Priapus

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Priapus

In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
, Priapus was a minor rustic fertility god, protector of livestock

Livestock

Livestock is the term used to refer to a domesticated animal intentionally reared in an agricultural setting to produce things such as food or fibre, or for its labour....
, fruit plants, gardens and male genitalia. His Roman

Roman mythology

Roman mythology, or more appropriately, Latin mythology, refers to the mythology beliefs of the Italic people inhabiting the region of Latium and its main city, Rome....
equivalent was Mutinus Mutunus. He was best noted for his huge, permanently erect penis

Penis

Priapism

Priapism is a potentially harmful and painful medical condition in which the erection penis does not return to its flaccid state, despite the absence of both physical and psychological stimulation, within four hours....
.

Relationship with other deities
He was described as the son of Aphrodite

Aphrodite

Aphrodite is the classical Greek mythology goddess of love, sex, and beauty. According to Greek oral poet Hesiod, she was born when Uranus was castrated by his son Cronus....
by Dionysus

Dionysus

In classical mythology, Dionysus or Dionysos , is the God of wine, the inspirer of ritual madness and ecstasy, and a major figure of Greek mythology, and one of the twelve Olympians, among whom Greek mythology treated Dionysus as a late arrival....
, Hermes

Hermes

Zeus

Zeus in Greek mythology is the king of the gods, the ruler of Mount Olympus and the god of the sky father and List of thunder gods. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull , and oak....
or Pan

Pan (mythology)

Pan , in Ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, is the companion of the nymphs, god of shepherds and flocks, of mountain wilds, hunting and rustic music....
, depending on the source. According to legend, Hera

Hera

In the Twelve Olympians of classical Greek Mythology, Hera or Here was the wife and older sister of Zeus. Her chief function was as goddess of women and marriage....
cursed him with impotence, ugliness and foul-mindedness while he was still in Aphrodite's womb, in revenge for the hero Paris

Paris (mythology)

Paris , the son of Priam, king of Troy, appears in a number of Greek mythology. Probably the best-known was his elopement with Helen, queen of Sparta, this being one of the immediate causes of the Trojan War....
having the temerity to judge Aphrodite more beautiful than Hera.

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Encyclopedia

In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Livestock

Roman mythology

Penis

Priapism

Relationship with other deities

He was described as the son of Aphrodite

Aphrodite

Aphrodite is the classical Greek mythology goddess of love, sex, and beauty. According to Greek oral poet Hesiod, she was born when Uranus was castrated by his son Cronus....
by Dionysus

Dionysus

Hermes

Zeus

Pan (mythology)

Hera

Paris (mythology)

Mount Olympus

Mount Olympus is the highest mountain in Greece at 2,919 metres high . Since its base is located at sea level, it is one of the highest mountains in Europe in terms of topographic prominence, the relative altitude from base to top....
and threw him down to Earth, where he was brought up by shepherds.

Priapus joined Pan and the satyr

Satyr

In Greek mythology, satyrs are a troop of male companions of Pan and Dionysus ? "satyresses" were a late invention of poets ? that roamed the woods and mountains....
s as a spirit of fertility and growth, though he was perennially frustrated by his impotence. He attempted to rape the nymph Lotis

Lotis

Lotis was a nymph of Greek mythology, the daughter of Poseidon or Nereus. Priapus tried to rape her and she was changed into a lotus tree to escape him....
but was thwarted by an ass

Donkey

The 'donkey' or 'ass', Equus africanus asinus, is a Domestication member of the Equidae or horse family, and an Odd-toed ungulates. The wild ancestor of the donkey is the Wild Ass, E....
, whose braying caused him to lose his erection at the critical moment and woke Lotis. He pursued the nymph until the gods took pity on her and turned her into a lotus

Lotus tree

The lotus tree is a plant that occurs in two stories from Greek mythology:* In Homer's Odyssey, the lotus bore a fruit that caused a pleasant drowsiness and was the only food of an island people called the Lotophagi or Lotus-eaters....
plant. The episode gave him a lasting hatred of asses and a willingness to see them killed in his honour. In the end, his lust gave him a permanent erection

Erection

An erection of the penis, clitoris or a nipple is its enlarged and firm state. It is the result of a complex interaction of psychological, neural, vascular and endocrine factors, and is usually, though not exclusively, associated with sexual arousal....
and his penis grew so large that he was unable to move.

