyr who is a hybrid is accusing the Man of being dual.

Other aspects have been changed in translations across generations. The setting started as a Greek pit, became a cave in Rome, and then the Satyr’s house (usually portrayed as a hut or cottage). The setting has remained rural and rustic throughout these transformations. This may be why the original offering of the wine was transformed to soup, porridge, or hot water. Wine has taken on a sophisticated and urban symbolism, whereas soup and porridge are distinctly rustic and homey as a symbol.