Priapeia

Quinctia, the people's darling, renowned in the Great Circus, cunning to flirt her tremulous buttocks to and fro, the cymbals and the castanet, the weapons of wantonness,[*]( So called because the songs and dances to which the cymbals and castanets were accompaniments were of a loose and wanton character, inciting the spectators to venery.) dedicates to Priapus, and the tambour, struck by the hand towards her drawn. And she prays for them, that she may always find favour with her spectators; and that her crowd of admirers may be 'rigid'[*]( This was looked on as a mark of the dancer's success in arousing the spectators' passions by her lascivious movements and postures.), after the manner of the god.

Thou who wickedly designest, and scarce forbearest from robbing my garden, shall be sodomised with my twelve-inch fascinum [phallus]. But if so severe and unpleasant a punishment shall not avail., I will strike higher

May I die,[*]( A favourite formula of oath amongst the Romans.) Priapus, if I do not blush to make use of lewd and impure words; but when you, a deity without shame, display to me your balls in all openness, I must call a tool a tool, a coynte a coynte.

Priapus, terrific with thy sickle and thy greater part, tell me, prithee, which is the way to the fountain?[*]( Scaliger says that figures of Priapus and of Mercury were placed at crossroads, with rods in their hands, pointing out the way to fountains. 'The figure of Hermes had, like that of Priapus, a long and massive phallus; I have seen them in a cardinal's palace at Rome; and another proof is the saying of the philosophers, who, deriding the gluttony and lust of the youths, compared them to tois ermais [statues of Mercury)

Haste thee through these vines, for if thou hast plucked off their clustering grapes, guest! thou wilt take the water for another purpose