Pompeii - Casa del Chirurgo - Paintress - MAN

The ''Priapeia'' (or ''Carmina Priapea'') is a collection of eighty (in some editions ninety-five) anonymous short Latin poems in various meters on subjects pertaining to the

phallic A phallus is a penis (especially when Erection, erect), an object that resembles a penis, or a mimesis, mimetic image of an erect penis. In art history a figure with an erect penis is described as ithyphallic. Any object that symbolically— ...

god

Priapus In Greek mythology, Priapus (; grc, Πρίαπος, ) is a minor rustic fertility god, protector of livestock, fruit plants, gardens and male genitalia. Priapus is marked by his oversized, permanent erection, which gave rise to the medical ter ...

. They are believed to date from the 1st century AD or the beginning of the 2nd century. A traditional theory about their origin is that they are an anthology of poems written by various authors on the same subject. However, it has recently been argued that the 80 poems are in fact the work of a single author, presenting a kind of biography of Priapus from his vigorous youth to his impotence in old age.

Overview

Not counting the last few poems, which seem not to be part of the original collection, the Priapeia consists of 80 epigrams (average length 6 to 8 lines) mainly written in either

hendecasyllable In poetry, a hendecasyllable (sometimes hendecasyllabic) is a line of eleven syllables. The term may refer to several different poetic meters, the older of which are quantitative and used chiefly in classical (Ancient Greek and Latin) poetry, and ...

s or

elegiac couplet The elegiac couplet is a poetic form used by Greek lyric poets for a variety of themes usually of smaller scale than the epic. Roman poets, particularly Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid, adopted the same form in Latin many years late ...

s, with a few also in scazons. Many of the epigrams are written as though they were to be engraved on the walls of a shrine containing a statue of the god

that stood in the midst of gardens as the protector of the fruits that grew in them. These statues, usually carved from wood, were in the form of a man with a huge phallus, carrying a sickle in one hand. The statues, painted red to signify sexual prowess, also promoted the gardens’ fertility. Most of the poems in the collection are

monologues In theatre, a monologue (from el, μονόλογος, from μόνος ''mónos'', "alone, solitary" and λόγος ''lógos'', "speech") is a speech presented by a single character, most often to express their thoughts aloud, though sometimes a ...

by Priapus himself. In them the god congratulates and praises himself for the size and virility of his sexual parts and issues fearful warnings to those who would trespass upon his garden or attempt to steal its fruits, threatening such miscreants with various punishments of a sexual nature, such as irrumation and

sodomy Sodomy () or buggery (British English) is generally anal or oral sex between people, or sexual activity between a person and a non-human animal ( bestiality), but it may also mean any non- procreative sexual activity. Originally, the term ''s ...

. The poems are notable for their use of obscene words and ideas in combination with refined and elegant diction. In the past one theory was that the ''Priapeia'' were the work of a group of poets who met at the house of

Maecenas Gaius Cilnius Maecenas ( – 8 BC) was a friend and political advisor to Octavian (who later reigned as emperor Augustus). He was also an important patron for the new generation of Augustan poets, including both Horace and Virgil. During the r ...

, amusing themselves by writing tongue-in-cheek tributes to the garden Priapus. (Maecenas was

Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ' ...

’s patron.) Others, including

Martial Marcus Valerius Martialis (known in English as Martial ; March, between 38 and 41 AD – between 102 and 104 AD) was a Roman poet from Hispania (modern Spain) best known for his twelve books of ''Epigrams'', published in Rome between AD 86 and ...

and

Petronius Gaius Petronius Arbiter"Gaius Petronius Arbiter"
Vinzenz Buchheit in 1962, the theory has gained ground that they are the work of a single poet illustrating Priapus's decline from a vigorous youth to an impotent old age. The first two poems are a dedication by the author and the last one is a prayer to Priapus to increase the sexual prowess of the poet himself. In 1890, the ''Priapeia'' were translated into English by

Leonard Smithers Leonard Charles Smithers (19 December 1861 – 19 December 1907) was a London bookseller and publisher associated with the Decadent movement. Biography Born in Sheffield, Smithers worked as a solicitor, qualifying in 1884,Jon R. Godsall, ''T ...

and

Sir Richard Burton Sir Richard Francis Burton (; 19 March 1821 – 20 October 1890) was a British explorer, writer, orientalist scholar,and soldier. He was famed for his travels and explorations in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, as well as his extraordinary kn ...

