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Myths about the Roman God Priapus
On his growing up to maturity, the
inhabitants of the place banished him their territories, on
account of his vicious habits; but being soon after visited
with an epidemic disease, the Lampsacans consulted the
oracle of Dodona, and Priapus was in consequence recalled.
Temples were erected to him as the protective and supervisory deity of
vineyards and gardens, to defend them from thieves and from
birds.
He is usually represented naked and obscene, with a stern
countenance, matted hair, crowned with garden herbs, and
holding a wooden sword, or scythe, whilst his body
terminates in a shapeless trunk. His figures are generally
erected in gardens and orchards to serve as scarecrows.
Priapus held a pruning-hook in his hands, when he had hands,
for he was sometimes nothing more than a mere log of wood,
as Martial somewhat humorously calls him. Indeed the Roman
poets in general seem to have looked on him as a ridiculous
god, and are all ready enough either to despise or abuse
him.
Trimalchio, in his ridiculous feasts described by Petronius,
had a figure of this god to be held up during his dessert:
it was made of paste, and, as Horace observes on another
occasion, that he owed all his divinity to the carpenter,
Petronius seems to hint that he was wholly obliged for it to
the pastry cook in this. Some mythologists make the birth of
Priapus allude to that radical moisture which supports all
vegetable productions, and which is produced by Bacchus
and Venus, that is, the solar heat, and the fluid whence
Venus is said to have sprung. Some affirm that he was the
same with the Baal of the Phoenicians, mentioned in
scripture.
Myths about the Roman God Priapus
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