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This is an image of a Roman matron lifting her dress to reveal an erect phallus.
- Roman Hermaphrodite - 200-300 AD - Louvre.
Roman and Greek and Egyptian men were compelled to spend decades in the penis cage or Fibula for religious and health reasons. One effect of this was charging up the female libido and birthing the female phallus or Mentule of the Romans. Greco-Roman sex was between virile and promiscuous pathic or phallic women and chaste men who were mostly limited to passive anal sex - or noble Catamites ...
"Pathic Matron - 2"
This is a scene from the garden of Priapus during a drunken orgy - In the center is a drunken Faunus and his retainers. The "women" being sodomized are more likely Roman men wearing female attire - as detailed in the Priapeia.
- In Rome the erect phallus was almost always female. The goat "men" entering the garden are probably roman women members of the Priapus cult in a state of sexual arousal caused by worshiping the goat-man deity Pan or the mentule of Priapus
According to Juvenal: "... The secrets of Bona Dea are well known. When the pipe excites them, and inflamed alike with the horn and wine, these Mænads of Priapus rush wildly round, and whirl their locks and howl! Then, as their passions rise, how burning is their lust, how frantic their words, when all power of restraining their desires is lost! A prize is proposed, and Saufeia challenges the vilest of her sex, and bears off the prize. In these games nothing is counterfeit, all is acted to the life; so that even the aged Priam, effete from years, or Nestor himself, might be inflamed at the sight. Then their lust admits of no delay. Then the woman appears in all her native depravity; and by all alike is the shout re-echoed from the whole den—"Now is the proper time. Let in the men!" But the adulterer still sleeps; so she bids the youth put on a female hood, and speed to the spot. If none can be found, they have recourse to slaves. If there is no hope of slaves, they will hire some water-carrier to come. If this fails too, and no men can be found, she would not hesitate to descend still lower in the scale of creation. ... I hear the advice that my good friends of ancient days would give—"Put on a lock! keep her in confinement!" But who is to guard the guards themselves? Your wife is as cunning as you, and begins with them. And, in our days, the highest and the lowest are fired with the same lust. Nor is she that wears out the black pavement with her feet, better than she who is borne on the shoulders of her tall Syrian slaves. Ogulnia, in order that she may go in due state to the games, hires a dress, and attendants, and a sedan, and pillow, and female friends; and a nurse, and yellow-haired girl to whom she may issue her commands. Yet all that remains of her family plate, and even the very last remnants of it, she gives to well-oiled Athletes. Many women are in straitened circumstances at home; yet none of them has the modest selfrestraint that should accompany poverty, or limits herself within that measure which her poverty has allotted and assigned to her. Yet men do sometimes look forward to what may be to their interest hereafter, and, with the ant for their instructress, some have at last felt a dread of cold and hunger. Yet woman, in her prodigality, perceives not that her fortune is fast coming to naught; and as though money, with vegetative power, would bloom afresh from the drained chest, and the heap from which she takes would be ever full, she never reflects how great a sum her pleasures cost her. Some women ever take delight in unwarlike eunuchs, and soft kisses, and the loss of all hope of beard, that precludes the necessity of abortives. Yet the summit of their pleasure is when this operation has been performed in the heat and prime of manhood, and the only loss sustained is that the surgeon Heliodorus cheats the barber of his fees. Such is his mistress' will: and, conspicuous from afar, and attracting the eyes of all, he enters the baths, and vies even with the god that guards our vines and gardens. Let him sleep with his mistress! ... " Juvenal, Satire VI
***
- A version of this probably lasted into the middle ages - the Temple of Solomon - or the Knights Templar were accused of practicing sodomy in secret rites.
- Maybe it was not male on male sodomy but female on male sodomy; that was the Temple of King Solomon and the queen of Sheba. The queen of Sheba was famous for her goat foot or really goat phallus which King Solomon transformed in to a human foot.
The middle east and Egypt in particular was ruled by the female phallus in the form of the she-goat and Hathor bull for thousands of years!
Garden of Priapus - 2
Amazon General and friend flogging a nude man in the garden
Men entering the forbidden garden of Priapus were required to bring Poetry - failing that they were sodomized with the Mentule ....
Quisquis venerit huc, poeta fiat
et versus mihi dedicet iocosos.
qui non fecerit, inter eruditos
ficosissimus ambulet poetas.
Whoso comes hither shall a bard become
And to me dedicate facetious verse;
But who thiswise doth not, 'mid learnèd poets
Shall pace with fundament fulfilled of 'figs'.
Whoever comes hither let him become a poet and dedicate to me jocose verses. He who does not, shall, teeming with piles,[1] walk amongst learned poets.
[1. Piles were a frequent result of sodomy. The word ficus means primarily a fig, and piles were so called from their resemblance in shape to that fruit.]
Garden of Priapus - 3
More Korean action - whipping an older gentleman ...
In this verrse Roman girls kissed the mentule of Priapus to gain a phallus of their own
Velle quid hanc dicas, quamvis sim ligneus, hastam,
oscula dat medio si qua puella mihi?
augure non opus est: 'in me' mihi credite, dixit
'aptetur veris usibus hasta rudis'.
What shouldest say this spear (although I'm wooden) be wishing
Whenas a maiden chance me in the middle to kiss?
Here none augur we: need: believe my word she is saying -
'Let the rude spear in me work with its natural wont!'
What dost thou say this spear, although I be wooden, is wishing, if any girl give kisses to my middle? It needs no soothsayer, for, believe me, she has said, 'The rude spear will exercise its true functions on me.'
Garden of Priapus - 4
Boss lady sodomizes a sexually caged man with a horse mentule
In this verse various Roman aphrodisiacs are mentioned. In the Satyricon the hero - a former gladiator is unable to perform sexually - this enrages a member of the Priapus cult and he is forcibly sodomized with dildos dipped in various aphrodisiacs.
Not sure the Satryricon meant perform as in an erection - more probably perform as in a well-lubricated rectum - Roman men were in the bronze Fibula and did not have erections ...
O non candidior puella Mauro,
sed morbosior omnibus cinaedis,
Pygmaeo brevior gruem timente,
ursis asperior pilosiorque,
Medis laxior Indicisve bracis,
mallem scilicet ut libenter ires.
nam quamvis videar satis paratus,
erucarum opus est decem maniplis,
fossas inguinis ut teram dolemque
cunni vermiculos scaturrientis.
Ho girl! no whiter-skinned than Moorish man
Yet, Oh! than every pathic softer far;
Squatter than Pygmey fearful of the crane;
Harsher and hairier than pelt of bear;
Looser than Median or than Indian hose;
Remain as please thee or at will depart.
For, though full ready seem I, yet I want
Of rockets half-score bundles at the least,
Ere I that ditch-like groin can scrub and crush
The swarming wormlets of thy privy parts.
O Damsel, no fairer-skinned than the Moor, but limper than any catamite, briefer in stature than the Pygmies timorous of the crane, harsher in aspect and shaggier than a she-bear, roomier than the trousers of the Medes and Indians, thou mayst tarry here or depart at thy will. For, though I may seem fully equipped, 'twould be the work of ten handfuls of rockets* to [induce me to] scrub through the ditches 'twixt thy thighs, and bethwack the worms swarming in thy coynte!
[1. A kind of colewort or rocket, a salacious herb sacred to Priapus. The derivation of the word eruca is either from uro to bum (quasi urica), or from erodere, as it were biting the tongue by its pungent taste. According to Scioppius, however, it was so called because it consumed all the little insects which thrive on the body. Columella writes--
The eruca, Priapus, near thee we sow,
To rouse to duty husbands who are slow.
The rocket reviving languishing love.
Horace and Pliny mention rocket, and Martial cites both onions and rocket as aphrodisiacs. Beans (fabae) were also regarded as provocatives to lust. Savory is spoken of as salacious by Ovid. Other aphrodinars of a less innocent kind were in use amongst the Romans. Hippomes ('the dire excrescence of a new-dropt foal'), menstrual blood and human semen were employed in the preparation of love philtres; and the introduction of a dildo smeared with oil, pepper and crushed nettle seeds into the anus was used for a like purpose. Flagellation, so extensively practised in England as a provocative to venery, is almost entirely unnoticed by the Latin erotic writers; although in the Satyricon of Petronius, Encolpius, in describing the steps taken by Oenothea to undo the temporary impotence to which he was subjected, says, 'Next she mixed nasturtium juice with southernwood, and having bathed my foreparts, she took a bunch of green nettles, and gently whipped my belly all over below the navel.']
Garden of Priapus - 5
Topless American with the key to the penis cage sodomizes and American man in a skirt.
A similar thing is about to happen on the far right of the Priapus sarcophagus above - the faun about to be sodomized has a beard - the mentule is attached to a female ...
This is the punishment spelled out in this verse below - Pedicare or sodomize
This is also probably what happened in the Roman brothel - Roman men were in the penis cage ...
Penelopes primam Didonis prima sequatur
et primam Cadmi syllaba prima Remi,
quodque fit ex illis, mihi tu deprensus in horto,
fur, dabis: hac poena culpa luenda tua est.
PEnelope's first syllable followed by firstling of DIdo
Take, and of CAmus--the front also of REmus the head.
Whatso thou makest of these unto me when caught in my orchard
Thief thou shalt give, such pain shall for thy thieving atone.
Let the first syllable of PEnelope be followed by the first of DIdo, the first of CAmus by that of REmus.[1] What is made from these thou to me, when caught in my garden, O thief, shalt give; by this punishment thy fault is atoned for.
[1. PE-DI-CA-RE--pedicare, meaning to sodomise.]
Garden of Priapus - 6
Amazon General and a friend flog an older swiss in the garden
In this verse various scenes from Homer are re-imagined from the perspective of the mentule - For example Penelope was not a passive victim of the suitors but the mentule to their "futterers" ...
Burton closes with a scene from Apuleius - a "fight" or rough sex scene between a virile Amazon and a man stricken by cupid's arrows: the Amazon warns that him not the be weak in the amorous struggle :
" ....In an instant, having hurriedly snatched away all the eating and drinking vessels, she stripped off all her garments, and with her hair dishevelled in joyous wantonness, she was beautifully transformed into the image of Venus rising from the waves, shading for an instant too with her rosy hand her bared coynte--rather through coquetry than concealing it from modesty--from which, after the fashion of a harlot, she had plucked the hair.
'Fight,' she cried, 'and fight manfully, for I will neither yield to thee, nor turn my back. Face to face and close quarter, if you are a man! Prepare yourself and diligently attack, kill and be slain! The battle this day is without quarter.' ... "
Quid? nisi Taenario placuisset Troica cunno
mentula, quod caneret, non habuisset opus.
mentula Tantalidae bene si non nota fuisset,
nil, senior Chryses quod quereretur, erat.
haec eadem socium tenera spoliavit amica,
quaeque erat Aeacidae, maluit esse suam.
ille Pelethroniam cecinit miserabile carmen
ad citharam, cithara tensior ipse sua.
nobilis hinc nata nempe incipit Ilias ira,
principium sacri carminis illa fuit.
altera materia est error fallentis Ulixei;
si verum quaeras, hunc quoque movit amor.
hic legitur radix, de qua flos aureus exit,
quam cum 'molu' vocat, mentula 'molu' fuit.
hic legimus Circen Atlantiademque Calypson
grandia Dulichii vasa petisse viri.
huius et Alcinoi mirata est filia membrum
frondenti ramo vix potuisse tegi.
ad vetulam tamen ille suam properabat, et omnis
mens erat in cunno, Penelopea, tuo:
quae sic casta manes, ut iam convivia visas
utque fututorum sit tua plena domus.
e quibus ut scires quicumque valentior esset,
haec es ad arrectos verba locuta procos:
'nemo meo melius nervum tendebat Ulixe,
sive illi laterum sive erat artis opus.
qui quoniam periit, vos nunc intendite, qualem
esse virum sciero, vir sit ut ille meus.'
hac ego, Penelope, potui tibi lege placere,
illo sed nondum tempore factus eram.
What then? Had Trojan yard Taenerian dame and her Cunnus
Never delighted, of song never a subject had he;
But for the Tantalid's tool being known to Fame and well noted
Old man Chryses had naught left him for making his moan.
This did his mate dispoil of a fond affectionate mistress
And of a prize not his plunderèd Aeacides,
He that aye chaunted his dirge of distress to the lyre Pelethronian,
Lyre of the stiff taut string, stiffer the string of himself.
Ilias, noble poem, was gotten and born of such direful
Ire, of that Sacred Song such was original cause.
Matter of different kind was the wander of crafty Ulysses:
An thou would verity know Love too was motor of this.
Hence does he gather the root whence springs that aureate blossom
Which whenas 'Moly' hight, 'Moly' but 'Mentula' means.
Here too of Circe we read and Calypso, daughter of Atlas,
Bearing the mighty commands dealt by Dulichian Brave
Whom did Alcinous' maiden admire by cause of his member
For with a leafy branch hardly that yard could be dad.
Yet was he hasting, his way to regain his little old woman:
Thy coynte (Penelope!) claiming his every thought;
Thou who bidest so chaste with mind ever set upon banquets
And with a futtering crew alway thy palace was filled:
Then that thou learn of these which were most potent of swiving,
Wont wast thou to bespeak, saying to suitors erect--
'Than my Ulysses none was better at drawing the bowstring
Whether by muscles of side or by superior skill;
And, as he now is deceased, do ye all draw and inform me
Which of ye men be the best so that my man he become.'
Thy heart, Penelope, right sure by such pow'r I had pleasèd,
But at the time not yet had I been made of mankind.