(the latter of whom also freely translated ''

The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night ''The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night'' (1888), subtitled ''A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments'', is the only complete English language translation of '' One Thousand and One Nights'' (the ''Arabian N ...

''), who provided numerous glosses concerning the sexual practices and proclivities that are referenced in the poems. These explanatory notes address such diverse topics as

oral sex Oral sex, sometimes referred to as oral intercourse, is sexual activity involving the stimulation of the genitalia of a person by another person using the mouth (including the lips, tongue, or teeth) and the throat. Cunnilingus is oral sex p ...

(

fellatio Fellatio (also known as fellation, and in slang as blowjob, BJ, giving head, or sucking off) is an oral sex act involving a person stimulating the penis of another person by using the mouth, throat, or both. Oral stimulation of the scrotu ...

and

cunnilingus Cunnilingus is an oral sex act performed by a person on the vulva or vagina of another person. The clitoris is the most sexually sensitive part of the human female genitalia, and its stimulation may result in a woman becoming sexually aroused ...

), irrumation,

masturbation Masturbation is the sexual stimulation of one's own genitals for sexual arousal or other sexual pleasure, usually to the point of orgasm. The stimulation may involve hands, fingers, everyday objects, sex toys such as vibrators, or combinat ...

, bestiality, sexual positions, eunuchism, phalli,

religious prostitution Sacred prostitution, temple prostitution, cult prostitution, and religious prostitution are rites consisting of paid intercourse performed in the context of religious worship, possibly as a form of fertility rite or divine marriage (). Scholars ...

aphrodisiacs An aphrodisiac is a substance that increases sexual desire, sexual attraction, sexual pleasure, or sexual behavior. Substances range from a variety of plants, spices, foods, and synthetic chemicals. Natural aphrodisiacs like cannabis or cocain ...

pornography Pornography (often shortened to porn or porno) is the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal. Primarily intended for adults,

, and sexual terminology, but are not always accurate scholarly reflections of ancient Roman practices. A more recent translation titled ''The'' ''Priapus Poems'' has been carried out by Richard W. Hooper. In the "Introduction" to the ''Priapeia'', the Smithers and Burton claim that "The worship of Priapus amongst the Romans was derived from the

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning the North Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via a land bridg ...

ians, who, under the form of Apis, the Sacred Bull, adored the generative Power of Nature," adding that "the Phallus was the ancient emblem of creation, and representative of the gods

Bacchus In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, myth, Dionysus (; grc, wikt:Διόνυσος, Διόνυσος ) is the god of the grape-harvest, winemaking, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstas ...

, Priapus,

Hermaphroditus In Greek mythology, Hermaphroditus or Hermaphroditos (; grc, Ἑρμαφρόδιτος, Hermaphróditos, ) was a child of Aphrodite and Hermes. According to Ovid, he was born a remarkably handsome boy whom the naiad Salmacis attempted to rape an ...

Hercules Hercules (, ) is the Roman equivalent of the Greek divine hero Heracles, son of Jupiter and the mortal Alcmena. In classical mythology, Hercules is famous for his strength and for his numerous far-ranging adventures. The Romans adapted the ...

Shiva Shiva (; sa, शिव, lit=The Auspicious One, Śiva ), also known as Mahadeva (; Help:IPA/Sanskrit, ɐɦaːd̪eːʋɐ, or Hara, is one of the Hindu deities, principal deities of Hinduism. He is the Supreme Being in Shaivism, one o ...

Osiris Osiris (, from Egyptian ''wsjr'', cop, ⲟⲩⲥⲓⲣⲉ , ; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎𐤓, romanized: ʾsr) is the god of fertility, agriculture, the afterlife, the dead, resurrection, life, and vegetation in ancient Egyptian religion. He wa ...

Baal Baal (), or Baal,; phn, , baʿl; hbo, , baʿal, ). ( ''baʿal'') was a title and honorific meaning "owner", "lord" in the Northwest Semitic languages spoken in the Levant during antiquity. From its use among people, it came to be applied t ...

and

Asher Asher ( he, אָשֵׁר ''’Āšēr''), in the Book of Genesis, was the last of the two sons of Jacob and Zilpah (Jacob's eighth son) and the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Asher. Name The text of the Torah states that the name of ''As ...

, who were all Phallic

deities A deity or god is a supernatural being who is considered divine or sacred. The ''Oxford Dictionary of English'' defines deity as a god or goddess, or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton defines a deity as "a being with powers greater ...

