Priapeia

I am not shaped from the fragile elm, nor is this column of mine which stands extended with rigid vein [made] from wood taken at random, but produced from the evergreen cypress which neither a hundred full-told generations nor the decay of a lengthy senility fears. This do thou, whoever thou mayst be, O ill-doer, dread; for if with greedy hand but the smallest dusters of grapes on this vine thou dost injure, there shall be born on thee, however much thou mayst wish to oppose it, a fig tree grafted from this cypress

A Cilician thief of but too notorious rapacity wished to rob a certain garden; but large as the garden was, O Fabullus, there was naught in it save a marble Priapus. Not desiring to go back empty-handed, the Cilician stole Priapus himself

No ignorant peasant shaped me with unskilful sickle: the noble handywork of the steward thou perceivest. For the most influential cultivator of the Caeretan lands, Hilarus, owns these hills and smiling slopes. Behold, with well-shaped features I do not seem to be wooden, nor belly-weapons devoted to the kitchen-fire do I bear; but my imperishable mentule of undying cypress, worthy the hand of Phidias, stiffly raises itself. Neighbours, I warn you, worship the sacred Priapus, and these fourteen acres respect

If thou desirest to appease thine hunger, thou canst eat our Priapus; thou mayst munch even its privities, thou wilt still be pure

Aforetimes I was the trunk of a wild fig tree, useless wood,[*]( The wood of a fig tree was very little used, on account of its brittleness.) when the craftsman, uncertain whether to make a bench or a Priapus, preferred me to be the god. A god henceforth became I, to the thieves and birds the greatest of bugbears; for my right hand checks pilferers, and a ruddy pole thrust forth from obscene groin; while a cane to my pate affixed alarms the pestering birds, and prevents them from flocking down upon these recently made gardens.[*]( Octavius, willing to correct the infection of this hill, which was a common burying-place for all the poor of Rome, got the consent of the senate and people to give part of it to Maecenas, who built a magnificent house there, with very extensive gardens.) Hither, of yore, corpses from strait cells expelled, by brother-slaves were conveyed for disposal in mean biers. This for the miserable mob stood a common sepulchre, for Pantolabus the droll and Nomentanus the spendthrift. A thousand feet of frontage, three hundred backwards in field a boundary stone here gave, lest the memorial ground descend to the heirs. Now one may inhabit the Esquiliae made salubrious, and promenade on the terrace 'neath the sun, where but lately the saddened observed the ground distorted by white bones; as for me, nor thieves nor wild beasts wont this place to infest cause so much of trouble and labour as do those females who with magical songs and with venoms do overturn the minds of folk. These in no wise to make away with am I able nor to prevent, soon as the fleeting moon her beauteous visage shows forth, from gathering together dry bones and noisome herbs. With mine own eyes did I see with black garment upgirdled Canidia, walking barefoot and dishevelled of hair, with Sagana the elder a-screeching (and pallor had made both of horrible aspect) begin to claw up the ground with their