Priapeia

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.)