Authorship

Although even today some scholars hold that the Carmina Priapea are anthology of poems by different authors, others support the arguments for the single authorship of all 80 poems. Among these arguments are the following. First, the poems seem to have been carefully arranged according to metre. Only three metres are used. There appear to be 5 groups of 14 poems each. The first fourteen poems alternate between elegiac couplets and hendecasyllables. In the second to fifth groups the alternation is not so regular, but each group contains exactly 7 poems in hendecasyllables and 7 poems in either elegiac couplets or scazons. The scazon poems are arranged two in the 3rd group, two in the 4th, and two in the 5th. The last ten poems consist of a coda of 4 poems in elegiac couplets, 3 in hendecasyllables, 2 in scazons, and 1 poem in elegiac couplets. Kloss argues that if the poems were a miscellaneous anthology, they would presumably have contained poems in other metres too, such as the iambic (84 and 87), aeolic (85, 89) or hexameter (95) metres used in the "extra" poems in Smithers and Burton's edition. Further, in the second dedicatory poem, the poet announces that he has written (not collected together) the poems: "Playfully, without taking too much trouble, I have written these poems, which as you can witness, Priapus, are more suitable for a garden than for a book of poems": :''lūdēns haec ego teste tē, Priāpe,
hortō carmina digna, nōn libellō,
scrīpsī nōn nimium labōriōsē'' A third argument is based on the observation that pairs of consecutive or near-consecutive poems are often linked by the repetition of a word. For example, the rare word ''erucarum'' (

rocket A rocket (from it, rocchetto, , bobbin/spool) is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using the surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entir ...

) in 46.8 is repeated in ''erucis'' in 47.6; ''Maurae ... puellae'' in 45.3 is echoed by ''puella Mauro'' in 46.1; ''virgineum locum'' in 2.5 reappears as ''virgo ... loci'' in 3.7, and so on. There are also possibly wider links between the poems. For example, Laure Sandoz sees a connection between the words ''membrōsior'' in 1.5, ''mentulātior'' in 36.11, and ''sarcinōsior'' (or in some texts ''fascinōsior'') in 79.4, all meaning "endowed with a larger penis", at the beginning, middle, and end of the collection, with the last two words both in the last line of a scazon poem. On the other hand, the poet also clearly aims at variety. For example, in the first group of 14 poems, the god's oversized phallus is referred to in a number of different ways (''mentula'', ''partī'', ''inguen'', ''tēlum'', ''columna'' and so on). Another argument concerns the subject matter of the poems themselves, which like the collections of love poetry of the poets of the time of

Augustus Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian, was the first Roman emperor; he reigned from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. He is known for being the founder of the Roman Pr ...

, show the course of an affair from its beginning to its end. In the first group of fourteen poems, Priapus is shown as boastful and vigorous, but gradually problems set in. In poem 26 he confesses that he is worn out by sex (''effutūtus'') and thin and pale (''macerque pallidusque'') and complains that the neighbouring women give him no rest. In poem 33, on the other hand, he complains that he is compelled to relieve himself with his own hand for want of female companions among the nymphs. Towards the end of the book the problems multiply. In poem 56 he is mocked by a thief and shown the middle finger (''impudīcum digitum'') because his phallus is only made of wood, and he is reduced to calling on his master to perform the punishment. In poem 70 he has become so impotent that he has to endure the humiliation of a dog performing ''fellatio'' on him all night. In poem 76 we learn that Priapus is now old and grey-haired and only good for penetrating old men. In 77 he complains that because of a hedge round the garden he is no longer getting any sex. Finally, in 79, an anonymous speaker informs Priapus that he is no better endowed than "our poet" – who, it appears from the final poem, has an unusually small penis.

Date

The date of the ''Carmina Priapea'' is still disputed, though is generally assumed to be in the 1st century AD. One piece of evidence for the date of the collection is the phrase ''inepta locī'' ("foolish ... of the place") which occurs in poem 3.8 in connection with a girl who offers her backside to her husband on her wedding night instead of the usual place. The same phrase, in a similar context, is quoted in

Seneca the Elder Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Elder (; c. 54 BC – c. 39 AD), also known as Seneca the Rhetorician, was a Roman writer, born of a wealthy equestrian family of Corduba, Hispania. He wrote a collection of reminiscences about the Roman schools of rheto ...

(''Contr.'' 1.2.22), where it is called ''Ovidiānum illud'' ("that Ovidian phrase"). Some scholars have assumed therefore that poem 3 of the collection at least was composed by

Ovid Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom ...