Worship and attributes

The first extant mention of Priapus is in the eponymous comedy Priapus, written in the fourth century BC by Xenarchus. Originally worshipped by Greek colonists in Lampsacus

Lampsacus

File:Stater Zeus Lampsacus CdM.jpgLampsacus was an ancient Greece city strategically located on the eastern side of the Hellespont in the northern Troad....
in Asia Minor, the cult of Priapus spread to mainland Greece and eventually to Italy during the third century BC. Lucian

Lucian

Lucian of Samosata was an Assyrian people rhetorician, and satire who wrote in the Greek language. He is noted for his witty and scoffing nature....
(De saltatione) tells that in Bithynia

Bithynia

Bithynia was an ancient region, kingdom and Roman province in the northwest of Asia Minor, adjoining the Propontis, the Thrace Bosporus and the Euxine ....
Priapus was accounted as a warlike god, a rustic tutor to the infant Ares

Ares

In Greek mythology, Ares is the son of Zeus and Hera. Though often referred to as the Twelve Olympians God of warfare, he is more accurately the god of bloodlust, or slaughter personified: "Ares is apparently an ancient abstract noun meaning throng of battle, war."...
. Arnobius

Arnobius

Arnobius of Sicca was an Early Christian apologetics, during the reign of Diocletian . According to Jerome's Chronicle, Arnobius, before his conversion, was a distinguished rhetorician at Sicca Veneria , a major Christian center in Proconsular Africa , and owed his conversion to a premonitory dream....
is aware of the importance accorded Priapus in this region near the Hellespont

Hellespont

Hellespont was the ancient name of the narrow strait, now known by the modern European term 'Dardanelles'. It was so called from Helle , the daughter of Athamas, who was drowned here in the mythology of the Golden Fleece....
. Also, Pausanias notes:

This god is worshipped where goats and sheep pasture or there are swarms of bees; but by the people of Lampsacus he is more revered than any other god, being called by them a son of Dionysus and Aphrodite.

Outside his "home" region in Asia Minor, Priapus was regarded as something of a joke by urban dwellers. However, he played a more important role in the countryside, where he was seen as a guardian deity. He was regarded as the patron god of sailors and fishermen and others in need of good luck, and his presence was believed to avert the evil eye

Evil eye

The evil eye is a belief that the envy elicited by the good luck of fortunate people may result in their misfortune. The perception of the nature of the phenomenon, its causes, and possible protective measures, varies between different cultures....
.

Priapus does not appear to have had an organised cult and was mostly worshipped in gardens or homes, though there are attestations of temples dedicated to the god. His sacrificial animal was the ass, reflecting his lustful nature, but agricultural offerings (such as fruit, flowers, vegetables and fish) were also very common.

Long after the fall of Rome and the rise of Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a Monotheistic religion #Christian view religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus as New Testament view on Jesus' life....
, Priapus continued to be invoked as a symbol of health and fertility. The 13th century Lanercost Chronicle

Lanercost Chronicle

The Lanercost Chronicle is a northern England and Scotland history covering the years 1201 to 1346. It covers the Wars of Scottish Independence, but it is also highly tangential and as such provides insights into English life in the thirteenth century....
, a history of northern England and Scotland, records a "lay Cistercian brother" erecting a statue of Priapus (simulacrum Priapi statuere) in a bid to end an outbreak of cattle disease.

In the 1980s, D. F. Cassidy founded the St. Priapus Church

St. Priapus Church

St. Priapus Church is a North American religion founded in the 1980s that centres on the worship of the phallus.St. Priapus Church was founded in Montreal, Quebec by D....
as a modern church centred on worship of the phallus

Phallus

Phallus can refer to a penis, or to an object shaped like a penis. The word comes from Vulgar Latin "phallus", from Ancient Greek "fa????" phallos, penis....
.

