Priapeia

Do thou, who art about to read these wanton sallies of careless verse, lay aside the brow befitting Latium.[*]( The poet commemorates the three goddesses, Diana, Vesta and Minerva, whose perpetual virginity knew no man. 'Callimachus, in a Hymn to this Goddess [Diana) Not Phoebus's sister, not Vesta in her sanctuary, nor that Goddess sprung from her father's brain,[*]() dwells here: but the ruddy Protector of our Gardens, larger membered than is usual, and who has his groin covered by no garment. Therefore, either spread thy tunic over that part which 'tis meet to conceal; or with the same eyes that thou lookest upon it, peruse these.

For pastime, and with little care, have I written these verses, thee attesting,[*]( Possibly with a punning allusion to testicles.) O Priapus--verses worthy a garden,[*]( A double entendre intended to be conveyed by the word 'garden'.) not a little book! Nor have I, as poets are wont, invoked the Muses to this unvirginal spot. For I had neither mind nor heart for the emprise, to bring the chaste sisters, the chorus of Pïérides, to the mentule[*]( The male member--mentula.) of Priapus. Therefore, whatever it is I have jotted in an idle hour on the walls of thy temple, take it in good part, I pray thee.

Lalage dedicates a votive offering to the God of the standing prickle, bringing pictures from the shameless books of Elephantis, and begs him to try and imitate with her all the different coitions of the painted figures.

Hereunder is written in two verses the condition which Priapus is said to have made with a boy:

Though I am, as you see, a wooden Priapus, with wooden reaping-hook and a wooden penis; yet I will seize thee, and when thou art caught [my girl], I will enjoy thee. And the whole of this, large though it be, and stiffer than twisted cord, than the string of the lyre, I will surely bury in thee to thy seventh rib.

Whenever I speak, one word slips me; for, talking with a lisp, I always say instead of praedico, paedico

Go far hence, ye virtuous wives, 'tis unseemly for you to read lewd verses.[*]( The obscene inscriptions scrawled on the base of his statue.) They care not an as [for my words],[*]( A Roman copper coin of small value.) and straightway approach. Verily these matrons are sensible, and look joyfully, too, on the well-grown mentule.

Why are my privy parts without vesture? you demand. I ask why no God conceals his emblem? The Lord of the World [Jupiter] has his thunderbolt, and holds it unconcealed; nor is a covered trident given to the God of the Sea [Neptune]. Mars does not secrete the sword by whose means he prevails; nor does Pallas's spear lie hid in the warm bosom of her robe. Is Phoebus ashamed to carry his golden arrows? Is Diana wont to bear her quiver secretly? Does Alcides conceal the strength of his knotted club? Has the winged God [Mercury] his caduceus under his tunic? Who has seen Bacchus draw his garment over the slender thyrsus; or thee, O Love, with hidden torch? Nor should it be a reproach to me that my mentule is always uncovered. For if this spear be wanting to me, I am weaponless.

Why, most foolish girl, do you laugh? Neither Praxiteles[*]( Praxiteles, according to Pliny, lived in the time of Pompeius: his statue of Venus was very famous.) nor Scopas[*]( Scopas was a celebrated sculptor in marble and carved in relief on the Mausoleum.) has given me shape, nor have I been perfected by the hand of Phidias;[*]( Phidias was a renowned ivory sculptor.) but a bailiff carved me from a shapeless log, and said to me, 'You are Priapus!'[*]( The statue was so badly carved that the sculptor had to explain what his work was intended to represent.) Yet you gaze at me, and laugh repeatedly. Doubtless it seems to you a droll thing--the 'column' standing upright from my groin.

Take heed lest thou art caught. If I do seize thee, nor with my club will I belabour thee, nor cruel wounds with the curved sickle will inflict on thee. Thrust into by my twelve-inch I pole, thou shalt be so stretched that thou wilt drink thy anus never had any wrinkles.

A certain hag, more aged than the mother [Hecuba] of Hector (the sister, I opine, of the Cumaean Sibyl), old as thou whom Theseus when he came back home found lying in the grave, often comes hither with tottering steps, and lifting her shrivelled hands to the stars, begs that she may not lack the mentule. In yesterday's fight too, while praying, she spat out one of her three teeth. Take it far away, I say, and bid it he concealed under thy tattered tunic and thy scarlet stole, as 'tis its custom; let it shun the fight of thy meagre jaws, which, thy hairy nose in the air, gape with a chasm so foul and enormous that you would. think an Epicurean was yawning.

I warn thee, my lad, thou wilt be sodomised; thee, my girl, I shall futter;[*]( Futuere. Used frequently by Martial. Derived from fundo, to pour out (the semen).) for the thief who is bearded, a third punishment[*]( Tertia poene in the Latin original meaning irrumation, or coition with the mouth.) remains.

Hither, hither, whoever thou art, to the venerable sanctuary of the lecherous God, nor think to be turned away. And if a girl were with thee in the night, 'tis no reason why thou shouldst fear to approach my altar; though it is otherwise with the stem Gods above.[*]( The ancients thought that those defiled by carnal coition generally were precluded from worship of the gods until they had been purified by bathing.) I am a good-for-naught, a paltry rustic deity of scant culture. I stand in the open air, my modesty thrust aside, My bollocks exposed to view. Therefore, 'tis permitted to enter hither all who will, besmirched with the black filth of the stews.[*]( In the stews, they had lamps hanging, on the back part of which was expressed, hieroglyphically, to whom they were dedicated. Many of these lamps bore phallic emblems: I have seen one on the upper part of which was a sculpture representing Leda in the act of coition with the swan. The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter and the Satires of Juvenal and Horace all speak of the Roman brothels, which were constructed in the form of a gallery along which were ranged, on each side like a nunnery, a number of contiguous cells or chambers. Over the door of each of these was posted a bill with the price and name of the tenant, who stood at the entrance soliciting the preferences of the visitors.)

