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53-455: The Priapeia (or Carmina Priapea ) is a collection of eighty (in some editions ninety-five) anonymous short Latin poems in various meters on subjects pertaining to the phallic god Priapus . They are believed to date from the 1st century AD or the beginning of the 2nd century. A traditional theory about their origin is that they are an anthology of poems written by various authors on the same subject. However, it has recently been argued that
106-470: A 28,000-year-old siltstone phallus discovered in the Hohle Fels cave and reassembled in 2005, is among the oldest phallic representations known. The phallus played a role in the cult of Osiris in ancient Egyptian religion . When Osiris' body was cut in 14 pieces, Set scattered them all over Egypt, and his wife Isis retrieved all of them except one, his penis, which a fish swallowed; Isis made him
159-601: A calendar printed in St. Gallen omitted the genitals from the heraldic bear of Appenzell , nearly leading to war between the two cantons. Figures of Kokopelli and Itzamna (as the Mayan tonsured maize god) in Pre-Columbian America often include phallic content. Additionally, over forty large monolithic sculptures ( Xkeptunich ) have been documented from Terminal Classic Maya sites, with most examples occurring in
212-514: A fertility god. Pan , son of Hermes , was often depicted as having an exaggerated erect phallus. Priapus is a Greek god of fertility whose symbol was an exaggerated phallus. The son of Aphrodite and Dionysus , according to Homer and most accounts, he is the protector of livestock, fruit plants, gardens, and male genitalia. His name is the origin of the medical term priapism . The city of Tyrnavos in Greece holds an annual Phallus festival ,
265-608: A figure in human form are ithyphallic, for example, in coins of the Kushan Empire . Some figures up to about the 11th century AD have erect phalluses, although they have become increasingly rare. According to the Indonesian chronicles of the Babad Tanah Jawi , Prince Puger gained the kingly power from God by ingesting semen from the phallus of the already-dead Sultan Amangkurat II of Mataram . The phallus
318-454: A garden than for a book of poems": A third argument is based on the observation that pairs of consecutive or near-consecutive poems are often linked by the repetition of a word. For example, the rare word erucarum ( rocket ) in 46.8 is repeated in erucis in 47.6; Maurae ... puellae in 45.3 is echoed by puella Mauro in 46.1; virgineum locum in 2.5 reappears as virgo ... loci in 3.7, and so on. There are also possibly wider links between
371-498: A hedge round the garden he is no longer getting any sex. Finally, in 79, an anonymous speaker informs Priapus that he is no better endowed than "our poet" – who, it appears from the final poem, has an unusually small penis. The date of the Carmina Priapea is still disputed, though is generally assumed to be in the 1st century AD. One piece of evidence for the date of the collection is the phrase inepta locī ("foolish ... of
424-459: A penis, no one can possess the symbolic phallus. Jacques Lacan 's Ecrits: A Selection includes an essay titled The Signification of the Phallus in which sexual differentiation is represented in terms of the difference between "being" and "having" the phallus, which for Lacan is the transcendent signifier of desire. Men are positioned as men insofar as they wish to have the phallus. Women, on
477-435: A traditional event celebrating the phallus on the first days of Lent . The phallus was ubiquitous in ancient Roman culture , particularly in the form of the fascinum , a phallic charm. The ruins of Pompeii produced bronze wind chimes ( tintinnabula ) that featured the phallus, often in multiples, to ward off the evil eye and other malevolent influences. Statues of Priapus similarly guarded gardens. Roman boys wore
530-478: A wooden replacement. The phallus was a symbol of fertility, and the god Min was often depicted as ithyphallic, that is, with an erect penis. In traditional Greek mythology , Hermes , the god of boundaries and exchange (popularly the messenger god), is considered to be a phallic deity by association with representations of him on herms (pillars) featuring a phallus. There is no scholarly consensus on this depiction, and it would be speculation to consider Hermes
583-496: Is a penis (especially when erect ), an object that resembles a penis, or a mimetic image of an erect penis. In art history, a figure with an erect penis is described as ithyphallic . Any object that symbolically—or, more precisely, iconically—resembles a penis may also be referred to as a phallus; however, such objects are more often referred to as being phallic (as in " phallic symbol "). Such symbols often represent fertility and cultural implications that are associated with