Depictions

Priapus' iconic attribute was his priapism

Priapism

Penis

The penis is an external sex organ of certain biologically male organisms, in both vertebrates and invertebrates.The penis is a reproductive organ, technically an intromittent organ, and for Eutheria, additionally serves as the external organ of urination....
); he probably absorbed some pre-existing ithyphallic deities as his cult developed. He was represented in a variety of ways, most commonly as a misshapen gnome-like figure with an enormous erect phallus. Statues of Priapus were common in ancient Greece and Rome, standing in gardens or at doorways and crossroads. To propitiate Priapus, the traveller would stroke the statue's penis as he passed by. The Athenians

Athens

Athens , the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the List of cities by time of continuous habitation, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
often conflated Priapus with Hermes

Hermes

Hermes is the messenger of the gods in Greek mythology. An Twelve Olympians, he is also the patron of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of thieves and road travelers, of orators and wit, of literature and poets, of athletics, of weights and measures, of invention, of general commerce, and of the cunni...
, the god of boundaries, and depicted a hybrid deity with a winged helmet, sandals and huge erection.

Statues of Priapus were often hung with signs bearing epigram

Epigram

An Epigram is a brief, clever, and usually memorable statement. Derived from the "to write on - inscribe", the literary device has been employed for over two millennia....
s, collected in Priapeia (treated below

Priapus

In Greek mythology, Priapus was a minor rustic fertility god, protector of livestock, fruit plants, gardens and male genitalia. His Roman mythology equivalent was Mutinus Mutunus....
), which threatened sexual assault

Sexual assault

Sexual assault is is an assault of a sexual nature on another person. Although sexual assaults most frequently are by a man on a woman, it may be by a man on a man, woman on a man or woman on a woman....
towards transgressors of the boundaries that he protected:

Percidere, puer, moneo; futuere, puella;

barbatum furem tertia poena manet.

I warn you, boy, you will be sodomised; girl, you will be fucked;

a third penalty awaits the bearded thief.

Femina si furtum faciet mihi virve puerve,

haec cunnum, caput hic praebeat, ille nates.

If a woman steals from me, or a man, or a boy,

let the first give me her cunt, the second his head, the third his buttocks.

Per medios ibit pueros mediasque puellas

mentula, barbatis non nisi summa petet.

My dick will go through the middle of boys and the middle of girls,

but with bearded men it will aim only for the top.

Another example comes from the works of Martial

Martial

Marcus Valerius Martialis , was a Latin language poet from Hispania best known for his twelve books of Epigrams, published in Ancient Rome between AD 86 and 103, during the reigns of the Roman emperor Domitian, Nerva and Trajan....
(6.73):

Non rudis indocta fecit me falce colonus:

Dispensatoris nobile cernis opus.

Nam Caeretani cultor ditissimus agri

Hos Hilarus colles et iuga laeta tenet.

Adspice, quam certo videar non ligneus ore,

Nec devota focis inguinis arma geram:

Sed mihi perpetua nunquam moritura cupresso

Phidiaci rigeat mentala digna manu.

Vicini, moneo, sanctum celebrate Priapum,

Et bis septenis parcite iugeribus.

I am not hewn from fragile elm
Elm

Elms are deciduous and semi-deciduous trees comprising the genus Ulmus, family Ulmaceae. Elms first appeared in the Miocene period about 40 million years ago....
, nor is my member which stands stiff with a rigid shaft made from just any old wood. It is begotten from everlasting cypress
Cypress

Cypress is the name applied to many plants in the Pinophyta family Cupressaceae . Most plants which bear the common name cypress are in the genera Cupressus and Chamaecyparis, but several other genera in the family also carry the name, including:...
, which fears not the passage of a hundred celestial ages nor the decay of advanced years. Fear this, evil doer, whoever you are. If your thieving rod harms the smallest shoots of this here vine, like it or not, this cypress rod will penetrate [i.e. sodomise] and plant a fig in you.

A number of Roman paintings of Priapus have survived from ancient times. One of the most famous such images of Priapus is that from the House of the Vettii

House of the Vettii

In Pompeii one of the most famous of the luxurious residences, a domus rather than a Roman villa, is the so-called "House of the Vettii," preserved, like the rest of the Roman city, by the Vesuvius in 79 AD....
in Pompeii

Pompeii

Pompeii is a ruined and partially buried Ancient Rome town-city near modern Naples in the Italy region of Campania, in the territory of the comune of Pompei....
. A fresco

Fresco

Fresco is any of several related painting types, done on plaster on walls or ceilings. The word fresco comes from the Italian word affresco which derives from the adjective fresco , which has Latin origins....
depicts the god weighing his phallus against a bag full of money; it appears that his phallus is heavier. In nearby Herculaneum

Herculaneum

Herculaneum is an ancient Roman Empire town, located in the territory of the current commune of Ercolano. Its ruins can be found at the co-ordinates , in the Italy region of Campania....
, an excavated snack bar has a painting of Priapus behind the bar, apparently as a good-luck symbol for the customers.