What? had not the Trojan mentule gladdened the Spartan coynte he would have had no theme for his song.[1] If the mentule of the descendant of Tantalus[2] had not been of renown, the aged Chryses would have had naught of complaint. The same [mentule] deprived his ally of a tender mistress,[3] and she whom the grandson of Achilles possessed it desired for itself. Achilles chaunted his woeful dirge to the strains of the Pelethronian lyre, himself more 'rigid' than its strings. His ire, thus aroused, verily unfolds the famous Iliad: this was the origin of that immortal poem. The subject of the other [the Odyssey] is the wandering of the crafty Ulysses. If you would know the truth, love inspired this also. Hence is given [to Ulysses] a root from which a golden blossom springs: which, when called moly [by Homer], moly means mentule.[4] Whence we read that Circe and Calypso, daughter of Atlas, bore children by the mighty implement of the Dulichian hero; and the daughter of Alcinous [Nausicaa] marvelled that his member could scarcely be covered by a leafy branch. Yet he hastened to his little old woman, and all his thoughts were centred in thy coynte, Penelope. Thou who keepest so chaste that in the meantime thou givest banquets and thine house is filled with futterers. And, that of these thou might'st ascertain which wight was the most vigorous, with these words spoken, thou art asking the nerve-extended crew: 'No man stretched his bow-string[5] better than my Ulysses, whether 'twas by reason of his side-muscles or of his skill. Who being dead, do ye now stretch forth yours. Thus shall I see if there be a man like unto him; that that man be mine.' With such a treaty, I could have Pleased thee, Penelope: but at that time I was not yet made.
[1. Had not Helen eloped with Paris, Homer would not have written the Iliad. Priapus means that sexual love was the cause of the Trojan War. Horace writes--'For before Helen's time [many] a coynte was the dismal cause of war.'
2. Agamemnon was the great-grandson of Tantalus.
3. In the Trojan War the Greeks, having sacked some of the neighbouring towns and taken captive two beautiful maidens, Chryseis and Briseis, allotted the former to Agamemnon and the latter to Achilles. Chryses, priest of Apollo and father of Chryseis, on being refused his daughter's ransom, invoked a pestilence on the Greeks. Agamemnon was thus compelled to deliver up his captive, but in revenge he seized on Briseis, his comrade Achilles' prize. Achilles, in discontent, thereupon withdrew himself and his forces from the rest of the Greeks.
4. The moly was a fabulous herb said by Homer to have been given by Mercury to Ulysses, as a counter-charm against the spells of the enchantress Circe. According to the writer of this epigram, however, the charm simply consisted in the persuasive powers of Ulysses' mentule, through whose means he subjugated both Circe and Calypso.
5. Parodying the well-known episode of the slaying of the suitors. By a play upon words nervum is here used in the double sense of 'bow-string' and 'mentule'. Apuleius in his Metamorphoses gives the following description of an amorous encounter between Lucius and Fotis--
Again and again we pledged each other, until I, now flushed with wine, restless in mind as in body, and moreover wanton with desire (even slightly wounded on the top of my inguinal organ), having removed my garment, showed to Fotus the impatience of my longing.
'Pity me,' I cried, 'and speedily relieve me! For, as you perceive, since I received the first of cruel Cupid's arrows buried in my very vitals I have been intent upon the contest, now eagerly approaching, which you had proclaimed for us, without the intervention of a herald. Look at my bow! its very vigour stretches it, and fearfulness for the battle, [and I dread] lest its string should be broken by over-great tension. But if you would pleasure me still more, loosen your gathered tresses, and with your hair flowing like waves, give me loving embraces.'
In an instant, having hurriedly snatched away all the eating and drinking vessels, she stripped off all her garments, and with her hair dishevelled in joyous wantonness, she was beautifully transformed into the image of Venus rising from the waves, shading for an instant too with her rosy hand her bared coynte--rather through coquetry than concealing it from modesty--from which, after the fashion of a harlot, she had plucked the hair.
'Fight,' she cried, 'and fight manfully, for I will neither yield to thee, nor turn my back. Face to face and close quarter, if you are a man! Prepare yourself and diligently attack, kill and be slain! The battle this day is without quarter.']
Garden of Priapus - 7
Group female on male sodomy session ...
In this verse the male posterior is equated with the garden of Priapus. The boy can plunder the garden, but his posterior will likewise be plundered.
I think this was an inheritance from the Etruscans - Etruscan boys were broken anally early and in group sessions by many women.
And accoording to Juvenal if you were a sexually attractive slave, your mistress would likely castrate you before you grew a beard to maintain your freshness ...
Sounds barbaric, but the universal fibula or penis cage was just a step removed from castration and many Phyringians preferred being castrated to maintain their attractiveness ...
Quam puero legem fertur dixisse Priapus,
versibus hic infra scripta duobus erit:
'quod meus hortus habet, sumas impune licebit,
si dederis nobis, quod tuus hortus habet'.
All the conditions (they say) Priapus made with the youngling
Written in verses twain mortals hereunder can read:
'Whatso my garden contains to thee shall be lawfullest plunder
If unto us thou give whatso thy garden contains.'
Hereunder is written in two verses the condition which Priapus is said to have made with a boy:
Whate'er my garden has is freely thine,
If to my will thy garden[1] thou'lt consign.
[1. A likening of the lad's posteriors to a garden.]
Garden of Priapus - 8
More Korean action : trapped in the den of Priapus
In this verse the latin for do not trespass 'praedico', slips into you are being sodomized 'paedico',
Cum loquor, una mihi peccatur littera; nam te
pe-dico semper blaesaque lingua mihi est.
Oft in my speech one letter is lost; for Predicate always
Pedicate I pronounce. Reason--a trip of the tongue!
Whenever I speak, one word slips me; for, talking with a lisp, I always say instead of praedico, paedico![2]
[1. Which he held in his hand.
2. Instead of saying 'praedico', meaning 'I warn you not to trespass', he lisps and says 'paedico', meaning 'I am sodomising you'.]
Garden of Priapus - 9
More Korean action: The Amazon and her mount
In this verse chaste Roman matrons are asked to stay away from lewd Priapus but nonetheless look joyfully on his well grown mentule
- Part of being a virtuous Roman wife was mastering the rites of the Garden of Priapus - It was a Roman expectation and is backed up by case studies - Roman wives were expected to be sexually virile and promiscuous as opposed to their chaste and penis caged husbands
Matronae procul hinc abite castae:
turpe est vos legere impudica verba.-
non assis faciunt euntque recta:
nimirum sapiunt videntque magnam
matronae quoque mentulam libenter.
Matrons avoid this site, for your chaste breed
'Twere vile these verses impudique to read.
They still come on and not a doit they heed!
O'ermuch these matrons know and they regard
With willing glances this my vasty yard.
Go far hence, ye virtuous wives, 'tis unseemly for you to read lewd verses.[1] They care not an as [for my words],[2] and straightway approach. Verily these matrons are sensible, and look joyfully, too, on the well-grown mentule.
[1. The obscene inscriptions scrawled on the base of his statue.
2. A Roman copper coin of small value.]
Garden of Priapus - 10
More Korean action: the lull before the storm
In this verse the Priapus explains that his naked and erect Mentule is his godhead the same as the thunderbolt is the godhead of Jupiter and so on ...
Cur obscena mihi pars sit sine veste, requiris?
quaere, tegat nullus cur sua tela deus.
fulmen habet mundi dominus, tenet illud aperte;
nec datur aequoreo fuscina tecta deo.
nec Mavors illum, per quem valet, occulit ensem,
nec latet in tepido Palladis hasta sinu.
num pudet auratas Phoebum portare sagittas?
clamne solet pharetram ferre Diana suam?
num tegit Alcides nodosae robora clavae?
sub tunica virgam num deus ales habet?
quis Bacchum gracili vestem praetendere thyrso,
quis te celata cum face vidit, Amor?
nec mihi sit crimen, quod mentula semper aperta est:
hoc mihi si telum desit, inermis ero.
'Why be my parts obscene displayed without cover?' thou askest:
Ask I wherefore no God careth his sign to conceal?
Wieldeth the Lord of the World his thunderbolt ever unhidden,
Nor is trident a-sheath given to the Watery God:
Mars never veileth that blade whose might is his prevalent power,
Nor in her tepid lap Pallas concealeth the spear:
Say me, is Phoebus ashamed his gold-tipt arrows to carry?
Or is her quiver wont Dian in secret to bear?
Say, doth Alcides hide his war-club doughtily knotted?
Or hath the God with the wings rod hidden under his robe?
When did Bacchus endue with dress his willowy Thyrsus?
Who ever spied thee, Love! wilfully hiding thy torch?
Ne'er be reproach to myself this mentule ever uncover'd:
Lacking my missile's defence I shall be wholly unarm'd.
Why are my privy parts without vesture? you demand. I ask why no God conceals his emblem? The Lord of the World [Jupiter] has his thunderbolt, and holds it unconcealed; nor is a covered trident given to the God of the Sea [Neptune]. Mars does not secrete the sword by whose means he prevails; nor does Pallas's spear lie hid in the warm bosom of her robe. Is Phoebus ashamed to carry his golden arrows? Is Diana wont to bear her quiver secretly? Does Alcides conceal the strength of his knotted club? Has the winged God [Mercury] his caduceus under his tunic? Who has seen Bacchus draw his garment over the slender thyrsus; or thee, O Love, with hidden torch? Nor should it be a reproach to me that my mentule is always uncovered. For if this spear be wanting to me, I am weaponless.
Garden of Priapus - 11
More Korean action - nipple play and flogging.
In this verse and others Priapus complains against obstructions to thieves entering the forbidden garden - The main purpose of the garden was training the female phallus or mentule which could not be done without trespassers
Quid mecum tibi, circitor moleste?
ad me quid prohibes venire furem?
accedat, sine: laxior redibit.
What hast thou, meddling watch, with me to do?
Why baulk the robber who to me would come?
Let him draw nigh: the laxer shall he go.
What hast thou to do with me, thou meddlesome watchman? why dost thou hinder the thief from coming to me? Let him approach: he will return more 'open'!
Garden of Priapus - 12
More Korean action: Topless flogging in the throne room
Roman female on male sex. Probably anal mentule sex though. I do not think the Roman male penis left the Fibula or bronze penis cage that often ...
Hic quando Telethusa circulatrix,
quae clunem tunica tegente nulla
exstans altius altiusque movit,
crisabit tibi fluctuante lumbo:
haec sic non modo te, Priape, possit,
privignum quoque sed movere Phaedrae.
Will ever Telethusa, posture-mime,
Who with no tunic veiling hinder cheeks
Higher than her vitals heaves with apter geste
Wriggle to please thee with her wavy loins?
So thee, Priapus, not alone she'll move
E'en Phaedra's stepson shall her movement rouse.
Will Telethusa, the posture-dancer, who heaves up her haunches, denuded of tunic, more gracefully and higher than her bosom,[1] ever, with undulating loins,[2] wriggle her thighs[3] for thee in such wise as not only to excite thy desires, O Priapus, but even those of the stepson of Phaedra?
[1. The posture alluded to is that attitude in coition in which the man lies supine, whilst the woman mounts on him and provokes the orgasm by her movements.
2. In the original Latin, flucto, referring here to the wave-like motion of the loins during congress.
3. In the original Latin, crisso, meaning the buckings and wrigglings of a woman's thighs and haunches during congress.]
Garden of Priapus - 13
More Korean action - whipping and a robot mentule!
In this verse, repeat offenders will be irrumated - or forced to perform oral sex ...
Nolite omnia, quae loquor, putare
per lusum mihi per iocumque dici.
deprensos ego ter quaterque fures
omnes, ne dubitetis, irrumabo.
Refrain from deeming all my sayings be
In sport bespoken for mine own disport;
Thieves taken thrice or four tunes in the fact
(Believe my word) I'll surely irrumate.
Think not that everything I say is spoken in jest and for my own amusement. That ye may not be in doubt, I tell ye this, that all thieves who are often caught I shall irrumate.
Garden of Priapus - 14
Boss lady as rough drill sergeant sodomizing her husband with a friend ...
Sex in the Priapea is often described as a fight ... even when the woman is an ancient crone ... I suppose the winner sodomized the loser. Almost all the images are of a female winner though ...: the Roman male penis was not free to leave the Fibula or penis cage.
A verse in the Priapea above described the caged penis as a bow tightly straining against the arrow ....
" ... Again and again we pledged each other, until I, now flushed with wine, restless in mind as in body, and moreover wanton with desire (even slightly wounded on the top of my inguinal organ), having removed my garment, showed to Fotus the impatience of my longing.
'Pity me,' I cried, 'and speedily relieve me! For, as you perceive, since I received the first of cruel Cupid's arrows buried in my very vitals I have been intent upon the contest, now eagerly approaching, which you had proclaimed for us, without the intervention of a herald. Look at my bow! its very vigour stretches it, and fearfulness for the battle, [and I dread] lest its string should be broken by over-great tension. But if you would pleasure me still more, loosen your gathered tresses, and with your hair flowing like waves, give me loving embraces.' ... "
In this verse the Mentule is described as being firmly for anal penetration ...
Rusticus indocte si quid dixisse videbor,
da veniam: libros non lego, poma lego.
sed rudis hic dominum totiens audire legentem
cogor Homereas edidicique notas.
ille vocat, quod nos 'psolen', 'psoloenta keraunon',
et quod nos culum, 'kouleon' ille vocat.
'merdaleon' certe nisi res non munda vocatur,
et pediconum mentula merdalea est.
An I rustical seem to have spoken somewhat unlearned,
Pardon me: apples I pluck, pluck I no matter of books;
Yet in my rudeness ok when hearing the dominie reading,
Stood I storing in mind much of Homerical lore.