. However, the German scholar Gerrit Kloss argues that this is not necessarily so. It could be that ''inepta locī'' simply imitates a lost poem of Ovid, rather than being the first instance of its use. The same poem contains a number of other literary echoes of phrases used by Ovid, Virgil, and Horace. Another piece of evidence is that certain words in the poems, such as ''circitor'' ("watchman"), ''rubricatus'' ("painted red"), ''prūrīgo'' ("sexual desire") and so on, are not used until writers of the time of

Nero Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus ( ; born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus; 15 December AD 37 – 9 June AD 68), was the fifth Roman emperor and final emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, reigning from AD 54 un ...

or later. Assuming that all the poems are by a single author, then the whole collection can be dated to the time of Nero or later. A number of arguments from prosody have also been put forward by H. Tränkle (1998) in an attempt to date the poems. For example, it has been argued that the long ''-ō'' in spondaic words like ''virgō'' and ''ergō'' (in 11 out of 13 cases in the ''Carmina Priapea'') is closer to Ovid's practice than that of

, where the ''-o'' is usually short. However, Kloss points out that this argument is weak, since other writers later than Ovid, such as

Petronius Gaius Petronius Arbiter"Gaius Petronius Arbiter"
Silius Italicus Tiberius Catius Asconius Silius Italicus (, c. 26 – c. 101 AD) was a Roman senator, orator and epic poet of the Silver Age of Latin literature. His only surviving work is the 17-book '' Punica'', an epic poem about the Second Punic War and th ...

also preferred the long ''-ō''. Buchheit (1962) found sufficient echoes of

to argue that the poems must date from after Martial's time. Kloss (2003) is less certain, but thinks that the poems date at the earliest to Nero's time, but more probably to a period after Martial.

Other Priapic poems

The 80 poems of the ''Carmina Priapea'' are by no means the only poems which survive from the ancient world in honour of Priapus. Kytzler's edition contains 37 poems in Greek excerpted from the

Greek anthology The ''Greek Anthology'' ( la, Anthologia Graeca) is a collection of poems, mostly epigrams, that span the Classical and Byzantine periods of Greek literature. Most of the material of the ''Greek Anthology'' comes from two manuscripts, the ' ...

dating from the 3rd century BC to the 6th century AD. In Latin, outside the ''Corpus Priapeorum'' there are about 23 ''Priapea'' of various types, some of which are added as poems 83–95 in Smithers and Burton's edition of the ''Priapeia''. The earliest extant Priapic poem in Latin (no. 89 in Smithers and Burton) appears to be

Catullus Gaius Valerius Catullus (; 84 - 54 BCE), often referred to simply as Catullus (, ), was a Latin poet of the late Roman Republic who wrote chiefly in the neoteric style of poetry, focusing on personal life rather than classical heroes. His ...

fragment 1, which is written in the "Priapean" metre (a type of aeolic). It begins: :''hunc lūcum tibi dēdicō cōnsecrōque, Priāpe'' ::"I dedicate and consecrate this grove to you, Priapus" Three poems in the collected works of Catullus (16, 47, and 56) are also judged to be Priapic in character. Catullus's famous threat to "sodomise and irrumate" ('' pēdīcābo ego vōs et irrumābō'') his friends Aurelius and Furius (Catullus 16) is imitated in the passive voice in ''Priapea'' 35 (''pēdīcāberis irrumāberisque''). Among works of other poets, Horace ''Satires'' 1.8 (included as no. 95 in Smithers and Burton's edition of the ''Priapeia'') is a 50-line poem in hexameters in which Priapus recounts how the garden he was guarding, a former graveyard, was plagued by witches until suddenly the wood of his backside split open with a loud farting noise and scared them off. Four anonymous poems in the

Appendix Vergiliana The ''Appendix Vergiliana'' is a collection of poems traditionally ascribed as being the juvenilia (work written as a juvenile) of Virgil.Régine ChambertVergil's Epicureanism in his early poems in "Vergil, Philodemus, and the Augustans" 2003: ...

(nos. 86, 87, 88, and 84 of Smithers and Burton's edition of the ''Priapeia'') are also Priapic. In the first, the god describes his sufferings in the winter; in the second he describes his guardianship of the farm throughout the seasons, and demands respect from a passer-by; in the third, he warns some boys not to steal from his farm but to go to the neighbour's farm instead. In the fourth poem, the anonymous poet addresses Priapus and chides him for causing him to become impotent when sleeping with a boy. Both this and the short prayer to Priapus to protect a farm (no. 83 in Smithers and Burton) are sometimes, but for no good reason,Butrica, J.L. (1992
Review of Tränkle's ''The Appendix Tibulliana''
/ref> attributed to Tibullus.