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#1732775670883636-468: Is a form of meter in poetry. It is found in both Greek and Latin poetry in the classical period . Choliambic verse is sometimes called scazon , or "lame iambic", because it brings the reader down on the wrong "foot" by reversing the stresses of the last few beats. It was originally pioneered by the Greek lyric poet Hipponax , who wrote "lame trochaics" as well as "lame iambics". The basic structure
689-399: Is a plural divinity. In Bulgaria, a ritual spectacle of spring (a sort of carnival performed by Kukeri ) takes place after a scenario of folk theatre, in which Kuker's role is interpreted by a man attired in a sheep or goat-pelt, wearing a horned mask and girded with a large wooden phallus. During the ritual, various physiological acts are interpreted, including the sexual act, as a symbol of
742-410: Is closer to Ovid's practice than that of Martial , where the -o is usually short. However, Kloss points out that this argument is weak, since other writers later than Ovid, such as Petronius and Silius Italicus also preferred the long -ō . Buchheit (1962) found sufficient echoes of Martial to argue that the poems must date from after Martial's time. Kloss (2003) is less certain, but thinks that
795-689: Is commonly depicted in its paintings . Wooden phalluses, with white ribbons hanging from the tip, are often hung above the doorways of houses to deter evil spirits. Khalid Nabi Cemetery ( Persian : گورستان خالد نبی, "Cemetery of the Prophet Khaled") is a cemetery in northeastern Iran 's Golestan province . Touristic visitors often have perceived the cylindrical shafts with the thicker top as depictions of male phalli. This gave rise to popular hypotheses about pre-Islamic fertility cults . The Mara Kannon Shrine ( 麻羅観音 ) in Nagato , Yamaguchi prefecture
848-626: Is imitated in the passive voice in Priapea 35 ( pēdīcāberis irrumāberisque ). Among works of other poets, Horace Satires 1.8 (included as no. 95 in Smithers and Burton's edition of the Priapeia ) is a 50-line poem in hexameters in which Priapus recounts how the garden he was guarding, a former graveyard, was plagued by witches until suddenly the wood of his backside split open with a loud farting noise and scared them off. Four anonymous poems in
901-406: Is much like iambic trimeter , except that the last cretic is made heavy by the insertion of a longum instead of a breve . Also, the third anceps of the iambic trimeter line must be short in limping iambs. In other words, the line scans as follows (where — is a long syllable, u is a short syllable, and x is an anceps ): As in all classical verse forms, the phenomenon of brevis in longo
954-442: Is observed, so the last syllable can actually be short or long. The Roman poet Catullus' poems 8 , 22 and 39 serve as examples of choliambic verse. Occasionally, one of the first three longa in the line may be resolved into two short syllables, but this is rare. There is usually a caesura or word-break after either the 5th or the 7th syllable. In later poets, such as Persius , Martial , and Ausonius , resolution
1007-893: Is one of many fertility shrines in Japan that still exist today. Also present in festivals such as the Danjiri Matsuri ( だんじり祭 ) in Kishiwada , Osaka prefecture , the Kanamara Matsuri in Kawasaki , and the Hōnen Matsuri ( 豊年祭 , Harvest Festival) in Komaki , Aichi Prefecture , though historically phallus adoration was more widespread. Kuker is a divinity personifying fecundity, sometimes in Bulgaria and Serbia it
1060-402: Is shown as boastful and vigorous, but gradually problems set in. In poem 26 he confesses that he is worn out by sex ( effutūtus ) and thin and pale ( macerque pallidusque ) and complains that the neighbouring women give him no rest. In poem 33, on the other hand, he complains that he is compelled to relieve himself with his own hand for want of female companions among the nymphs. Towards the end of
1113-452: The bulla , an amulet that contained a phallic charm until they formally came of age. According to Augustine of Hippo , the cult of Father Liber , who presided over the citizen's entry into political and sexual manhood, involved a phallus. The phallic deity Mutunus Tutunus promoted marital sex. A sacred phallus was among the objects considered vital to the security of the Roman state, which
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#17327756708831166-479: The Appendix Vergiliana (nos. 86, 87, 88, and 84 of Smithers and Burton's edition of the Priapeia ) are also Priapic. In the first, the god describes his sufferings in the winter; in the second he describes his guardianship of the farm throughout the seasons, and demands respect from a passer-by; in the third, he warns some boys not to steal from his farm but to go to the neighbour's farm instead. In