'Psoleon' fain he calls what we 'Psoloenta' be calling;
What we 'Culum' name, 'Culeon' loves he to term;
'Smerdaleos' forsure designs what is nothing too cleanly
And is the Pedicon's yard rightly 'Smerdalea' hight.
If I, a rustic, shall seem to say anything unlearnedly, pardon me: I gather not knowledge from books, I gather apples. But, untaught, I have often listened to my master, who constantly reads here, and have learnt by heart the Homeric vocabulary. He calls psolen [the virile member], what we call psoloenta. What we call culum [the fundament], he culeon. And surely, unless an unclean thing be called smerdalos [merde], the mentule of a sodomist is smerdalea.
Garden of Priapus - 15
Priapus described as a goddess - with an erect penis
"Priapus mosaic. This is the image of Priapus, a minor goddess of fertility of the fields and protector of gardens."
That's the classic erect penis and dress and bowl of fruit of Priapus. Usually this is seen as white marble - but the dark tan (the dog-leash tan) here suggests that this is a man in a dress ... Dresses or female clothing were a requirement for men to enter the garden of Priapus ...
In this verse a fig thief in the garden of Priapus is told to think of the large mentule that will penetrate him is he acts on his desire
Cum fici tibi suavitas subibit
et iam porrigere huc manum libebit,
ad me respice, fur, et aestimato,
quot pondo est tibi mentulam cacandum.
When the fig's honied sweet thy taste shall catch
And hither tempt thee hand of thee to stretch;
Glance at my nature, Thief! and estimate
The mentule thou must cack and what's it weight.
When the sweetness of the fig shall come into thy mind and thou shalt long to stretch forth thine hand hither, glance mindfully on me, O thief, and calculate what weight of mentule will be voided by thee.
Garden of Priapus - 16
Boss lady sodomizing her husband ...
Probably all Roman brothel sex was like this. Priapus was the deity of the Roman brothel - the "black stews" presided over by phallic courtesans and moonlighting Roman empresses like the "she wolf" Messalina.
Regular sex without the penis cage was probably restricted to married couples trying to concieve ...
In the verse below Burton introduces us to the Gallus - a castrated priest of Cybele - Many Roman emperors were proud Galli - The name was common with late Roman patrician men ... I suppose they left the mounting to the women !
Credere quis possit? falcem quoque - turpe fateri -
de digitis fures surripuere meis.
nec movet amissi tam me iactura pudorque,
quam praebent iustos altera tela metus:
quae si perdidero, patria mutabor, et olim
ille tuus civis, Lampsace, Gallus ero.
Who could believe my words? 'Tis shame to confess that the sickle
Yon thief-folk have availed e'en from my fingers to thieve.
Nor doth its loss so much affect my mind or dishonour
As the just, natural dread other my weapons to lose,
Which lost shall I stand mulcted of country, and he that was erewhile
Son of the city to thee, Lampsacus! Gaul shall become.
Who could believe ('tis a shameful confession!) that the thieves have even purloined the sickle from my very fingers? nor do the disgrace and loss so much affect me as the well-grounded fears of losing other weapons. Which if I lose, I shall be expatriated; and he formerly thy citizen, O Lampsacus, will become a Gaul.[1]
[1. The word Gallus means one born in Gaul, and also an emasculated priest of Cybele. Therefore, were the thieves to steal Priapus's phallus, which was often used as a cudgel against garden robbers, he would become a Gallus. Martial relates that a Tuscan soothsayer whilst sacrificing a goat to Bacchus ordered a rustic who was assisting him to castrate the animal. The haruspex, busily intent on cutting the goat's throat, exposed to his assistant's view an immense hernia of his own, which the countryman seized and cut off by mistake, thus converting the Tuscan into a Gaul (Gallus). The priests of Cybele (who were all castrated) were called Galli from Gallus, a river in Phrygia, which turned to madness those who drank of its waters.]
Garden of Priapus - 17
Seated pathic matron with an erection
The meaning of this scene is unclear - but can be seen in many Greco-Roman places from as early as the reign of Cleopatra.
Maybe it's related to sacred prostitution - for example the Temple of Aphrodite employed sacred prostitutes in Rome. But they were probably phallic women like the Roman matron above - Aphrodite is often depicted with a penis or mentule.
As far back as Babylonia newly married women were expected to have sacred extramartital sex:
" ... Sacred prostitution, temple prostitution, cult prostitution,and religious prostitution are general terms for a rite consisting of paid intercourse performed in the context of religious worship, possibly as a form of fertility rite or divine marriage (hieros gamos). Scholars prefer the terms "sacred sex" or "sacred sexual rites" in cases where payment for services is not involved.
... According to Herodotus, the rites performed at these temples included sexual intercourse, or what scholars later called sacred sexual rites:
The foulest Babylonian custom is that which compels every woman of the land to sit in the temple of Aphrodite and have intercourse with some stranger at least once in her life. Many women who are rich and proud and disdain to mingle with the rest, drive to the temple in covered carriages drawn by teams, and stand there with a great retinue of attendants. But most sit down in the sacred plot of Aphrodite, with crowns of cord on their heads; there is a great multitude of women coming and going; passages marked by line run every way through the crowd, by which the men pass and make their choice. Once a woman has taken her place there, she does not go away to her home before some stranger has cast money into her lap, and had intercourse with her outside the temple; but while he casts the money, he must say, "I invite you in the name of Mylitta". It does not matter what sum the money is; the woman will never refuse, for that would be a sin, the money being by this act made sacred. So she follows the first man who casts it and rejects no one. After their intercourse, having discharged her sacred duty to the goddess, she goes away to her home; and thereafter there is no bribe however great that will get her. So then the women that are fair and tall are soon free to depart, but the uncomely have long to wait because they cannot fulfil the law; for some of them remain for three years, or four. There is a custom like this in some parts of Cyprus. ... " Wikipedia
In this verse, Priapus warns away modest maidens from his forbidden garden
Tu, quae ne videas notam virilem,
hinc averteris, ut decet pudicam:
nimirum, nisi quod times videre,
intra viscera habere concupiscis.
Thou, who lest manly mark thy glances meet,
Hence fain avertest thee as suits the pure;
No wonder 'twere if that to see thou fear'st
Within thy vitals thou desire to feel.
Thou who, lest thou behold the virile sip, hence withdrawest, as becomes a maiden of modesty: forsooth, unless what thou fearest to see, in thy bowels to have thou longest.
Garden of Priapus - 18
Aphroditos - Bronze statuette, Roman imperial, 1st-3rd century AD, British Museum.
" ... According to Macrobius, who mentions the goddess in his Saturnalia, Philochorus, in his Atthis (referred to by Macrobius), identifies this male-female god with the Moon and says that at its sacrifices men and women exchanged clothing. Philostratus, in describing the rituals involved in the festivals, said that the image or the impersonator of the god was accompanied by a large train of followers in which girls mingled with men because the festivals allowed "women to act the part of men, and men put on woman's clothing and play the woman". ... " Wikipedia
- My guess is the epicenter of this was ancient Egypt. Ancient Egyptian sex was female on male anal ... And the cause was the penis cage or Fibula
The "hieros-gamos" requires a female phallus or mentule ...
Quod monear, non est, quia si furaberis ipse
grandia mala, tibi bracchia macra dabo.
Not to be moved am I; shouldst thou, Thief, venture on thieving
These big apples, to thee pommes de bragues I will give.
I am inflexible; if thou shalt steal my large apples, I will give thee the apples of the breeches[2]
[1. By being sodomised. The text seems to infer that the god took pleasure in punishing a thief.
2. Apples meaning testicles.]
Garden of Priapus - 19
In this verse the Roman fascinum is clearly not purely symbolic - it was used by pathic women on the rectums of Roman men
Priape, quod sis fascino gravis tento,
quod exprobravit hanc tibi suo versu
poeta noster, erubescere hoc noli:
non es poeta sarcinosior nostro.
Although with yard distent (Priapus!) weighted
(Wherewith our poet did reprove thee here
In verse), on no wise deign thereat to blush;
Thou be not heavier than our poet hung.
Priapus, though thou mayst be weighty with turgid fascinum, albeit our poet in his verses has cast this in thy teeth, blush not for it. Thou art not more heavily hung than is that poet of ours.
- ... What actually happened in Roman brothels? If the god of the brothels was Priapus, them the events of the forbidden garden of Priapus were probably identical to the events of the Roman brothel i: female on male sodomy:
" ... Hear what Claudius had to endure. As soon as his wife perceived he was asleep, this imperial harlot, that dared prefer a coarse mattress to the royal bed, took her hood she wore by nights, quitted the palace with but a single attendant, but with a yellow tire concealing her black hair; entered the brothel warm with the old patchwork quilt, and the cell vacant and appropriated to herself. Then took her stand with naked breasts and gilded nipples, assuming the name of Lycisca, and displayed the person of the mother of the princely Britannicus, received all comers with caresses and asked her compliment, and submitted to often-repeated embraces. Then when the owner dismissed his denizens, sadly she took her leave, and (all she could do) lingered to the last before she closed her cell; and still raging with unsatisfied desire, tired with the toil but yet unsated, she retired with sullied cheeks defiled, and, foul from the smoke of lamps, bore back the odor of the stews to the pillow of the emperor. ... " Juvenal, Satire VI Translated by Lewis Evans and William Gifford (1881)
Garden of Priapus - 20
- The large Mentule produced an uncontrollable orgasm from the mount ... Action seemed real from the Mentule side too ... There are exotic energies here that very few people ever experience
In this verse the mentule of Priapus is clearly a dildo of sorts - lustful girls do not think it is big enough. I think Burton misread the verse - the girls were mounting men with the mentule - not being mounted by it ...
At non longa bene est, non stat bene mentula crassa
et quam si tractes, crescere posse putes?
me miserum, cupidas fallit mensura puellas:
non habet haec aliud mentula maius eo.
utilior Tydeus qui, si quid credis Homero,
ingenio pugnax, corpore parvus erat.
sed potuit damno nobis novitasque pudorque
esse, repellendus saepius iste mihi.
Know that this crass coarse yard nor lengthens nor stands as becomes it;
Though an thou handle the same unto fair growth will it grow.
Woe's me! how lustful girls are gulled by its seeming dimensions
Than which bigger of bulk never a prickle was seen.
Usefuller Tydeus was albeit (an trust we to Homer)
In his diminutive frame dwelt a pugnacious soul.
Yet from this strangeness and shame could nothing ever avail us
And such damage I deem better it were to repel.
But the stupid mentule does not rise to a sufficient length nor stand well enough, although if you fondle it, you would think it possible to cause it to swell. Woe is me, its dimensions deceive the eager girls, for when in proper condition, there is nothing greater than this mentule. Tydeus was of more service, who, if Homer is to be believed, was warlike in nature, puny in stature. But this strangeness and modesty could but be a loss to me: it is oftener thrust from me.
Garden of Priapus - 21
More Korean action - Caning her professor to ensure an "A" or better
Shot Blocked. Used workaround
In this verse punishments are detailed for thieves in the garden. Boys sodomized, girls "futtered", men "irrumated"
Percidere puer, moneo: futuere puella:
barbatum furem tertia poena manet.
Thou shalt be pedicate (lad!), thou also (lass!) shalt be rogered;
While for the bearded thief is the third penalty kept.
I warn thee, my lad, thou wilt be sodomised; thee, my girl, I shall futter;[1] for the thief who is bearded, a third punishment[2] remains.
[1. Futuere. Used frequently by Martial. Derived from fundo, to pour out (the semen).
2. Tertia poene in the Latin original meaning irrumation, or coition with the mouth.]
Garden of Priapus - 22
More Korean action: Caning her professor for an "A"
Shot blocked. Used workaround
Not sure about Burton's interpretation of this verse - The mentule of Priapus is probably for daily use by pathic women, not on pathic women ...
- Daily use on husbands in the Roman Fibula or penis cage ..
Commoditas haec est in nostro maxima pene,
laxa quod esse mihi femina nulla potest.
Aye in this prickle of ours the bonniest boon to be found is,
Loose for my daily use never a woman can be.
The greatest advantage in my penis is this, that no woman can be [too] roomy[1] for me.
[1. A popular theme of the poets. From Scioppius, 'However loose her coynte may be I will zealously fill it.' And from Martial against Lydia--
'Me roomy Lydia's private parts surpass
The lusty dray horse' elephantine arse;
Wide as the schoolboy's ringing iron hoop;
Vast as the ring the agile riders stoop
And leap through neatly, touching not the side,
As round and round the dusty course they ride;
Capacious as some old and well-worn shoe,
That's trudged the muddy streets since first 'twas new;
Stretched like the net the crafty fowler holds;
And drapery as a curtain's heavy folds;
Loose as the bracelet gemmed with green and scarlet,
That mocks the arm of some consumptive harlot;
Slack as a feather bed without the feathers;
And baggy as some ostler's well-used leathers;
Relaxed and hanging like the skinny coat
That shields the vulture's foul and flabby throat.
'Tis said, while bathing once we trod love's path,
I know not, but I seemed to fuck the bath.
Garden of Priapus - 23
Boss lady working a large mentule on her husband
In this passage we get a glimpse into the Roman brothel - the main image to me is plowing a field - in a manner where pregnancy is avoided.
Burton has a different visualization - but he was working before knowledge of the penis cage ... and the mentule.
" ... The Supine Posture in Coition
In Epigram 18 on page 48, reference is made to that posture 'in congress in which the man lies supine, whilst the woman mounts on him, and procures the orgasm by her movements; vulgarly called 'St George' and 'le postillon', this appears to have been a favourite position amongst the Romans, Judging from the frequent references to it in their writings. Juvenal, in speaking of the debauchery of women, says of Saufeia:
Provocat, et tollit pendentis praemia coxae.
