The worshiping of Priapus was most likely started by Greek colonists in Lampsacus, an ancient Greek city located on the eastern side of the Hellespont, in Asia Minor. From Lampsacus, the cult of Priapus spread to mainland Greece, and from there arrived to Italy in the 3rd century BC. Priapus was none of these things. The rustic god was driven by sexual vice, even though he could never fulfil the base desires that seemed to define his personality.

J. Gordon Melton (1996, 5th ed.). Encyclopedia of American Religions (Detroit, Mich.: Gale) ISBN 0-8103-7714-4 p. 952. Men suffered the usual anxieties about the sexual fidelity of their wife and paternity of their children. In one of Catullus’s poems to newlyweds, wishing that their union be blessed with children, he writes: Grant, Michael; Mulas, Antonia (1997). Eros in Pompeii: The Erotic Art Collection of the Museum of Naples. New York: Stewart, Tabori and Chang. ISBN 978-1556706202.

Media in category "Priapus"

The nymph Pomona walled in her garden to keep the lustful rustic gods at bay. Priapus was named among those who tried to breach the walls to reach her. Clarke, John (2003). Roman Sex: 100 B.C. to A.D. 250. New York: Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 978-1626548800. The greatest dissemination of the Priapuseas in Roman literature took place during the reign of Augustus. At that time, poems devoted to Priapus were written by, among others, Horace and Tibullus. During the reign of Octavian of Augustus, the circle of poets gathered around Patron, the surviving anonymous collection of 85 Priapuses. These works, stylized as folk poetry, are a testimony to the great literary skill of the author (or authors), full of references, among others to Homer or Eratosthenes. In later years, Priapusea wrote, inter alia, Martial. Lucius Aurelius Verus (15 December 130 – January/February 169) was a Roman emperor who reigned with his adopted brother Marcus Aurelius from 161 until his death in 169.

While the exact origins of Priapus are unknown, it is likely that the Greek colonists in Anatolia included a local fertility god in their deity. Priapus joined Pan and the satyrs as a spirit of fertility and growth, though he was perennially frustrated by his impotence. In a ribald anecdote told by Ovid, [8] he attempted to rape the goddess Hestia but was thwarted by an ass, whose braying caused him to lose his erection at the critical moment and woke Hestia. The episode gave him a lasting hatred of asses and a willingness to see them killed in his honour. [9] The emblem of his lustful nature was his permanent erection and his large penis. Another myth states that he pursued the nymph Lotis until the gods took pity on her and turned her into a lotus plant. [10] The phallus was also used in sympathetic magic. I already knew that there was a phallus engraved above a baker’s oven at Pompeii to encourage the bread to rise, but according to Alberto Angela until recently in parts of Southern Campania (and possibly still now in remote areas) they used to cover kneaded dough with men’s underpants for the same reason!

Priapus was born shortly after the Trojan War, and the insult of being judged less beautiful than Aphrodite was still fresh in Hera’s mind. As an act of petty revenge for the goddess of beauty winning the judgement of Paris, Hera placed a curse of Aphrodite’s unborn child. The relationship between Roman and Greek art complicates the study of Roman sculpture. Many of the most renowned Greek sculptures, such as the Apollo Belvedere and the Barberini Faun, are only known via Roman Imperial or Hellenistic “copies.”