1219-640: The Priapeia , Smithers and Burton claim that "The worship of Priapus amongst the Romans was derived from the Egyptians , who, under the form of Apis , the Sacred Bull, adored the generative Power of Nature," adding that "the Phallus was the ancient emblem of creation, and representative of the gods Bacchus , Priapus, Hermaphroditus , Hercules , Shiva , Osiris , Baal and Asher , who were all Phallic deities ." Although even today some scholars hold that
1272-495: The Priapeia . The earliest extant Priapic poem in Latin (no. 89 in Smithers and Burton) appears to be Catullus fragment 1, which is written in the "Priapean" metre (a type of aeolic). It begins: Three poems in the collected works of Catullus (16, 47, and 56) are also judged to be Priapic in character. Catullus's famous threat to "sodomise and irrumate" ( pēdīcābo ego vōs et irrumābō ) his friends Aurelius and Furius (Catullus 16)
1325-434: The phallōs was a symbol of the real penis in its erect imaginary form. Norbert Wiley states that Lacan's phallus is akin to Durkheim's mana . In Gender Trouble , Judith Butler explores Freud's and Lacan's discussions of the symbolic phallus by pointing out the connection between the phallus and the penis. They write, "The law requires conformity to its own notion of 'nature'. It gains its legitimacy through
1378-749: The 20th century with the rise of Sigmund Freud , the founder of modern psychoanalysis of psychology . One example is " Princess X " by the Romanian modernist sculptor Constantin Brâncuși . He created a scandal in the Salon in 1919 when he represented or caricatured Princess Marie Bonaparte as a large gleaming bronze phallus. This phallus likely symbolizes Bonaparte's obsession with the penis and her lifelong quest to achieve vaginal orgasm. Choliamb Choliambic verse ( Ancient Greek : χωλίαμβος ), also known as limping iambs or scazons or halting iambic ,
1431-467: The 80 poems are in fact the work of a single author, presenting a kind of biography of Priapus from his vigorous youth to his impotence in old age. Not counting the last few poems, which seem not to be part of the original collection, the Priapeia consists of 80 epigrams (average length 6 to 8 lines) mainly written in either hendecasyllables or elegiac couplets , with a few also in scazons . Many of
1484-477: The Carmina Priapea are anthology of poems by different authors, others support the arguments for the single authorship of all 80 poems. Among these arguments are the following. First, the poems seem to have been carefully arranged according to metre. Only three metres are used. There appear to be 5 groups of 14 poems each. The first fourteen poems alternate between elegiac couplets and hendecasyllables. In
1537-541: The German scholar Gerrit Kloss argues that this is not necessarily so. It could be that inepta locī simply imitates a lost poem of Ovid, rather than being the first instance of its use. The same poem contains a number of other literary echoes of phrases used by Ovid, Virgil, and Horace. Another piece of evidence is that certain words in the poems, such as circitor ("watchman"), rubricatus ("painted red"), prūrīgo ("sexual desire") and so on, are not used until writers of
1590-450: The Puuc region of Yucatán (Amrhein 2001). Uxmal has the largest collection, with eleven sculptures now housed under a protective roof. The largest sculpture was recorded at Almuchil measuring more than 320 cm high with a diameter at the base of the shaft measuring 44 cm. St. Priapus Church (French: Église S. Priape ) is a North American new religion that centres on the worship of
1643-680: The Thousand Nights and a Night ), who provided numerous glosses concerning the sexual practices and proclivities that are referenced in the poems. These explanatory notes address such diverse topics as oral sex ( fellatio and cunnilingus ), irrumation , masturbation , bestiality , sexual positions, eunuchism, phalli , religious prostitution , aphrodisiacs , pornography , and sexual terminology, but are not always accurate scholarly reflections of ancient Roman practices. A more recent translation titled The Priapus Poems has been carried out by Richard W. Hooper. In their "Introduction" to
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1696-399: The binary and asymmetrical naturalization of bodies in which the phallus, though clearly not identical to the penis, deploys the penis as its naturalized instrument and sign". In Bodies that Matter , they further explore the possibilities for the phallus in their discussion of The Lesbian Phallus . If, as they note, Freud enumerates a set of analogies and substitutions that rhetorically affirm