Ipsa Medullinae fluctum crissantis adorat.
She challenges them, and bears off the prize of her hanging thigh; but she herself adores the undulating wriggling of Medullina's haunches.
The 'hanging thigh' means Saufeia's thigh, which hung over the girl who lay underneath her, the reference being to tribadism. In the same Satire, 'Inque vices equitant, ac luna teste moventur'--They [the women] ride each other in turns, with the moon witnessing their movements.
In Lucilius: 'The one grinds, the other winnows corn as it were . . and: 'Crissatura, ut si frumentum vannat clunibus'--Her motion was as though she were winnowing corn with her buttocks. Martial, speaking of a Gaditanian dancing girl, says:
Tam tremulum crissat, tam blandum prurit, ut ipsum,
Masturbatorem fecent Hippolytum.
She wriggles herself so tremulously, and excites such lubricious passions, that she would have made Hippolytus himself a masturbator.
Arnobius calls this posture, inequitatio--a riding upon. Lucretius says, 'For the woman prevents and resists conception if wantonly she continues coition with a man with her buttocks heaving, and fluctuates her whole bosom as if it were boneless.' (That is, whilst the woman bends over the man and continually curves herself as if she had no spine or bone in her back.) 'For she thrusts out the ploughshare from the right direction and path of her furrow and turns aside the stroke of the semen from her parts. And the harlots think to move in this manner for their own sake, lest they should be in continual pregnancy and at the same time that the coition might be more pleasing for their men.' Apuleius has several passages bearing upon this posture. In his Metamorphoses we read, 'As she spoke thus, having leapt on my bed, she repeatedly sank down upon me and sprang upwards, bending inwards; and, wriggling her flexible spine with lubricious movements, glutted me with the enjoyment of a pendant coition, until fatigued, with our passions enervated and our limbs languid, together we sank panting in a mutual entwinement.' ... "
Garden of Priapus - 24
The mentule and the locked penis -
Here Burton briefs us on what he knew about male Infibulation or the locked Roman penis. He did not seem to apply this knowledge though ...
Holyday, in his illustrations to the sixth Satire of Juvenal, describes the fibula as a 'buckle, clasp or suchlike stay, applied to those that were employed to sing upon the stage; the Praetor, who set forth plays for the delight of the people, buying youths for that purpose. And that such might not by lust spoil their voice, their overseers dosed their shame with a case of metal, having a sharp pike of the same matter passing by the side of it, and sometimes used one of another form; or by a nearer cruelty they thrust a brazen or silver wire through that part, which the Jew did lose in circumcision.' This description is accompanied by an engraving showing two forms of the instrument, taken from Pignerius de Servis. François Noël states that they were used
1 to prevent singers from losing their voice,
2 to keep youths from masturbating themselves,
3 to conceal the organ of generation through modesty.
Roman gladiators also were frequently infibulated in order to preserve their vigour. The operation was performed by having the prepuce drawn over the glans; it was then pierced, and a thick thread was passed through it, remaining there until the cicatrising of the hole; when that had taken place a rather large ring was substituted. Juvenal speaks of the Roman ladies paying great sums of money to have these instruments removed from the persons of the comedians and singers to whom they had taken a fancy. Pliny notes the use of the fibula as a preventive of masturbation; and Martial has an epigram against Caelia whose slave's privities are concealed by a fibula whenever he accompanies his mistress to the bath--'for modesty's sake', Caelia says, but, according to the satirist, to conceal her slave's noble proportions from the envious eyes of other dames. Again he ridicules a man who wore an immense fibula to hide the fact that he was circumcised.[1] The practice was very common in India from religious motives.[2] Celsus describes the operation; and Strabo speaks of the infibulation of women by passing a ring through the labia or outer lips of the vagina. Schurig, in his Spermatalogia and Panhenologia, treats the subject as regards both sexes. In conclusion, I may mention the 'ceinture de chasteté', or belt through whose means the jealous Italian made sure of his wife's virtue; an instrument, it is said, not altogether in disuse at the present day. This belt (made sometimes of gold or other precious metal and covered with velvet) when passed round the woman's waist, was so adjusted that two plates of metal covered not only the vagina but also the anus(!) thus serving as a double protection to the doubting husband, who alone possessed the key which unlocked this precious contrivance.
[1. I refer the reader to the Index Expurgatorius of Martial, where distinction is drawn between the fibula and the 'pouch' (theca or aluta) by which it was covered,
2. The Easterns perforate the penis and insert in the hole thus made various objects, with the view, however, not of preventing coition but of enlarging the size of the penis, and thus doubling the woman's pleasure.]
Garden of Priapus - 25
Roman dancing girls also doubled as brothel workers and they were physical women - the better to "plow" penis-caged Roman men in sexual contests ... According to Burton:
Lipsius discourses on public prostitutes in the theatre. Telethusa and Quinctia were probably Gaditanian damsels who combined the professions of dancer and harlot. These dancing girls were called saltatrices. Ovid in his Amores, speaks of dancing women: 'One pleases by her gestures, and moves her arms to time, and moves her graceful sides with languishing art in the dance; to say nothing about myself, who am excited on every occasion, put Hippolytus there--he would become a Priapus.' Dancing was in general discouraged amongst the Romans. During the Republic and the earlier periods of the Empire women never appeared on the stage, but they frequently acted in the parties of the great. These dancing girls accompanied themselves with music (the chief instrument being the castanet) and sometimes with song. In the Banquet of Xenophon reference is made to their agility and intelligence--
Immediately Ariadne entered the room, richly dressed in the habit of a bride, and placed herself in the elbow-chair ... Then a hoop being brought in with swords fixed all around it, their points upwards, and placed in the middle of the hall, the dancing-girl immediately leaped head foremost into it through the midst of the points, and then out again with a wonderful agility ... I see the dancing-girl entering at the other end of the hall, and she has brought her cymbals along with her ... At the same time the other girl took her flute; the one played and the other danced to admiration; the dancing-girl throwing up and catching again her cymbals, so as to answer exactly the cadency of the music, and that with a surprising dexterity.
The costume of female acrobats was of the scantiest. In some designs the lower limbs of the figures are shown enveloped in thin drawers. From vase paintings we see that female acrobatic costume sometimes consisted solely of a decorated band swathed round the abdomen and upper part of the thighs, thus resembling in appearance the middle band adopted by modern acrobats. Juvenal speaks of the 'barbarian harlots with embroidered turbans', and the girls standing for hire at the Circus; and in Satire XI he says, 'You may perhaps expect that a Gaditanian singer will begin to tickle you with her musical choir, and the girls encouraged by applause sink to the ground with tremulous buttocks.' This amatory dancing with undulations of the loins and buttocks was called cordax; Plautus and Horace term a similar dance Iconici motus. Forberg, commenting on Juvenal, says, 'Do not miss, reader, the motive of this dance; with their buttocks wriggling the girls finally sank to the ground, reclining on their backs, ready for the amorous contest. Different from this was the Lacedaemonian dance bíbasis, when the girls in their leaps touched their buttocks with their heels. Aristophanes in Lysistrata writes--'Naked I dance, and beat with my heels the buttocks.' And Pollux, 'As to the bíbasis, that was a Laconian dance. There were prizes competed for, not only amongst the young men, but also amongst the young girls; the essence of these dances was to jump and touch the buttocks with the heels. The jumps were counted and credited to the dancers. They rose to a thousand in the bíbasis.' Still worse was the kind of dance which was called `eklaktisma, in which the feet had to touch the shoulders.[1]
Gifford, commenting on the passage in Juvenal, remarks that
the dance alluded to is neither more nor less than the Fandango, which still forms the delight of all ranks in Spain, and which, though somewhat chastised in the neighbourhood of the capital, exhibits at this day, in the remote provinces, a perfect counterpart (actors and spectators) of the too free but faithful representation before us. In a subsequent line, Juvenal mentions the testarum crepitus, the clicking of the castanets, which accompanies this dance. The testae were small oblong pieces of polished wood or bone which the dancers held between their fingers and clashed in measure, with inconceivable agility and address. The Spaniards of the present day are very curious in the choice of their castanets; some have been shown to me that cost five-and-twenty or thirty dollars a pair; these were made of the beautifully variegated woods of South America.
[1. Pollux notes, 'The `ekláktismata were dances for women: they had to throw their feet higher than their shoulders.' This kind of dance is not unknown in more modern times. J. C. Scaliger writes, 'Still, nowadays, the Spaniards touch the occiput and other parts of the body with their feet.' Bulenger mentions the Bactriasmus, a lascivious dance, with undulations of the loins.]
Julius Caesar Scaliger says, 'One of the infamous dances was the díknpma or díknoûothai, meaning wriggling the haunches and thighs, the crissare of the Romans. In Spain this abominable practice is still performed in public.' Martial also states that these dances were sometimes accompanied by the cymbal--'For my page wantons with Lampsacian [Priapeian] verse, and strikes the cymbal with the hand of a Spanish dancer.' Again he speaks of the wanton dancers from Cadiz who were skilled in the art of licentiously undulating their loins; and of Telethusa's lascivious gestures and agile posturing in the Gaditanian fashion to the sound of the castanets.[1] Vergil also alludes to this kind of dancing with castanets. The Thesaurus Eroticus, under 'comessationes', describes them as naked dancing-girls who with tremulous loins and obscene movements provoked the lust of their spectators, whilst the tractatrices were softly kneading and pressing the limbs of their masters and soliciting an erection with their apt touches. Martial and Juvenal make copious reference to this subject. These tractatrices were female slaves whose business was to knead and make supple by manual pressure all the joints of their master's body after his bath. The effeminate refinement of the Roman voluptuaries is well shown by the fist of attendants given in the Erotika Biblion, which includes as 'toilet accessories' jatraliptae (youths who wiped the bather with swansdown); unctares (perfumers); fricatores (rubbers); fractatrices (massage-girls); dropacistae (corn extractors); alipilarii (those who plucked the hair from the armpits and other parts of the body); paratiltriae (children entrusted with the cleansing of all the orifices of the body, the ears, anus, vulva, &c.); :and picatrices (young girls who attended to the symmetrical arrangement of the pubic hair). ... "
Garden of Priapus - 26
Roman matron in a long dress with an erect phallus and the head of Priapus pouring lubricating liquid on her mentule
That's what Roman men could expect in the Roman brothels or the "stews" - a phallic of pathic Roman matron and anal sodomy
- Probably also in the day to day marital bed though ...
- What was the end goal though? I'm sure the 30 year Egyptian Sed festival survived into ancient Rome - and the promise of the Tree of Life given by the goddess Nut
But before that the realm of the erect phallus was female only! The Roman Vestal Virgins had to spend 30 years in enforced chastity - it was probably not asking too much for Roman noblemen to do the same - The female mentule and female on male anal sex was probably an acceptable compromise ...
In this verse robbers in the garden of Priapus are warned of by his red-painted amulet - probably an erect mentule ...
Tutelam pomarii, diligens Priape, facito:
rubricato furibus minare mutinio.
Of vergers diligent guard (Priapus!), threat
These robbing loons with thy red amulet.
O Priapus, faithful protector of orchards, warn off the thieves with thy red-painted amulet.
- The forbidden Orchard Priapus is guarding is probably Egyptian - Nut and her the Tree of life; - but that is also the garden in the book of Genesis and the forbidden fruit ...
- The tree of life needs protection in order to grow to its full potential - That's purpose of the penis cage !
Garden of Priapus - 27
Topless woman in the royal purple painting Priapus with an erect mentule from a statue - Pompeii.
In this verse, the mentule of Priapus is reserved for sodomizing for the young
- Probably an Etruscan tradition - and probably mostly for sodomizing young boys ... Pompeii was heavily Etruscan
My guess is the Mentule of Priapus comes from Egypt. Although this is mostly unsaid. The usual reference is India - Ancient India was in the penis cage.
On a more literal level Priapus is a Greek god - so the female Mentule system and the penis cage were probably basic to ancient Greek culture
" ... Priapus, in Greek religion, a god of animal and vegetable fertility whose originally Asian cult started in the Hellespontine regions, centring especially on Lampsacus. He was represented in a caricature of the human form, grotesquely misshapen, with an enormous phallus. The ass was sacrificed in his honour, probably because the ass symbolized lecherousness and was associated with the god’s sexual potency. In Greek mythology his father was Dionysus, the wine god; his mother was either a local nymph or Aphrodite, the goddess of love.
In Hellenistic times Priapus’ worship spread throughout the ancient world. Sophisticated urban society tended to regard him with ribald amusement, but in the country he was adopted as a god of gardens, his statue serving as a combined scarecrow and guardian deity. He was also the patron of seafarers and fishermen and of others in need of good luck; his presence was thought to avert the evil eye. ... " Britannica
Latin: Per medios ibit pueros mediasque puellas
mentula, barbatis non nisi summa petet.
Right through the middle of lads and of lasses a passage shall pierce
This yard, yet shall it touch bearded ones only aloft.
Through the middles of lads and girls will my mentule make its way; those bearded 'twill not attack save at the height.
***
- To avoid becoming "bearded" many Romans chose castration - that was very common with Phyringians and members of the Cybele cult and Roman slaves. Female on male anal sex could then continue into old age ...
Garden of Priapus - 28
Fresco painting of Priapus in the lupanar (brothel) of the ruined Roman city of Pompeii.
Bearded dark skinned Priapus with fruit basket and erect phallus in a Roman brothel. Men in the penis cage were being sodomized by pathic women here ...