In literature

Priapus gave rise to a genre of poetry collectively termed Priapeia. The genre shows how Roman poets in particular invented comic and obscene situations for the deity, giving him more literary prominence than he enjoyed in rites or cult, though masked phallic figures were prominent on many festive occasions, both in Greece and in the wider Roman world.

In Ovid

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso was a Roman Empire poet known as Ovid to the English language-speaking world, who wrote about love, seduction, and Roman mythology transformation....
's Fasti
Fasti

Fasti, a Latin word, refers to the Roman calendar and almanac; and especially, to a long, possibly unfinished poem on the religious festivals of the Roman year and their mythology underpinnings, by the poet Ovid....
, the nymph

Nymph

In Greek mythology, a nymph is any member of a large class of mythological entities in human form. They were typically associated with a particular location or landform....
Lotis

Lotis

Lotis was a nymph of Greek mythology, the daughter of Poseidon or Nereus. Priapus tried to rape her and she was changed into a lotus tree to escape him....
fell into a drunken slumber at a feast, and Priapus seized this opportunity to advance upon her. With stealth he approached, and just before he could embrace her, Silenus's donkey alerted the party with "raucous braying". Lotis awoke and pushed Priapus away, but her only true escape was to be transformed into the lotus tree

Lotus tree

The lotus tree is a plant that occurs in two stories from Greek mythology:* In Homer's Odyssey, the lotus bore a fruit that caused a pleasant drowsiness and was the only food of an island people called the Lotophagi or Lotus-eaters....
. To punish the donkey for spoiling his opportunity, Priapus bludgeoned it to death with his gargantuan phallus. In later versions of the story, Lotis is replaced with the virginal goddess Hestia

Hestia

In Greek mythology, virginal Hestia, daughter of Cronus and Rhea , is the goddess of the hearth, of the right ordering of domesticity and the family, who received the first offering at every sacrifice in the household....
. Ovid's anecdote served to explain why donkeys were sacrificed to Priapus in the city of Lampsacus

Lampsacus

File:Stater Zeus Lampsacus CdM.jpgLampsacus was an ancient Greece city strategically located on the eastern side of the Hellespont in the northern Troad....
on the Hellespont, where he was worshipped among the offspring of Hermes

Hermes

Hermes is the messenger of the gods in Greek mythology. An Twelve Olympians, he is also the patron of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of thieves and road travelers, of orators and wit, of literature and poets, of athletics, of weights and measures, of invention, of general commerce, and of the cunni...
.

Priapus is mentioned in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Merchant's Tale, part of the Canterbury Tales. During a description of a garden that the protagonist, Januarie, creates, Priapus is invoked in his form as God of gardens:

Ne Priapus ne myghte nat suffise, Though he be God of gardyns, for to telle The beautee of the gardyn and the welle, That stood under a laurer alwey grene.

Priapus might not suffice, Though he be god of gardens, to tell Of the beauty of the garden and the well That stood under the laurel, always green.

Priapus serves to remind the reader, or listening audience, that Januarie's intentions are driven by lust and not love.

Modern derivations

Medical terminology

The medical condition priapism

Priapism

Priapism is a potentially harmful and painful medical condition in which the erection penis does not return to its flaccid state, despite the absence of both physical and psychological stimulation, within four hours....
derives its name from Priapus, alluding to the god's permanently engorged penis.

Natural history

The group of worm-like marine burrowing animals known as the Priapulidea
Priapulida

Priapulida are a Phylum of marine worms with an extensible spiny proboscis. Priapulid fossils are known at least as far back as the Middle Cambrian....
, literally "penis worms", also derives its name from Priapus.
Mutinus caninus
Mutinus caninus

Mutinus caninus, commonly known as the Dog Stinkhorn, is a small thin, phallus-shaped woodland fungus, with a dark tip. It is often found growing in small groups on wood debris, or in leaf litter, during summer and autumn in Europe and eastern North America....
, a woodland fungus, draws its first name from Priapus's Roman name, due to its phallic shape.

Popular culture

It has been suggested by some scholars that the modern popular garden gnome is a descendant of Priapus.
Due to his large and constantly erect phallus, Priapus is sometimes the subject of (rather immature) jokes.