Priapeia

Priaepia

by divers poets in English verse and prose. Translated by Sir Richard Burton and Leonard C. Smithers

What is this? Or wherefore do I suspect the greatest number of thieves to come into my garden, when everyone of them who happens unexpectedly upon me pays the penalty and is excavated up to his undulating loins? The fig tree here is no better than my neighbour is, nor are the grapes such as golden-haired Arete[*]( The wife of Alcinous, King of the Phaeacians.) gathered; nor are the apples meet to be the produce of the trees of Picenum. Neither is the pear, which at such hazard you try to pilfer; nor the plum, more mellow in colour than new wax, nor the service-apple which stays slippery stomachs. Neither do my branches yield an excellent mulberry, the oblong nut, hight filbert, nor the almond bright with purple blossom. I do not, more gluttonously, grow divers kind of cabbage and beet, larger than any other garden trains, and the scallion with its ever-growing head; nor think I that any come for the seed-abounding gourd, the clover, the cucumbers extended along the soil, or the dwarfish lettuce. Nor that any bear away in the night-time lust-exciting rockets, and fragrant mint with healthy rue, pungent onions and fibrous garlic. All of which, though enclosed within my hedgerow, grow with no sparser measure in the neighbouring garden, which having left, ye come to the place which I cultivate, O most vile thieves. Without doubt, ye flock to the open punishment,[*]( So called because the natural parts of Priapus were always exposed to view.) and the very thing with which I threaten, allures you.[*]( The thieves came for the pleasure of being sodomised, instead of looking on it as a punishment.)

Hark ye, thou who scarcely withholdest thy greedy hand from the garden entrusted to me. Now, first the watchman, full of lechery, with alternate entrance and exit, shall make thy passage an open one. Then two shall approach, who stand guard at each side, nobly provided with pensile property. Who, when they have grievously ploughed thee, stretched prostrate, to the same part shall come a rampant little ass, by no means inferior in well-hung pizzle. Wherefore, he who is wise will beware of ill-doing, when he knows that here is so much of the mentule

Bacchus is wont to be content with a modest cluster from the vine, even when the deep vats can barely contain the must. And when the spacious threshing floors are insufficient for the rich harvest, in Ceres' locks a single garland is wreathed. Do thou also, less potent deity, guided by their greater example, although our offering be only a few apples, take it in good part

If thou writest E and D then addest a joining line, that which wishes to cleave through the middle of D [thee] will be represented.[*]( If you write the letters E D and place a dash between them, thus E-D, a mentule will be represented, which wishes to cleave through the middle of D. The ambiguity is in writing the letter D, instead of the Latin word Te (thee), in the second verse. The shape of the mentule is not strikingly apparent at first sight, but the top and bottom strokes of the letter E may be taken as forming the testicles, whilst the middle stroke of the E, continued by the dash thus E-, represents the mentule itself. The D (Te) stands for the anus to be cleaved by the mentule.)

Who could believe ('tis a shameful confession!) that the thieves have even purloined the sickle from my very fingers? nor do the disgrace and loss so much affect me as the well-grounded fears of losing other weapons. Which if I lose, I shall be expatriated; and he formerly thy citizen, O Lampsacus, will become a Gaul.[*]( The word Gallus means one born in Gaul, and also an emasculated priest of Cybele. Therefore, were the thieves to steal Priapus's phallus, which was often used as a cudgel against garden robbers, he would become a Gallus. Martial relates that a Tuscan soothsayer whilst sacrificing a goat to Bacchus ordered a rustic who was assisting him to castrate the animal. The haruspex, busily intent on cutting the goat's throat, exposed to his assistant's view an immense hernia of his own, which the countryman seized and cut off by mistake, thus converting the Tuscan into a Gaul (Gallus). The priests of Cybele (who were all castrated) were called Galli from Gallus, a river in Phrygia, which turned to madness those who drank of its waters.)