1749-486: The book the problems multiply. In poem 56 he is mocked by a thief and shown the middle finger ( impudīcum digitum ) because his phallus is only made of wood, and he is reduced to calling on his master to perform the punishment. In poem 70 he has become so impotent that he has to endure the humiliation of a dog performing fellatio on him all night. In poem 76 we learn that Priapus is now old and grey-haired and only good for penetrating old men. In 77 he complains that because of
1802-429: The epigrams are written as though they were to be engraved on the walls of a shrine containing a statue of the god Priapus that stood in the midst of gardens as the protector of the fruits that grew in them. These statues, usually carved from wood, were in the form of a man with a huge phallus, carrying a sickle in one hand. The statues, painted red to signify sexual prowess, also promoted the gardens’ fertility. Most of
1855-423: The first group of 14 poems, the god's oversized phallus is referred to in a number of different ways ( mentula , partī , inguen , tēlum , columna and so on). Another argument concerns the subject matter of the poems themselves, which like the collections of love poetry of the poets of the time of Augustus , show the course of an affair from its beginning to its end. In the first group of fourteen poems, Priapus
1908-437: The fourth poem, the anonymous poet addresses Priapus and chides him for causing him to become impotent when sleeping with a boy. Both this and the short prayer to Priapus to protect a farm (no. 83 in Smithers and Burton) are sometimes, but for no good reason, attributed to Tibullus. Tibullus 1.4 is part of a series of 3 elegies about Tibullus's love for a certain boy called Marathus. In this 82-line poem, Priapus gives advice to
1961-416: The fundamental transferability of the phallus from the penis elsewhere, then any number of other things might come to stand in for the phallus. The phallus is often used for advertising pornography , as well as the sale of contraception . It has often been used in provocative practical jokes and has been the central focus of adult-audience performances. The phallus had a new set of art interpretations in
2014-531: The god's sacred marriage, while the symbolical wife, appearing pregnant, mimes the pains of giving birth. This ritual inaugurates the labours of the fields ( ploughing , sowing ) and is carried out with the participation of numerous allegorical personages, among which are the Emperor and his entourage. In Switzerland , the heraldic bears in a coat of arms had to be painted with bright red penises , otherwise, they would have been mocked as being she-bears. In 1579,
2067-478: The male sexual organ, as well as the male orgasm . The term is a loanword from Latin phallus , itself borrowed from Greek φαλλός ( phallos ), which is ultimately a derivation from the Proto-Indo-European root * bʰel - "to inflate, swell". Compare with Old Norse (and modern Icelandic ) boli , " bull ", Old English bulluc , " bullock ", Greek φαλλή , " whale ". The Hohle phallus,
2120-525: The old temples and in museums in India and abroad, which are often more clearly phallic than later stylized lingams. The famous "man-size" Gudimallam Lingam in Andhra Pradesh is about 1.5 metres (5 ft) in height, carved in polished black granite, and clearly represents an erect phallus, with a figure of the deity in relief superimposed down the shaft. Many of the earliest depictions of Shiva as
2173-471: The other hand, wish to be the phallus. This difference between having and being explains some tragicomic aspects of sexual life. Once a woman becomes, in the realm of the signifier, the phallus the man wants, he ceases to want it because one cannot desire what one has, and the man may be drawn to other women. Similarly, though, for the woman, the gift of the phallus deprives the man of what he has and thereby diminishes her desire. It should be remembered that
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2226-414: The past one theory was that the Priapeia were the work of a group of poets who met at the house of Maecenas , amusing themselves by writing tongue-in-cheek tributes to the garden Priapus. (Maecenas was Horace ’s patron.) Others, including Martial and Petronius , were thought to have added more verses in imitation of the originals. However, since a study by the German scholar Vinzenz Buchheit in 1962,
2279-660: The phallus. Founded in the 1980s in Montreal, Quebec, by D. F. Cassidy, it has a following mainly among homosexual men in Canada and the United States. Semen is also treated with reverence, and its consumption is an act of worship. Semen is esteemed as sacred because of its divine life-giving power. The symbolic version of the phallus, a phallic symbol, is meant to represent male generative powers. According to Sigmund Freud 's theory of psychoanalysis , while males possess