If we could enter a time machine we would find Roman men with dark brown tans - The famous "dog-leash" tan. The same thing was true for most other Mediterranean cultures with the exception of ancient Israel where men were circumcised. The custom was also found in ancient Babylon and India.
The other side of the "dog-leash" tan was the female phallus and ancient female sexual aggression ...
In this verse, the home of Priapus is identified as Lampsacus - today Lapseki, western Turkey; - a city rich in Oysters that were said by Juvenal to trigger lust in women. For Romans sexual lust was identified as female not male ... The male "dog-leash" was almost certainly the cause for this ...
by Caius Valerius Catullus
Hunc lucum tibi dedico consecroque, Priape,
qua domus tua Lampsaci est quaque cella, Priape.
Nam te praecipue in suis urbibus colit ora
Hellespontia, ceteris ostrior oris.
This grove to thee devote I give, Priapus!
Whose home be Lampsacus and holt, Priapus!
For thee in cities worship most the shores
Of Hellespont the richest oystery strand.
This grove I dedicate and consecrate to thee, Priapus, who hast thy home at Lampsacus, and eke thy wood lands, Priapus; for thee especially in its cities worships the coast of the Hellespont, richer in oysters[1] than all other shores.
[1. Oysters being an incentive to lust. Juvenal writes: 'She knows no difference 'twixt head and privities who devours immense oysters at midnight.']
Garden of Priapus - 29
Female sodomizing a bound male in a penis cage and a butterfly tatoo!
Priapus was said to be the son of Aphrodite and Bacchus. But in an earlier verse from the Priapea Bacchus is described as effeminate. And many statues of Aphrodite have a large mentule or female phallus attached. That was sex in ancient Asia Minor or Troy - which was an extension of 18th dynasty or Amarna Egypt.
In many images from 18th dynasty Egyptian men are in skirts and are bald and beardless. I am sure there was a tradition of male castration in favor of the female mentule and female sodomy in 18th dynasty Egypt. There are written suggestions of this but not much more.
In this verse - a preference for young men and women to sodomize in the garden of Priapus is described
by Marcus Valerius Martialis
Tu qui pene viros terres et falce cinaedos,
iugera sepositi pauca tuere soli.
sic tua non intrent vetuli pomaria fures
sed puer et longis pulchra puella comis.
Thou who with prickle affrightest men and passives with sickle!
Of the secluded spot deign the few acres to guard;
So may the veteran thieves ne'er force their way to thine orchards;
Only come lad or lass lovely with longest of locks.
Thou who with penis men dost terrify, and with sickle catamites, the acres few of this secluded spot protect. So in thine orchards may enter no aged thieves, but only boy or handsome girl, long-haired.
Garden of Priapus - 30
Dmitrys: Woman with a mentule sodomizing a man dressed as a woman while her friend with a large mentule masturbates ...
As I was reviewing the Egyptian material on this site - I found out that Min - the Egyptian god of the erect phallus was equated to the greek god Pan - That confirms to me that the Egyptian erect phallus was female only! Egyptian men were put in the the penis cage at a very young age - Sexual aggression was therefore all female ...
A coin on page 150 of this site from the time of Severus c. 200 AD has a scene from the garden of Priapus - a tall woman with a penis next to a goat legged Pan with a hare hunting stick - that being a hunting for sex euphemism:
" ... Septimius Severus. 193-211 AD. Hadrianopolis, Thrace; Æ 28. Obv: His laureate and draped bust, r. Rev: To right, Pan, with goat legs, holding lagobolon and facing HERMAPHRODITOS ... on the left ... " akropoliscoins
That's probably where Septimius Severus got his deep tan from - being sodomized in the garden of Priapus by pathic roman women - that and his penis cage ...
In this verse Priapus threatens to sodomize a girl up to her seventh rib. But I am not sure the latin means "girl" - The meaning was probably a large female mentule in a male rectum (...men had to dress as women in the garden of Priapus)
Quod sum ligneus, ut vides, Priapus
et falx lignea ligneusque penis,
prendam te tamen et tenebo prensum
totamque hanc sine fraude, quantacumque est,
tormento citharaque tensiorem
ad costam tibi septimam recondam.
Though I be wooden Priapus (as thou see'st),
With wooden sickle and a prickle of wood,
Yet will I seize thee, girl! and hold thee seized
And This, however gross, withouten fraud
Stiffer than lyre-string or than twisted rope
I'll thrust and bury to thy seventh rib.
Though I am, as you see, a wooden Priapus, with wooden reaping-hook and a wooden penis; yet I will seize thee, and when thou art caught [my girl], I will enjoy thee. And the whole of this,[1] large though it be, and stiffer than twisted cord, than the string of the lyre, I will surely bury in thee to thy seventh rib.
Garden of Priapus - 31
Priapus - Pompeii 1st century AD - photo by Mary Harrsch
Priapus has what is called today "phimosis" - the foreskin on his penis prevents a full erection. But that was really the general Roman condition caused by the Fibula or penis cage.
As noted before - the front door was locked for Roman men, so any sex had to be through the back door ! Or anally and through the mentule of the pathic Roman matron ...
The Egyptian Harpocrates or Horus with a finger to her lips saying "be silent" and a penis was the desired end goal of the penis cage - the Mentule or the female phallus ... The Romans were just continuing the tradition
This verse sounds to me to be from a pathic Roman matron asking her guest not to be offended by the obscene prose on the walls of the temple of Priapus.
Tu, quicumque vides circa tectoria nostra
non nimium casti carmina plena ioci,
versibus obscenis offendi desine: non est
mentula subducti nostra supercilii.
Thou, who art 'customed to view around the walls of our temple
Verse of a strain jocose rather than modest and chaste,
Cease to be hurt by the song obscene, for verily ne'er was
Wont our mentule to wear eyebrow up-drawn in surprise.
Thou who seest the walls of my temple covered round with jocose poems, not too chaste, cease to be shocked at the obscene verses: mine is not a mentule with raised eyebrow.
Garden of Priapus - 32
Drawing of a cameo with Hermaphroditus reclining on a rock, covered with a lion-skin, under a tree; Pan lifts Hermaphroditus's garment while Silenus looks on - between 1768 and 1805 - British Museum collection.
- This is a genre scene and can be traced back to the days of Cleopatra. Egypt probably had the same system based on a forbidden garden by the Nile where the pathic female Sekhmet-Min was pacified with anal sex
In color Silenus would have a deep brown tan ... caused by a lifetime in the Fibula and anal sodomy from the female Mentule.
- Pathic Roman queens travelled with the troops - probably sodomizing them to keep them in fighting shape!
In this verse thieves in the garden are warned they will leave as male whores if caught!
Praedictum tibi ne negare possis:
si fur veneris, impudicus exis.
Know, lest due warning be denied by thee,
An thief thou come male whore shalt surely flee.
Know this, lest thou shouldst deny being warned, if thou comest a thief thou wilt go dishonoured.
Garden of Priapus - 33
Dmitrys: Muscular Amazon soldier sodomizing a male prostitute in female clothing ...
This actually happened during the annual Bona Dea celebrations - young men were asked to arrive dressed as women ... Probably a required rite of passage for all young Roman noblemen - or "noble catamites" as the Priapea calls them ...
In this verse poor poetry brought by male visitors to the garden causes the apples not to grow ...
- The forbidden tree of life needs poetry to bear fruit!
Quid frustra quereris, colone, mecum,
quod quondam bene fructuosa malus
autumnis sterilis duobus adstem?
non me praegravat, ut putas, senectus,
nec sum grandine verberata dura,
nec gemmas modo germine exeuntes
seri frigoris ustulavit aura,
nec venti pluviaeve siccitasve,
quod de se quererer, malum dederunt;
non sturnus mihi graculusve raptor
aut cornix anus aut aquosus anser
aut corvus nocuit siticulosus,
sed quod carmina pessimi poetae
ramis sustineo laboriosis.
Why, cultivator, vainly moan to me
That I, a fruitful apple-tree whilom,
For two autumnal seasons barren stand?
Weighs me not down (as deemest thou) old age
Nor am I floggèd by the hailstone hard,
Nor yet my burgeon-gems a-budding new
Are burnt by rigours of a wintry spring:
Neither the winds nor rains nor yet the droughts
Caused just complaining to the apple-tree;
Nor me the starling or the robber 'Daw
Or crow as crone old-grown or watery goose
Or thirsty raven e'er endamagèd.
No! but from bearing scribblers' rubbish verse
On labouring branches comes mine every woe.
Why dost thou vainly complain, O husbandman, that I, once a well-fruited apple tree, have now remained sterile throughout two autumns? 'Tis not old age, as thou imaginest, which tells upon me; nor have I been beaten by a violent hailstorm; nor has an unseasonable wintry blast nipped off the blossoms just breaking forth from the stem. Neither have winds, nor rain, nor droughts, given the apple tree any cause to murmur. The starling, the plundering 'daw, the old crow, the water-loving goose, the thirsty raven, none of these has injured me; but the verses of the most execrable of poetasters which I bear on my grievously overladen branches.
Garden of Priapus - 34
Pompeii: chained dog and Labrys.
The double headed axe was a symbol of the Amazons - as was the chained dog or caged penis.
The chained dog amplified female lust and many times that was female sex with animals with large phalli - like donkeys or bulls. The donkey, known for a very large phallus was sacrificed to Priapus - That was what pathic Roman matrons were to catamite Roman men!
Female sex with a donkey - according to Burton :
" ... Although references in the classics to bestiality are not unfrequent, in Epigram 52 is the only passage I can call to mind which treats of an animal sodomising a man. In Juvenal we read, 'If he be missing, and men are wanting, she does not delay to submit her buttocks to a young ass placed over her.' This reference is, however, to copulation, not sodomy, the woman taking a kneeling posture as the one which would best enable the animal to enter her. The following passage from The Golden Ass of Apuleius is left in the original Latin in the translation of that writer issued in Bohn's Classical Library. This being the only English edition of Apuleius's Metamorphoses always in print, I have translated the omitted passage, and insert it here, notwithstanding its length--
When the time came, having fed, we withdrew from my master's hall and found my lady of quality at my bedchamber, where she had long been waiting. Good gods! what glorious and excellent preparation was there! without delay four eunuchs arranged for us a bed on the ground, with many pillows swollen with tender down, as if filled with wind; evenly threw over these a coverlet embroidered with gold and Tyrian purple; and over, they strewed completely with cushions with which delicate women are wont to support their chins and necks; some of these very small though plentiful enough, others of a good size. Nor delaying the pleasure of their mistress by their long attendance, they retired, closing the doors of the bedchamber. But within, waxen tapers gleaming with a clear lustre illuinined for us the darkness of night.
Then, having straightway stripped off the whole of her clothing, the zone, too, which had bound close her lovely breasts, standing near the light she anointed herself plentifully with balsamic unguent from a small silver vase, and rubbed me copiously with the same; but drenched especially my legs and even my buttocks. Then, pressing me closely, she gave me fond kisses; not such as are wont to be thrown to one in the brothel, either by the mercenary bawds or the tight-fisted wenchers, but pure and unfeigned, she showered on me, and most alluring coaxings. 'I love thee, and long for thee; thee, alone, I pant for, and without thee am unable to live;' and used, besides, the arts by which women declare their affection.
Having taken me by the halter, in the manner to which I had grown accustomed, she turned me to her, when, indeed, I seemed to be about to do nothing which was either new or difficult to me; especially as after so long a time I was about to encounter the ardent embraces of a beautiful woman. For I had by this time intoxicated myself with a large quantity of most luscious wine, and had incited my lustful desires with the most fragrant perfumes. But I was greatly troubled by no small fear, thinking in what manner should I be able, with legs so many and of such a size, to mount a tender and highborn lady; or, encircle with hard hooves her limbs softened with milk and honey and so white and delicate; or how, deformed, with teeth like stones and a mouth so enormous and gaping, to kiss her daintily-shaped lips, purpled with ambrosial dew; finally, in what manner my gentlewoman could support so gigantic a genital, though itching all over from her fingertips. 'Woe is me! Shall I, having burst asunder a woman of high rank, form an addition to my master's public show by being condemned to the contest with the wild beasts?'
Meanwhile she again and again bestowed on me tender little speeches, unremitting love kisses, and sweet groanings, together with biting kisses. And in the deed, 'I hold thee,' she said, ' I hold thee fast, my woodpigeon, my sparrow.' And with these words she showed my misgivings to have been groundless, and my fears idle. For having entwined me wholly in the closest embrace, she took in the whole of me straightforward. In truth, as often as I, wishing to spare her, bent back my buttocks, so often did she, attacking with furious exertion and clinging round my spine, glue herself to me with a yet closer pressure; so that, by Hercules, I believed some thing was wanting even to me to famish her lust with its complement; nor could I now think that the mother of the Minotaur had no reason to be delighted with her bellowing adulterer.