Thou also mockest, O thief, and when threatened, dost stretch out to me the indecent finger![*]( The middle finger. It was called 'infamous', according to some writers, on account of the custom of the Jews, who used to wipe the podex when they suffered from bleeding piles. This is not so. It derived its name from its resemblance to the mentule, and it is used in that sense here. When the middle finger is pointing, the other fingers are turned inside, representing a mentule with its accessories; for which reason it was thus pointedly shown in derision to sodomites. Martial: 'Cestus with tears in his eyes often complains to me, Mamurianus, of being teased with your finger.' In an admirable article on pederasty in The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: 'Debauchees had signals like Freemasons whereby they recognised one another. The Greek skematízein was made by closing the hand to represent the scrotum and raising the middle finger as if to feel whether a hen had eggs; hence the Athenians called it catapygon or sodomite and the Romans digitus impudicus or infamis, the 'medical finger' of Rabelais and the Chiromantists--though properly speaking medicus is the third or ring-finger, as shown by the old Chiromantist verses. The modern Italian does the same by inserting the thumb-tip between the index and medius to suggest the clitoris. When the Egyptians wish to represent pederasty, they painted two partridges, who, when bereft of their mates, were supposed to enjoy each other. Pliny supports this statement.The finger was also pointed at people as a mark of simple contempt. Martial: 'He points with the finger, but with the infamous finger.' Persius says, without any obscene afterthought, 'The grandmother cleanses with infamous finger the infant.') Alas, unhappy I! that the thing is but wood which makes me seem fearsome. But no matter, I will charge the lecherous owner of the garden that he may be willing to irrumate the thieves for me.

An old crow, a thing of decay, a very sepulchre, grown rotten through the lapse of generations, who perchance might have been the wet-nurse of Tithonus, of Priam, and of Nestor, or who was an old woman maybe when they were boys, beseeches me that a futterer may not be wanting to her. How if she were now to pray that she may become a girl again? Nevertheless if she hath- money, she is a girl.[*]( Suggesting she may obtain a lover if she will pay for him. Martial writes,'Lesbia swears that she has never been futtered gratis. It is true: for when shewants to futter, she is wont to pay.' And,Wouldst thou be wimbled gratis when thou artA wrinkled wretch deformed in every part?O 'tis a thing more than ridiculous:To take a man's full sum, and not pay Use!)

Whatever thief who deceives my faith may he wither away, far from the buttocks of a catamite. And whatso girl who with audacious hand plucks off these apples, may she meet with no futterer

Know this, lest thou shouldst deny being warned, if thou comest a thief thou wilt go dishonoured

  1. If as many verses so many apples thou hast dedicated to
  2. thee, O Priapus, thou wilt be richer than of yore Alcinous.

Why dost thou vainly complain, O husbandman, that I, once a well-fruited apple tree, have now remained sterile throughout two autumns? 'Tis not old age, as thou imaginest, which tells upon me; nor have I been beaten by a violent hailstorm; nor has an unseasonable wintry blast nipped off the blossoms just breaking forth from the stem. Neither have winds, nor rain, nor droughts, given the apple tree any cause to murmur. The starling, the plundering 'daw, the old crow, the water-loving goose, the thirsty raven, none of these has injured me; but the verses of the most execrable of poetasters which I bear on my grievously overladen branches

Sleep dogs in safety: Sirius will watch over the garden with his beloved Erigone.[*]( Sirius, the Dog Star, Erigone, the constellation Virgo. Icarus, the father of Erigone, having been slain by some intoxicated shepherds, his dog Maera, returning home, drew his daughter by her robe to where her father lay. She hanged herself for grief, and the dog perished of hunger. In compassion, Bacchus raised them to the sides, calling Icarus by the name of Boötes; Erigone the Virgin; and Maera, Canicula, Sirius, 'the Dog Star' or Procyon.)

'Tis not enough, O friends, that I have fixed my abode here, where the earth gapes into chinks through the heat of the dog days, and that I daily endure the summer's drought; 'tis not enough that the rains flow down my bosom, that hail-storms beat amongst my bared locks, and that my beard frozen together is stiffened by the ice: 'tis too little that having spent the day in labour, I protract it, sleepless, through a night equally long. Add to this, that the unskilled hands of a rustic have chopped me, the awe-inspiring god with a cudgel, and that, amongst all the gods the lowest deity, I am called the wooden guardian of gourds. A pyramid [the virile member] stretched forth with libidinous vigour joins to these the symbol of shamelessness. Hither a damsel (I had almost added her name) is wont to come with her futterer: who if as many forms as Philaenis narrates she does not experience, she departs raging with unsated lust

A certain one, more tender than the marrow of a goose, comes hither thieving for love of the punishment. He may steal when he fists, I shall not see him

This pig, which has crushed the rising lilies with his snout, is sacrificed to thee--a victim warm from the stye. But lest thou shouldst cause the whole herd to be annihilated, O Priapus, bid the gate of thy garden to be closed.[*]( The priestesses of Priapus were sometimes represented in marble sculptures as clothed with hides of swine.)