2332-515: The place") which occurs in poem 3.8 in connection with a girl who offers her backside to her husband on her wedding night instead of the usual place. The same phrase, in a similar context, is quoted in Seneca the Elder ( Contr. 1.2.22), where it is called Ovidiānum illud ("that Ovidian phrase"). Some scholars have assumed therefore that poem 3 of the collection at least was composed by Ovid . However,
2385-642: The poems date at the earliest to Nero's time, but more probably to a period after Martial. The 80 poems of the Carmina Priapea are by no means the only poems which survive from the ancient world in honour of Priapus. Kytzler's edition contains 37 poems in Greek excerpted from the Greek anthology dating from the 3rd century BC to the 6th century AD. In Latin, outside the Corpus Priapeorum there are about 23 Priapea of various types, some of which are added as poems 83–95 in Smithers and Burton's edition of
2438-489: The poems in the collection are monologues by Priapus himself. In them the god congratulates and praises himself for the size and virility of his sexual parts and issues fearful warnings to those who would trespass upon his garden or attempt to steal its fruits, threatening such miscreants with various punishments of a sexual nature, such as irrumation and sodomy . The poems are notable for their use of obscene words and ideas in combination with refined and elegant diction. In
2491-485: The poems were a miscellaneous anthology, they would presumably have contained poems in other metres too, such as the iambic (84 and 87), aeolic (85, 89) or hexameter (95) metres used in the "extra" poems in Smithers and Burton's edition. Further, in the second dedicatory poem, the poet announces that he has written (not collected together) the poems: "Playfully, without taking too much trouble, I have written these poems, which as you can witness, Priapus, are more suitable for
2544-413: The poems. For example, Laure Sandoz sees a connection between the words membrōsior in 1.5, mentulātior in 36.11, and sarcinōsior (or in some texts fascinōsior ) in 79.4, all meaning "endowed with a larger penis", at the beginning, middle, and end of the collection, with the last two words both in the last line of a scazon poem. On the other hand, the poet also clearly aims at variety. For example, in
2597-410: The poet on how to seduce boys. There are also some epigrams of Martial addressed to or written about Priapus; they include 85 and 90–94 in Smithers and Burton's Priapeia , as well as Martial 1.40, in which the poet asks Priapus to guard a grove of trees from thieves, threatening to use the statue of the god for firewood if he fails. Phallus A phallus ( pl. : phalli or phalluses )
2650-421: The second to fifth groups the alternation is not so regular, but each group contains exactly 7 poems in hendecasyllables and 7 poems in either elegiac couplets or scazons . The scazon poems are arranged two in the 3rd group, two in the 4th, and two in the 5th. The last ten poems consist of a coda of 4 poems in elegiac couplets, 3 in hendecasyllables, 2 in scazons, and 1 poem in elegiac couplets. Kloss argues that if
2703-447: The theory has gained ground that they are the work of a single poet illustrating Priapus's decline from a vigorous youth to an impotent old age. The first two poems are a dedication by the author and the last one is a prayer to Priapus to increase the sexual prowess of the poet himself. In 1890, the Priapeia were translated into English by Leonard Smithers and Sir Richard Burton (the latter of whom also freely translated The Book of
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#17327756708832756-411: The time of Nero or later. Assuming that all the poems are by a single author, then the whole collection can be dated to the time of Nero or later. A number of arguments from prosody have also been put forward by H. Tränkle (1998) in an attempt to date the poems. For example, it has been argued that the long -ō in spondaic words like virgō and ergō (in 11 out of 13 cases in the Carmina Priapea )
2809-621: Was in the keeping of the Vestal Virgins . Sexuality in ancient Rome has sometimes been characterized as " phallocentric ". Shiva , one of the most widely worshiped male deities in Hinduism pantheon, is worshiped much more commonly in the form of the lingam . Evidence of the lingam in India dates back to prehistoric times. Although Lingam is not a mere phallic iconography, nor do the textual sources signify it as so, stone Lingams with several varieties are found to this date in many of
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