Tibullus Albius Tibullus ( BC19 BC) was a Latin poet and writer of elegies. His first and second books of poetry are extant; many other texts attributed to him are of questionable origins. Little is known about the life of Tibullus. There are only a f ...

1.4 is part of a series of 3 elegies about Tibullus's love for a certain boy called Marathus. In this 82-line poem, Priapus gives advice to the poet on how to seduce boys. There are also some epigrams of

addressed to or written about Priapus; they include 85 and 90–94 in Smithers and Burton's ''Priapeia'', as well as Martial 1.40, in which the poet asks Priapus to guard a grove of trees from thieves, threatening to use the statue of the god for firewood if he fails.

References

Bibliography

*Buchheit, Vinzenz (1962). ''Studien zum Corpus Priapeorum'' (Zetemata, 28). Pp. viii+ i59. Munich: Beck. *Butrica, J. L. (2000)
"Richard W. Hooper (ed.) The Priapus Poems." (Review)
''Bryn Mawr Classical Review'' 2000.02.03. *Dutsch, Dorota and Ann Suter (ed.) (2015), ''Ancient Obscenities: Their Nature and Use in the Ancient Greek and Roman Worlds.'' Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. . Reviewed by Jeffrey Henderso

*Elomaa, Heather E. (2015
''The Poetics of the Carmina Priapea''
University of Pennsylvania PhD thesis. *Holzberg, Niklas (2005)
"Impotence? It Happened to the Best of Them! A Linear Reading of the ''Corpus Priapeorum''"
''Hermes'', 133. Jahrg., H. 3 (2005), pp. 368–381. (Reviews recent scholarly views on the Priapeia.) *Hooper, Richard W. (ed.) (1999). ''The Priapus Poems: Erotic Epigrams from Ancient Rome''. Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. *Kenney, E.J. (1963
"Review: Corpvs non ita Vile"
A review of Studien zum Corpus Priapeorum by Vinzenz Buchheit. ''The Classical Review'' Vol. 13, No. 1 (Mar., 1963), pp. 72–74. *Kloss, Gerrit (2003)
"Überlegungen zur Verfasserschaft und Datierung der ''Carmina Priapea''"
''Hermes'' 131. Jahrg., H. 4 (2003), pp. 464–487. (See Holzberg (2005) for a summary.) *Parker, W. H. (1988). ''Priapea: Poems for a Phallic God''. London: Croom Helm. *Richlin, Amy (1992 983. ''The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor''. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. *Sandoz, Laure Chappuis (2011)
"PRIAPUS FORMOSUS:" DENKT PRIAP ÜBER LEXIK, FORM UND GESTALT NACH? Carmina Priapea 36-39-75 und Adjektive auf -osus"
''Rheinisches Museum für Philologie'', Neue Folge, 154. Bd., H. 1 (2011), pp. 87-110. *Uden, James (2007)
"Impersonating Priapus"
''The American Journal of Philology'', Vol. 128, No. 1 (Spring, 2007), pp. 1-26. *Young, Elizabeth (2015), "''Dicere Latine'': The Art of Speaking Crudely in the ''Carmina Priapea''". In Dutsch and Suter (2105), pp. 255–82.

Online texts

ed. Bernhard Kytzler (Zürich/München 1978), in Latin with a German translation by Carl Fischer. (

Bibliotheca Augustana Augsburg Technical University of Applied Sciences (german: Technische Hochschule Augsburg or simply ''THA'') is a German university located in Augsburg. It was founded in 1971, but its institutional roots as an art academy go back to 1670. With ...

). (It contains 80 poems, and also has a section with Greek Priapeia taken from the

Greek Anthology The ''Greek Anthology'' ( la, Anthologia Graeca) is a collection of poems, mostly epigrams, that span the Classical and Byzantine periods of Greek literature. Most of the material of the ''Greek Anthology'' comes from two manuscripts, the ' ...

.)
''Priapeia''
Contains 95 poems, with a translation by Leonard C. Smithers and Sir Richard Burton (1890), with notes. (The first poem is unnumbered in this edition, so the numbering of the poems differs from Kytzler's text.)
''Petronii saturae et liber priapeorum''
Franz Bücheler (ed.), Berolini, apud Weidmannos, 1904. (The ''Priapea'' begin on page 150.)