He who shall plunder with dishonest hand the little field committed to my charge, shall feel me to be no eunuch[*]( Martial and Juvenal have many references to eunuchism and the use to which the Roman ladies put these castratos, who were of various kinds: castrati (castare, meaning to cut oft)--those who had lost both penis and testicles; spadones (either spata, a Gallic word meaning a razor, or Spada, a Persian village where the operation of eunuchism is performed)--those who still retained the penis; thlibiae (from the Greek meaning to rub with hemlock, etc.)--those whose testicles had been extracted by compression; thliasiae (from the Greek meaning to crush); cremaster (so called from the destruction of the muscle, cremaster, by which the testicle is suspended or drawn up or compressed in the act of coition); and bagoas. The subject scarcely calls for extended notice in this work, but I would refer those interested in the subject to The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, translated by Sir Richard F. Burton.) in this lonely place among the bushes. Here, perhaps, he will say this to himself, 'None will know that I have been thrust through.'[*]( Praecidere (literally meaning to cut off). Here means to cut through the bowels. It has a similar meaning in Juvenal--'to run against yesterday's supper'. Like expressions are billas dividere, 'to divide the bowels', and cacare mentulam, 'to defile the mentule with ordure'.) He will be mistaken; that cause will be sustained by 'weighty' witnesses

As the apples with which Hippomenes raped the daughter of Schoeneus;[*]( Referring to the story of the race between Hippomenes and Atalanta, and how the crafty lover tricked the damsel into defeat by the three gold apples.) for which the garden of the Hesperides was renowned; which one may imagine Nausicaa[*]( Nausicaa was the daughter of Alcinous, king of Phaeacia, whose pleasure demensnes and luxuriousness became a proverb.) often carrying in her teeming lap as she walked in her father's domains; as was that apple graced by the words of Acontius, which, read aloud [by Cydippe], pledged the maiden to this ardent lover[*]( The story is very prettily told by Aristaenetus. The words on the apple were--'I swear to thee inviolably, by the mystic rites of Diana, that I will join myself to thee as thy companion and will become thy bride.' According to Vossius the gift of an apple was equivalent to a promise of the last favour. The Emperor Theodosius caused Paulinus to be murdered for receiving an apple from his empress.)--such are those which the boy-owner of a small but fertile field has placed on thy sacrificial table, O naked Priapus.

What hast thou to do with me, thou meddlesome watchman? why dost thou hinder the thief from coming to me? Let him approach: he will return more 'open

The greatest advantage in my penis is this, that no woman can be [too] roomy[*]( A popular theme of the poets. From Scioppius, 'However loose her coynte may be I will zealously fill it.' And from Martial against Lydia--'Me roomy Lydia's private parts surpassThe lusty dray horse' elephantine arse;Wide as the schoolboy's ringing iron hoop;Vast as the ring the agile riders stoopAnd leap through neatly, touching not the side,As round and round the dusty course they ride;Capacious as some old and well-worn shoe,That's trudged the muddy streets since first 'twas new;Stretched like the net the crafty fowler holds;And drapery as a curtain's heavy folds;Loose as the bracelet gemmed with green and scarlet,That mocks the arm of some consumptive harlot;Slack as a feather bed without the feathers;And baggy as some ostler's well-used leathers;Relaxed and hanging like the skinny coatThat shields the vulture's foul and flabby throat.'Tis said, while bathing once we trod love's path,I know not, but I seemed to fuck the bath.A somewhat similar person was the provident wife in the poem of "The Sutler', who when her husband was robbed of his horses and waggon and all his goods by a party of the enemy's forces, consoled him as follows--'No matter,' she said, and look'd with a smile,'I did the damn'd party, in some sort, beguile;'Then drew out a purse twice as big as your fist,'Tho' they search'd me,' said she, 'this treasure they missed;Then prithee, be cheerful.' This gave him new life,He wept, and he laugh'd, and he ogl'd his wife,And leering upon her, said, 'Tell me, my dear,Where was it you hid the purse I see here?'She smil'd on her spouse, then laugh'd in his face,'I hid it,' said she, 'in a certain place,With which you're acquainted! He said, 'My dear life,I see you're a careful and provident wife;You've done very well, but you'd had more to brag on,If you there had conceal'd the horses and waggon.') for me.

Will Telethusa, the posture-dancer, who heaves up her haunches, denuded of tunic, more gracefully and higher than her bosom,[*]( The posture alluded to is that attitude in coition in which the man lies supine, whilst the woman mounts on him and provokes the orgasm by her movements.) ever, with undulating loins,[*]( In the original Latin, flucto, referring here to the wave-like motion of the loins during congress.) wriggle her thighs[*]( In the original Latin, crisso, meaning the buckings and wrigglings of a woman's thighs and haunches during congress.) for thee in such wise as not only to excite thy desires, O Priapus, but even those of the stepson of Phaedra?

Jove controls the thunderbolts; the trident is Neptune's weapon; Mars is mighty by the sword; thine, Minerva, is the spear. Bacchus fights his battles with a bundle of thyrsi; the bolt, we are told, is shot by Apollo's hand. Hercules' invincible right arm is equipped with a club; but a mentule at full stretch makes me appalling

All my wealth have I lost; be propitious when I ask thee, nor betray me, Priapus, by word or deed. Tell it to none, that these home-grown apples, which I have placed on thy altar, are from the Sacred Way