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In Greek mythology, Priapus was a minor rustic fertility god of purely phallic character, protector of livestock, fruit plants, gardens and male genitalia. (Roman equivalent: Mutinus Mutunus.) He was a son of Aphrodite, with Dionysus, Hermes, or Adonis (according to a scholiast on Lycophron, noted by Kerenyi 1951). At Helicon in Boeotia, the travel-writer Pausanias pointed out a statue of Priapus that was "worth seeing":
- "This god is worshipped where goats and sheep pasture or there are swarms of bees; but by the people of Lampsacus he is more revered than any other god, being called by them a son of Dionysus and Aphrodite." (Description of Greece IX.312)
Sculptures of Priapus with large, ithyphallic genitalia were placed in gardens and fields to guarantee an abundant crop. For the Romans, his statue was used as a scarecrow and his erect penis was thought to frighten thieves. Epigrams collected in Priapeia show Priapus using sodomy as a threat toward transgressors of the boundaries he protected like a herm:
- "I warn you, my lad, you will be sodomised; you, my girl, I shall futter; for the thief who is bearded, a third punishment remains."
- "... If I do seize you . . . you shall be so stretched that you will think your anus never had any wrinkles."
Lucian (De saltatione) tells that in Bithynia Priapus was accounted a warlike god, a rustic tutor to the infant Ares.
One of the most famous images of Priapus is that from the House of the Vettii in Pompeii; it is a wall fresco in which Priapus is weighing his phallus against a bag full of money and it appears that his phallus is heavier.
Priapus is also recognized as a saint in Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica.
Priapus in Popular Culture
In Fantasy Lover by Sherrilyn Kenyon, Priapus is responsible for cursing his half-brother, Julian of Macedon, to an existence as a sex slave trapped in an ancient scroll as an act of vengeance.
Medical Terminology
The medical condition priapism gets its name from Priapus.
Reference
- Kerenyi, Karl, 1951. The Gods of the Greeks, pp 175–177.
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"Priapus"