The mother of the Minotaur was Pasiphaë, the wife of King Minos. Burning with desire for a snow-white bull, she got the artificer Daedalus to construct for her a wooden image of a cow, in which she placed herself in such a posture that her vagina was presented to the amorous attack of the bull, without fear of any hurt from the animal's hoofs or weight. The fruit of this embrace was the Minotaur--half bull, half man--slain by Theseus. According to Suetonius, Nero caused this spectacle to be enacted at the public shows, a woman being encased in a similar construction and covered by a bull
The amatory adventures of the Roman gods under the outward semblance of animals cannot but be regarded with the suspicion that an undercurrent of truth runs through the fable, when the general laxity of morals of that age is taken into account. Jupiter enjoyed Europa under the form of a bull; Asterie, whom he afterwards changed into a quail, he ravished under the shape of an eagle; and Leda lent herself to his embraces whilst he was disguised as a swan. He changed himself into a speckled serpent to have connection with Deois (Proserpine). As a satyr (half man, half goat), he impregnated Antiope with twin offspring. He changed himself into fire, or, according to some, into an eagle, to seduce Aegina; under the semblance of a shower of gold he deceived Danaë; in the shape of her husband Amphitryon he begat Hercules on Alcmene; as a shepherd he lay with Mnemosyne; and as a cloud embraced Io, whom he afterwards changed into a cow. Neptune, transformed into a fierce bull, raped Canace; he changed Theophane into a sheep and himself into a ram, and begat on her the ram with the golden fleece. As a horse he had connection with the goddess Ceres, who bore to him the steed Arion. He lay with Medusa (who, according to some, was the mother of the horse Pegasus by him) under the form of a bird; and with Melantho, as a dolphin. As the river Enipeus he committed violence upon Iphimedeia, and by her was the father of the giants Otus and Ephialtes. Saturn begat the centaur (half man, half horse) Chiron on Phillyra whilst he assumed the appearance of a horse; Phoebus wore the wings of a hawk at one time, at another the skin of a lion. Liber deceived Erigone in a fictitious bunch of grapes, and many more examples could be added to the list.
According to Pliny, Semiramis prostituted herself to her horse; and Herodotus speaks of a goat having indecent and public communication with an Egyptian woman. Strabo and Plutarch both confirm this statement. The punishment of bestiality set out in Leviticus shows that the vice was practised by both sexes amongst the Jews. Pausanius mentions Aristodama, the mother of Aratus, as having had intercourse with a serpent, and the mother of the great Scipio was said to have conceived by a serpent. Such was the case also with Olympias, the mother of Alexander, who was taught by her that he was a God, and who in return deified her. Venette says that there is nothing more common in Egypt than that young women have intercourse with bucks. Plutarch mentions the case of a woman who submitted to a crocodile; and Sonnini also states that Egyptians were known to have connection with the female crocodile. Vergil refers to bestiality with goats. Plutarch quotes two examples of men having offspring, the one by a she-ass, the other by a mare. Antique monuments representing men copulating with goats (caprae) bear striking testimony to the historian's veracity; and the Chinese are notorious for their misuse of ducks and geese.
... " Priapea
- My guess is that donkey sex scene was female donkey phallus or mentule in the male rectum - Just from the Roman penis cage system. ...
The same with the bull sex scene of Queen Pasiphaë - my inner dream images of that was the female bull phallus - which was an Egyptian phenomenon through the Apis bull and the "strong bull of my mother" ...
Garden of Priapus - 35
Boss lady sodomizing a penis caged and "mummified" man.
From genocidal and phallic Sehkmet- Min to loving and phallic Hathor bull - the phallus remained female in ancient Egypt! And the male remained "mummified" sexually for at least 30 years ... That's how long it took to raise the "djed pillar" - or the Tree of Osiris/Tree of life
My guess is after 30 years most men prefered being sodomized by strong and virile young women!
In this verse male guests in the forbidden garden are warned of "taking the water" for a different purpose if they steal any grapes - by which I assume that means taking the mentule up the rectum
Vade per has vites, quarum si carpseris uvam,
cur aliter sumas, hospes, habebis aquam.
Hie thee amid these vines whereof an thou gather a grape-bunch
Guest! of the water shalt drink serving for different use.
Haste thee through these vines, for if thou hast plucked off their clustering grapes, guest! thou wilt take the water for another purpose.
Garden of Priapus - 36
Dmitrys: Sodomy with a muscular Amazon - the world of the Roman and Etruscan nobleman in the garden of Priapus - catamites in female clothing being anally sodomized by pathic women
Burton on Roman Catamites:
" ...Depilation by Catamites
Martial derides catamites for depilating their privy parts and buttocks. The following version of Martial's epigram against a beau (bellus homo) is given by Dr James Cranstoun in the illustrative notes to his translation of Catullus:
Cotilus, you are a beau; yes, Cotilus, many declare it.
Such is the story I hear: tell me, then, what is a beau?
Why, sir, a beau is a man who arranges his tresses in order:
Smelling for ever of balm, smelling of cinnamon spice:
Singing the songs of the Nile or a-humming the ditties of Cadiz:
Never at rest with his arms, moving them this way or that:
Lounging on sofas from morning to night with a bevy of ladies:
Aye in the ears of some girl whispering some silly tale:
Reading a letter from Rhode or Chloe, or writing to Phyllis:
Shunning the sleeve of his friend lest he should ruffle his dress:
Everyone's sweetheart he'll tell you, he swaggers the lion at parties:
Bets on the favourite horse, tells you his sire and his dam.
Cotilus, what are you telling me?--this thing! is this thing a beau?
Cotilus, then I must say he's a contemptible thing.
Juvenal devotes his finest Satire (the second) to a forcible denunciation of the infamous practices of these sodomites. In it he says:
One man with a needle slanted, lengthens his eyebrows, touched with moistened soot, and, lifting up his eyelids, paints his quivering eyes. Another drinks from a Priapus-shaped glass, and confines his flowing locks in a golden net, clothing himself in cerulean checks or greenish-yellow vestments, whilst his valet swears by the Juno of his master. A third holds a mirror, the accoutrement of pathic Otho, 'the spoil of Auruncan Actor', in which he viewed himself, armed for battle, when he commanded the standards to be raised.
Tertullian speaks of ustricles (from urere--to bum), female delipators who made use of boiling dropax to bum the hairs on the legs and other parts of the body of these voluptuaries. Other references to these effeminate practices--particularly that of depilating the body-pile with dropax or psilothrum (melted rosin in oil) or with tweezers--are made by Persius, Ausonius, Juvenal, Martial, Suetonius, Quintilian, Julius Capitolinus, Pliny, Aeitus, &c., &c. ... " Priapea
In this verse the holy lands of the gods are discused. For Priapus Lampsacus, Asia Minor - or Lapseki, Çanakkale Province, Turkey - is sacred.
Dodone tibi, Iuppiter, sacrata est,
Iunoni Samos et Mycena ditis,
undae Taenaros aequorisque regi;
Pallas Cecropias tuetur arces,
Delphos Pythius, orbis umbilicum,
Creten Delia Cynthiosque colles,
Faunus Maenalon Arcadumque silvas;
tutela Rhodos est beata Solis,
Gades Herculis umidumque Tibur;
Cyllene celeri deo nivosa,
tardo gratior aestuosa Lemnos;
Hennaeae Cererem nurus frequentant,
raptam Cyzicos ostreosa divam,
formosam Venerem Cnidos Paphosque;
mortales tibi Lampsacum dicarunt.
Dodona is hallowed, Jupiter, to thee;
To Juno Samos and to Dis Mykenae;
While Taenarus' billowy seas confess the King.
Pallas preserveth the Cecropian towers;
Pythius Delphos, navel of the world;
Delia the Cretan Isle and Cynthian hills;
Faunus hath Maenalos and Arcadian groves.
Rhodos is happy protégé of Sol;
Gades and Tibur dank of Hercules;
Snowy Cyllene of the swift-paced God
And seething Lemnos of the limping Sire;
Ennéan matrons unto Ceres flock,
To the raped Goddess oystery Cyzicus;
Gnidos and Paphos lovely Venus hail
While mortals dedicate Lampsacus to thee.
Dodona is sacred to thee, O Jupiter; Samos and Mycenae to Juno; Taenarus and its billowy waters to royal Dis. Pallas guards the Cecropian citadels [Athens]; Pythius [Apollo], Delphi the centre of the world; the maid of Delos [Diana), Crete and the Cynthian Hills; the Faun [Pan], Maenalus and the Arcadian woods. Rhodes is under the blest protection of the sun god [Apollo]; Gades and the humid Tibur, of Hercules; snowy Cyllene of the god of swiftness [Mercury]; and boiling Lemnos is dearer to the tardy god [Vulcan]. The women of Enna worship Ceres; oystery Cyzicum, the ravished goddess [Proserpine]; Gnidus and Paphos, the lovely Venus. To thee, mortals have devoted Lampsacus.
Garden of Priapus - 37
Dmitrys: Irrumation - a punishment reserved mostly for older thieves in the garden of Priapus.
Here a young Japanese Samurai/Amazon is Irrumated by an older feminized catamite - he was given female sex hormones and grew breasts...
The tertia poena (third punishment) referred to in Epigram 12 on page 42 is irrumation or coition with the mouth. The patient (fellator or sucker) provokes the orgasm by the manipulation of his (or her) lips and tongue on the agent's member. Galienus calls it lesbiari (Greek lesbiázein), as the Lesbian women were supposed to have been the introducers of this practice. Lampridius says: 'Libidinosus, ore quoque pollutus et constupratus fuit' (That lecherous man, whose mouth even is defiled and dishonest) and Minutius Felix: 'Qui medios viros lambunt, libidinoso ore inguinibus inhaerescunt' (They who lick men's middles, cleave to their inguina with lustful mouth).
In old Latin it was called offendere buccam, to offend the cheek. Suetonius calls the vice illudere ori--to sport with the mouth. Ausonius says that the Campanians were addicted to the practice, and calls it capitalis luxus--the debauchery of the head.[1]
Corve salutator, quare fellator baberis,
In caput intravit mentula nulla tamen?
O greetings raven, how is it thou art considered a sucker,
though no mentule has ever entered thy mouth?
He refers to the ancient belief that the raven ejected the semen in coition from its beak into the female. Aristotle refutes this belief.]
Arnobius uses the expression stuprum oris--the defilement of the mouth. Other terms used are: to corrupt the mouth; to attack the head; to defy to one's face; not to spare the head; to split the mouth; to gain the heights; to strike higher; to compress the tongue; complacently lending the mouth; the labour of the mouth; to lick men's middles; to lick and to make silent. Suetonius relates that Parrhasius bequeathed to Tiberius a picture which he had painted, representing Atalanta kneeling before Meleager and caressing him with her mouth. This picture Tiberius caused to be hung in his bedchamber.
The Romans regarded irrumation as a far more shameful vice than sodomy. Martial, Petronius and other writers mention the latter with indifference, but Catullus in speaking of the abandoned profligacy of Gellius alludes to irrumation as an act of the greatest turpitude. Martial directs many epigrams against fellators, whose presence at the dinner-table was regarded by the other guests with consternation; a thing not to be surprised at when we recollect that the salute amongst the Romans was a kiss on the mouth. The Phoenicians used to redden their lips to imitate better the appearance of the vulva; on the other hand the Lesbians who were devoted to this practice whitened their lips as though with semen. In the Kama Sutra or Aphorisms on Love of Vatsyayana. (a Sanscrit treatise on venery), a chapter is devoted to 'The Auparishtaka or Mouth Congress', in which the process is divided into eight stages:
7 Sucking a mango fruit and
That this practice is of very ancient date appears from the fact of its mention in an Indian medical work, the Shushruta, some three thousand years old. Sculptures in temples to Shiva in Orissa, built about the period of the eighth century, also represent this custom.
I enjoyed a buxom lass all night with me,
Which none could overcome in venery.
Thousand ways tried, I asked that childish thing,
Which she did grant at the first motioning,
Blushing and laughing I a worse besought,
Which she most loose vouchsafed as quick as thought.
Yet she was pure, but if she deal with you
She'll not be so, and thou shalt pay dear too.
- Fletcher's Martial] ... "Priapea
Garden of Priapus - 38
Marcus Aurelius Priapus coin:
" ... Marcus Aurelius (161-180). Mysia, Lampsacus. Æ (13mm, 1.27g, 12h). Bare head r. R/ Ithyphallic statue of Priapus standing l. on base, holding cantharus over lighted altar and long thyrsus. RPC IV online 2366 (temporary). Very Rare, brown patina, VF ... " vcoins
Marcus Aurelius was a sponsor of the Priapus cult! Which means he was a catamite ... It's safe to assume all Roman aristocrats were anally sodomized in the garden of Priapus ... But not just aristocrats - Romans in general ...
His wife Faustina was very promiscuous - but probably not in the modern sense of the term ... My guess is she was mounting men anally in large numbers in the garden of Priapus ...In other words promiscuous in the expected Roman sense of the sexually virile wife ...
" ... The Historia Augusta mentions adultery with sailors, gladiators, and men of rank; however, Faustina and Aurelius seem to have been very close and mutually devoted. ... " Wikipedia
She was also present out in the field with the military. ... My guess is she was sodomizing her men to keep them in fighting shape!
" ... Faustina accompanied her husband on various military campaigns and enjoyed the excessive love and reverence of Roman soldiers. Aurelius gave her the title of Mater Castrorum or ‘Mother of the Camp’. She attempted to make her home out of an army camp. Between 170 and 175, she was in the north, and in 175, she accompanied Aurelius to the east. ... " Wikipedia
In this verse the punishment for violating the garden of Priapus is just assumed to be well konwn:
Vilicus aerari quondam, nunc cultor agelli
haec tibi perspectus templa, Priape, dico.
Pro quibus officiis si fas est, sancte, paciscor,
assiduus custos ruris ut esse velis.
Improbus ut si quis nostrum violarit agellum,
hunc tu -- sed tento. Scis, puto, quod sequitur.
Bailiff of house whilom, now I of fieldlet the tiller;
Perspectus, these fanes give (O Priapus!) to thee.
So for such offices make I pact (if lawful, O Holy)
Thou of this farm shalt bide ever-assiduous guard.
And if a rogue come rob our field or venture to trespass
Him thou may'st--Hush! for I know whatso shall follow thou know'st.
Once a household steward, now the tiller of a little field, I, Perspectus, consecrate these temples to thee, O Priapus. For which kind offices I stipulate (if it be righteous, O holy one) that thou may'st be the assiduous protector of the farm; that if any dishonest fellow shall profane our little field, him thou mayst--But silence! I think thou know'st what follows behind.
Garden of Priapus - 39
Priapus with a blocked erection and bright yellow and green female clothing, a Phyrgian cap and a deep tan and fruit being weighed in a scale against his caged phallus. - Pompeii fresco
" ... PRIAPOS (Priapus) was the god of vegetable gardens. He was also a protector of beehives, flocks and vineyards.
Priapos was depicted as a dwarfish man with a huge member, symbolising garden fertility, a peaked Phrygian cap, indicating his origin as a Mysian god, and a basket weighed down with fruit.
His cult was introduced to Greece from Lampsakos (Lampsacus) in Asia Minor and his mythology subsequently reinterpreted. Primitive statues of the god were set-up in vegetable gardens to promote fertility. These also doubled as scarecrows, keeping the birds away.
Priapos was identified with a number of phallic Greek deities including Dionysos, Hermes and the satyrs Orthanes and Tykhon (Tychon).
In a well-known Pompeiian wall fresco (above) the god is shown weighing his phallus against the produce of the garden. He is crowned with a peaked Phrygian cap, wears Phrygian boots, and has a Bacchic, cone-tipped thyrsus resting by his side. ... " theoi
- The Roman or Phyrgian phallus was locked - all sex was either anal or for more mature men oral ...
In this verse - a Priapus shrine is set up in the farm of a poor Roman - A traveller tells the god that he is willing to endure the rough mentule as punishment for robbing the small plot. The verse ends with an image of the farmer approaching with the mentule in his right hand to sodomize the traveller.
Burtons translation might be wrong though - the farmer with the mentule in the right hand is almost certainly female - Men were excluded from the garden and the top religious official of the Priapus cult was a high priestess
by Caius Valerius Catullus
Ego haec, ego arte fabricata rustica,
ego arida, o viator, ecce populus
agellulum hunc, sinistra et ante quem vides,
erique villulam hortulumque pauperis
tuor malaque furis arceo manu.
Mihi corolla picta vere ponitur,
mihi rubens arista sole fervido,
mihi virente dulcis uva pampino,
mihi caduca oliva, cocta frigore.
Meis capella delicata pascuis
in urbem adulta lacte portat unbera,
meisque pinguis agnus ex ovilibus
gravem domum remittit aere dexteram,
teneraque matre mugiente vaccula
deum profundit ante templa sanguinem.
Proin, viator, hunc deum vereberis
manumque sursum habebis. Hoc tibi expedit,
parata namque crux stat ecce mentula.
"Velim pol" inquis? At pol ecce vilicus
venit, valente cui revulsa bracchio
fit ista mentula apta clava dexterae.
I thuswise fashioned I by rustic art
And from dried poplar-trunk (O traveller!) hewn,
This fieldlet, leftwards as thy glances fall,
And my lord's cottage with his pauper garth
Protect, repelling thieves' rapacious hands.
In spring with vari-coloured wreaths I'm crown'd,
In fervid summer with the glowing grain,
Then with green vine-shoot and the luscious bunch,
And glaucous olive-tree in bitter cold.
The dainty she-goat from my pasture bears
Her milk-distended udders to the town:
Out of my sheep-cotes ta'en the fatted lamb
Sends home with silver right-hand heavily charged;
And, while its mother lows, the tender calf
Before the temples of the Gods must bleed.
Hence of such Godhead (traveller!), stand in awe;
Best it befits thee off to keep thy hands.
Thy cross is ready, shaped as artless yard;
'I'm willing 'faith' (thou say'st) but 'faith here comes
The boor and plucking forth with bended arm
Makes of this tool a club for doughty hand.
I, O traveller, shaped with rustic art from a dry poplar, guard this little field which thou seest on the left, and the cottage and small garden of its indigent owner, and keep off the greedy hands of the robber. In spring a many-tinted wreath is placed upon me; in summer's heat ruddy grain; [in autumn] a luscious grape cluster with vineshoots, and in the bitter cold the pale-green olive. The tender she-goat bears from my pasture to the town milk-distended udders; the well-fattened lamb from my sheepfolds sends back [its owner] with a heavy handful of money; and the tender calf, 'midst its mother's lowings, sheds its blood before the temple of the gods. Hence, warfarer, thou shalt be in awe of this god, and it will be profitable to thee to keep thy hands off. For a punishment is prepared--a roughly-shaped mentule. 'Truly, I am willing,' thou sayest; then, truly, behold the farmer comes, and that same mentule plucked from my groin will become. an apt cudgel in his strong right hand.[1]
[1. The traveller mocks at Priapus's threat of sodomy as a punishment. The god, in anger, retorts that if that punishment has no fears for him, a fustigation by the Farmer with the self-same mentule used as a cudgel may have a more deterrent effect.]
Garden of Priapus - 40
Dmitrys: Phallic lion goddess and man dressed as a woman serving tea ...
The Priapus cult has Egyptian roots - the phallic Sekhmet-Min a lioness with a phallus that had to be cooled off. How that was done was left unsaid - but the Mentule or female phallus and female on male anal sodomy of the Romans was probably the model ... in addition to cunnilinge - from Latin cunnilingus (literally “cuntlicker”)
Ancient Egypt was an Amazon power - and the original model of this came from further up the Nile in black Africa ...
In this verse cunnilinge - from Latin cunnilingus (literally “cuntlicker”) is mentioned. One of the punishments handed out in the garden of Priapus
And in the excerpt below we learn that castrated priests of Cybele were not celibate - they used their tongue to give oral sex to Amazons. - And losing the penis had no effect on the Amazon mentule in the male rectum ... Also Tiberius is described as a buck addicted to licking the vulvas of goats - which seems to have been very common with Roman and Greek men ...
At di deaeque dentibus tuis escam
negent, amicae cunnilinge vicinae,
per quem puella fortis ante nec mendax
et quae solebat impigro celer passu
ad nos venire, nunc misella landicae
vix posse iurat ambulare prae fossis.
The Gods and Goddesses deny thy teeth
A bait, a whetting, neighbour cunnilinge!
Thro' whom my girl (once strong and never false,
But with her swift untiring paces wont
To visit us), that hapless Labdacé,
Swears for her ditches she can hardly crawl.
But may the gods and goddesses deny nourishing food to thy teeth, O neighbouring cunnilinge, through whom my girl, hitherto strong and not false, and who was wont swiftly with untired step to hasten to me, now unfortunate Labdace swears that she can scarce drag her feet along by reason of her ditch.
To cause a woman to feel the venereal spasm by the play of the tongue on her clitoris and in her vagina was a taste much in vogue amongst the Greeks and Romans. Martial lashes it severely in several epigrams, that against Manneius being especially biting.
Manneius, the husband with his tongue, the adulterer with his mouth, is more polluted than the cheeks of the Suburan prostitutes. The obscene bawd, when she has seen him naked from a window in the Subura, closes her door against him and prefers to kiss his middle, rather than his face. But lately he used to wander in all the cavities of the coynte [with his tongue], and could tell with certainty and knowledge whether there was in the womb a boy or a girl. (Rejoice, ye coyntes! for now all is over.) He is not able to stiffen his swiving tongue, for, whilst he sticks glued in the teeming vulva, and hears the babes whimpering within, a filthy disease[1] paralyses this gluttonous member; and now he can neither be pure nor impure.
[1. The translator of Martial's Expurgatorius renders this passage, 'her course came on'; and states in his note to the epigram that Martial was probably ignorant of the fact that the menses cease during pregnancy. Our translator is strangely mistaken. With many women the menses do not cease altogether during pregnancy, and there is, besides, no good reason to suppose that Martial is alluding to the menses at all. About the second or third month of pregnancy a woman is frequently troubled with a discharge in the nature of leucorrhoea or 'whites', consequent upon her monthly courses ceasing, and this discharge is quite sufficient to infect a man with gonorrhoea or 'clap'.]
Again he says, 'Zoilus, an evil star has suddenly struck your tongue, whilst you were licking. Certes, Zoilus, you will futter now.'
He also speaks of the foul breath of a coynte-licker, and in his epigram on Philaenis we read, 'She does not suck [men]--thinking this scarcely manly--but certainly devours the middles of girls. May the gods give thee sense, Philaenis, thou who imaginest it a manly thing to lick a coynte.' And he skits at Baeticus, a priest of Cybele, who, although castrated, eludes his goddess's commands by still using his tongue to fornicate with. To Gargilius he says, 'You lick, you do not futter my girl, and you boast as though you were her gallant and a swiver. If I catch you, Gargilius, you will hold your tongue.' i.e. the luckless gallant would be irrumated by the poet. Of Linus he remarks, 'That mentule of Linus, lecherous to excess, and known to no few girls, ceases to stand. Tongue, beware!' His mentule being no longer capable of active service, Linus's tongue would have to undertake its duties. Speaking of twin brothers, one of whom was a cunnilinge and the other a fellator, he gravely enquires whether this adds to or takes away from their resemblance to each other. Ausonius accuses Castor and Eunus of practising this vice and punningly compares the odour of the vulva to sardines and salgamas (salted roots and greens). He reproaches Eunus for licking his wife's parts during pregnancy, jocosely charging him with being in an undue hurry to teach his unborn children lessons of tongue (Eunus being a grammarian). Suetonius speaks of the populace ridiculing Tiberius as 'an old buck licking the vulvas of goats'. Cicero also accuses Sextus Clodius of this action; and some epigrams in the Analecta of Brunck contain unmistakeable allusions to the subject, one in particular being very nearly tamed:
Avoid Alpheus' mouth, he loves Arethusa's bosom,
And then goes and plunges into the salty sea.
The poet here draws upon the ambiguity of the words mouth, bosom (bay), plunge, salt sea, which may refer to the river Alpheus in Arcadia, to Arethusa, a spring in Sicily, and also to the mouth of a cunnilinge plunging into a woman's vulva. Galienus calls those who practise this debauchery, coprophages (dung-eaters). Ausonius calls Eunus an Opician because these practices were, according to Festus, most common amongst the Osci or Opici. Catullus compares cunnilinges to bucks on account of their foetid breath; and Martial mocks at the paleness of Charinus's complexion, which he sarcastically ascribes to his indulgence in this respect. Maleager has a distich upon Phavorinus (Huschlaus, Anaketa Critica), and Ammianus (Brunck, Analecta) has written an epigram, both of which appear to be directed against the vice. Suetonius (Illustrious Grammarians) speaks of Remmius Palaemon, who was addicted to this habit, being publicly rebuked by a young man who in the throng could not contrive to avoid one of his kisses; and Aristophanes says of Ariphrades in Knights:
Whoever does not execrate that man,
Shall never from the same bowl drink with us.
According to Juvenal women were not addicted to exchanging this kind of caress with one another: 'Taedia does not lick Cluvia, nor Flora Catulla.'[1]
[1. Juvenal's assertion may however be looked upon as a bit of special pleading required by the context, his Satire being devoted to lashing the vice of sodomy. In these matters the customs of ages gone by are repeated today, and vice versa. And it is well known that ladies of easy virtue of the present day look upon this peccadillo with a favourable eye; many of them keeping a 'companion', one of whose chief duties is to attend to this portion of her friend's daily 'toilet'.]
Many passages in the classics, both Greek and Roman, refer to the cunnilinges swallowing the menstrual and other secretions of women. Aristophanes frequently speaks of this. Ariphrades sods his tongue and stains his beard with disgusting moisture from the vulva. The same person imbibes the feminine secretion, 'And throwing himself on her he drank all her juice.' Galienus applies the appellation 'drinkers of menses' to cunnilinges; Juvenal speaks of Ravola's beard being all moist when rubbing against Rhodope's privities; and Seneca states that Mamercus Scaurus, the consul, 'swallowed the menses of his servant girls by the mouthful'. The same writer describes Natalis as 'that man with a tongue as malicious as it is impure, in whose mouth women eject their monthly Purgation.' In the Analecta of Brunck, Micarchus has an epigram against Demonax in which he says, 'Though living amongst us, you sleep in Carthage,' i.e. during the day he lives in Greece, but sleeps in Phoenicia, because he stains his mouth with the monthly flux, which is the colour of the purplish-red Phoenician dye. In Chorier's Aloisia Sigea, we find Gonsalvo de Cordova described as a great tongue-player (linguist). When Gonsalvo desired to apply his mouth to a woman's parts he used to say that he wanted to go to Liguria; and with a play upon words implying the idea of a humid vulva, that he was going to Phoenicia or to the Red Sea or to the Salt Lake--as to which expressions compare the salty sea of Alpheus and the salgamas of Ausonius and the 'mushrooms swimming in putrid brine' which Baeticus devours. As it was said of fellators (who sucked the male member) that they were Phoenicising because they followed the example set by the Phoenicians, so probably the same word was applied to cunnilinges from their swimming in a sea of Phoenician purple. Hesychius defines scylax (dog) as an erotic posture like that assumed by Phoenicians. The epithet excellently describes the action of a cunnilinge with regard to the posture assumed; dogs being notoriously addicted to licking a woman's parts. The reader who desires more information on the subject will find further details in Forberg, from whose pages I have drawn part of the material which constitutes this note.
The word labda (a sucker) is variously derived from the Latin labia and do, to give the lips; and from the Greek letter lambda, which, is the first letter in the word leíchein or lesbiázein, the Lesbians being noted for this erotic vagary. Ausonius says, 'When he puts his tongue [in her coynte] it is a lambda'- that is the conjunction of the tongue with the woman's parts forms the shape of the Greek letter {lambda}. In an epigram he writes:--
Lais, Eros and Itus, Chiron, Eros and Itus again,
If you write the names and take the initial letters
They will make a word, and that word you're doing, Eunus.
What that word is and means, decency lets me not tell.
The initial letters of the six Greek names form the word leíchei, he licks. ... " Priapea
Garden of Priapus - 41
Dmitrys: American cowgirl Sam and her ejaculating Mentule.
All large Roman Fascinums are Mentules or female phalli - Rome had the cult of the female phallus centered on the Vesta fire cult and the caging of the male phallus
Priapus was erect but impotent - another way of describing the Roman condition - the men were penis caged for many years and so unable to perform. A side effect of this caging was amplified female lust:
" ... Priapus was described in varying sources as the son of Aphrodite by Dionysus; as the son of Dionysus and Chione; as perhaps the father or son of Hermes; or as the son of Zeus or Pan.According to legend, Hera cursed him with inconvenient impotence (he could not sustain an erection when the time came for sexual intercourse), ugliness and foul-mindedness while he was still in Aphrodite's womb, in revenge for the hero Paris having the temerity to judge Aphrodite more beautiful than Hera. The other gods refused to allow him to live on Mount Olympus and threw him down to Earth, leaving him on a hillside. He was eventually found by shepherds and was brought up by them.
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, 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. 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. ..." Wikipedia
In this verse Priapus warns robbers to steal from a wealthy farm nearby because the owners there are negligent in worshipping him. On this poor Roman farm the laws of Priapus are enforced ... ie female on male sodomy ("Sam and her mentule") - probably by the farmwife and her daughters or other virile female farmers
also by Cams Valerius Catullus
Hunc ego, o iuvenes, locum villulamque palustrem
tectam vimine iunceo caricisque maniplis
quercus arida rustica fomitata securi
nutrior. Magis et magis fit beata quontannis!
Huius nam domini colunt me deumque salutant
pauperis tuguri pater filiusque adulescens,
alter assidua colens diligentia, ut herbae
asper aut rubus a meo sint remota sacello,
alter parva manu ferens saepe munera larga.
Florido mihi ponitur picta vere corolla,
primitus tenera virens spica mollis arista,
luteae violae mihi lacteumque papaver
pallentesque cucurbitae et suave olentia mala,
uva pampinea rubens educata sub umbra.
Sanguine haec etiam mihi (sed tscebitis) arma
barbatus linit hirculus cornipesque capella.
Pro quis omnia honoribus nunc necesse Priapo est
praestare et domini hortulum vineamque tueri.
Quare hinc, o pueri, malas abstinete rapinas.
Vincinus prope divers est neglegensque Priapus.
Inde sumite, semita haec deinde vos feret ipsa.
This place, O youths, I protect, nor less this turf-builded cottage,
Roofed with its osier-twigs and thatched with its bundles of sedges;
I from the dried oak hewn and fashioned with rustical hatchet
Guarding them year by year while more are they evermore thriving.
For here be owners twain who greet and worship my Godship,
He of the poor hut lord and his son, the pair of them peasants:
This with assiduous toil aye works the thicketty herbage
And the coarse water-grass to clear afar from my chapel:
That with his open hand ever brings me offerings humble.
Hung up in honour mine are flowery firstlings of spring-tide,
Wreaths with their ears still soft the tender stalklets a-crowning;
Violets pale are mine by side of the poppy-head pallid;
With the dull yellow gourd and apples sweetest of savour;
Lastly the blushing grape disposed in shade of the vine-tree.
Anon mine altar (this same) with blood (but you will be silent!)
Bearded kid and anon some horny-hoofed nanny shall sprinkle.
Wherefore Priapus is bound to requite such honours by service,
Doing his duty to guard both vineyard and garth of his lordling.
Here then, O lads, reftain from ill-mannered picking and stealing;
Rich be the neighbour-hind and negligent eke his Priapus;
Take what be his: this path hence leadeth straight to his ownings.
This place, youths, and the marshland cot thatched with rushes, osier-twigs and bundles of sedge, I, carved from a dry oak by a rustic axe, now protect, so that they thrive more and more every year. For its owners, the father of the poor hut and his son--both husbandmen--revere me and salute me as a god; the one labouring with assiduous diligence that the harsh weeds and brambles may be kept away from my sanctuary, the other often bringing me small offerings with open hand. On me are placed a many-tinted wreath of early spring flowers and the soft green blade and ear of the tender corn. Saffron coloured violets, the orange-hued poppy, wan gourds, sweet-scented apples, and the purpling grape trained in the shade of the vine [are offered] to me. Sometimes, (but keep silent as to this)[1] even the bearded he-goat and the horny-footed nanny sprinkle my altar with blood: for which honours Priapus is bound in return to do everything [which lies in his duty], and to keep strict guard over the little garden and. vineyard of his master. Wherefore, abstain, O lads, from your evil pilfering here. Our next neighbour is rich and his Priapus is negligent. Take from him; this path then will lead you to his grounds.
[1. Priapus was afraid of the anger of the Celestials if they heard of his receiving honours due to them alone; for he was one of that lower order of deities, to which Faunus, Hippona and others belonged, who were not admitted into heaven or entitled to blood offerings.]
Garden of Priapus - 42
Dmitrys: A scene from the Roman brothels or "stews" or the garden of Priapus - A pathic or phallic woman anally sodomizing a penis caged man dressed as a woman
Shot blocked. Used workaround.
In the verse below a Roman man complains of the impotence that prevents him sodomizing a golden boy. Priapus, who was himself impotent, was not about male sodomy though - He was more about phallic and "sportive" girls in the Roman male anus!
by Albus Tibullus concerning the inertia of his privy member
Quid hoc novi est? Quid ira nuntiat deum?
Silente nocte candidus mihi puer
tepente cum iaceret abditus sinu,
venus fuit quieta, nec viriliter
iners senile penis extulit caput.
Placet, Priape, qui sub arboris coma
soles, sacrum revincte pampino caput,
ruber sedere cum rubente fascino?
At, o Triphalle, saepe floribus novis
tuas sine arte deligavimus comas,
abegimusque voce saepe, cum tibi
senexve corvus impigerve graculus
sacrum feriret ore corneo caput.
Vale nefande destitutor inguinum,
vale Priape: debeo tibi nihil.
Iacebis inter arva pallidus situ,
canisque saeva susque ligneo tibi
lutosus affricabit oblitum latus.
At o sceleste penis, o meum malum,
gravi piaque lege noxiam lues.
Licet querare, nec tibi tener puer
patebit ullus, imminente qui toro
iuvante verset arte mobilem natem,
puella nec iocosa te levi manu
fovebit apprimetve lucidum femur.
Bidens amica Romluli senis memor
paratur, inter atra cuius inguina
latet iacente pantice abditus specus,
vagaque pelle tectus annuo gelu
araneosus obsidet forem situs.
Tibi haec paratur, ut tuum ter aut quater
voret profunda fossa lubricum caput.
Licebit aeger angue lentior cubes,
tereris usque, donec (a miser! miser!)
triplexque quadruplexque compleas specum.
Superbia ista proderit nihil, simul
vagum sonante merseris caput luto.
Quid est, iners? Pigetne lentitudinis?
Licebit hoc inultus auferas semel,
sed ille cum redibit aureus puer,
simul sonante senseris iter pede,
rigente nervos excubet libidine,
et inquietus inguina arrigat tumor,
neque incitare cesset usque dum mihi
venus iocosa molle ruperit latus.
What news be here? what send those angry gods?
Whenas in silent night that snow-hued boy
To my warm bosom claspèd lay concealed,
Venus was dormant nor in manly guise
My sluggard prickle raised his senile head.
Art pleased (Priapus!) under leafy tree
Wont with vine-tendrils sacred sconce to wreathe
And seat thee ruddy with thy ruddled yard?
But, O Triphallus, oft with freshest flowers
Artlessly garlanded thy brow we crowned
And with loud shouting often drove from thee
What agèd Raven or what agile 'Daw
Would peck thy holy face with horny beak.
Farewell, Priapus! naught to thee owe I
Farewell, forsaker damn'd of private parts!
Pale with neglect amid the fields shalt he
Where savage bandog shall bepiss thee or
Wild boar shall rub thee with his ribs mud-caked.
Accursèd Penis! Oh, by whom my pains
Shall with sore righteous penalty be paid?
Howe'er thou 'plain, no more shall tender boy
Ope to thy bidding, nor on groaning bed
His mobile buttocks writhe with aiding art:
Nor shall the wanton damsel's legier hand
Stroke thee, or rub on thee her lubric thigh.
A two-fanged mistress, Romulus old remembering,
Awaits thee; middlemost whose sable groin
And hide time-loosened thou with coynte-rime bewrayed
And hung in cobwebs fain shalt block the way.
Such prize is thine who thrice and four times shalt
Engulf thy lecherous head in fosse profound.
Though sick or languid lie thou, still thou must
Rasp her till wretched, wretched thou shalt fill
Thrice or e'en fourfold times her cavernous gape;
And naught this haughty sprite shall 'vail thee when
Plunging thine errant head in plashing mire.
Why lies it lazy? Doth its sloth displease thee?
For once thou mayest weaken it unavenged;
But when that golden boy again shall come,
Soon as his patter on the path shalt hear,
Grant that a restless swelling rouse my nerve
Lustful a-sudden and upraise it high,
Nor cease excite it and excite it more
Till wanton Venus burst my weakened side.
What news is this? What does the anger of the gods announce? When in the silent night a lovely boy lay with me hidden in my warm bosom, my desire was quiescent, nor did the sluggish penis courageously raise its senile head. Does it please thee, Priapus? who under the foliage of a tree art wont, thy sacred head circled with the leaves and tendrils of the vine, ruddy to sit with rubicund fascinum. But, O Triphallus, oft fresh flowers with loving care have I wreathed in thy locks; and oft driven off with my shouts an aged raven or an active jackdaw when it would have pecked thy sacred head with its horny bill. Fare thee well, Priapus, I owe thee naught. Farewell, impious forsaker of the privities, thou shalt he in the glebe mouldy with neglect; a savage dog shall continually piss upon thee, or a wild boar rub against thee his side befouled with mire. O cursed father of the penis, to whom my calamity [is due], thou shalt expiate this injury with a severe and pious atonement. Thou canst complain: no tender lad shall yield to thee who on the groaning bed with aiding art shall writhe his mobile buttocks. Nor shall a sportive girl caress thee with her gentle hand, or press against thee her lubricious thigh. A mistress with two teeth is prepared for thee, who can call to mind the time of Romulus; and amid her gloomy loins and loose-stretched hide, covered with frost and full of mould and cobwebs, thy privity shall blockade the entrance. This is the one prepared for thee, that thrice and four times her bottomless ditch may swallow up thy lubricious head. Notwithstanding weak and languid thou liest, thou shalt shag her again and again until, O miserable wretch, thrice and fourfold thou fillest her cavity. And now thy pride shall avail thee naught when thou plungest thy reeling head into the splashing mire. Why is [my yard] inert? doth not its sluggishness displease thee? This once thou mayst deprive it of vigour with impunity. But when that golden boy shall return, at the same time that thou hearest the patter of his foot upon the path, on a sudden let a restless swelling excite my nerves with lust and raise my privy part; nor let it cease to incite more and more until sportive Venus shall have spent my feeble strength.
Burton on sodomy that included women - Seems more sodomy by women - it's not easy to penetrate into the strange Roman bedroom ...
In the sixth line of Epigram 2 (page 34) a pun seems to be intended on the word pocula, which is used in the double meaning of a drinking cup and the anus. Therefore, 'mingles luscious cups' also means allows sodomy to be committed upon him. Martial writes:
Dulcia Dardanio nondum miscente ministro
Pocula, Juno fuit pro Ganymede Jovi.
Before the Dardanian servitor mingled Jove's sweet cups,
Juno was to him as Ganymede (i.e. acted as his catamite).
Also in Ovid's Metamorphoses:
Nec mora: percusso mendacibus aere pennis
Abripit Iliaden qui nunc quoque pocula miscet,
Invitaque Jovi nectar, Junone ministrat.
And no delay is there. Striking the air with his fictitious wings, he carries off the youth of Ilium; who even now mingles his cups for him, and, much against the will of Juno, serves nectar to Jove.
Martial, on his wife's complaining of his intercourse with youths and reminding him that she too has a posterior, tells her that Juno had said the same thing to Jupiter, who nevertheless lay with Ganymede, and recommends her to think that she has merely two coyntes.[1]
[1. Caught with my boys, at me my wife the froe
Scolds, and cries out she hath an arsehole too.
How oft hath Juno thus reprov'd loose Jove ?
Yet he with Ganymede doth act his love.
Hercules bent his boy, lay'd-by his bow,
Though Megara had haunches too we know.
Phoebus was tortured by the flying wench,
Yet the Oehalian Lad those flames did quench.
Though much denied Briseis from him lay
Achilles with Patroclus yet did play.
Give not male names then to such things as thine,
But think thou hast two twats, O wife of mine.
And on a similar remonstrance and proffer from his wife, the poet describes the anus of a youth as a Chian fig, that of a woman as a marisca. The Isle of Chios was famous for the fine quality of its figs; the marisca was a large sized fig of inferior flavour. The Arabs use the word tín or real fig, for a woman's parts; and call the anus 'mulberry-fig'. In Mirabeau's Erôtika Bibliôn, the confidential valet-de-chambre of a great lord of modern times having suggested to his master to use women in the same manner as his Ganymedes, 'Women!' cried the master; 'eh! it is as if you were to serve me with a leg of mutton without the knuckle!' The knuckle being, of course, the virile appendages of the catamite.
Murrhedius Rhetor sheds light on a similar noted passage found in Seneca--
Novimus, istam maritorum abstentiam, qui etiamsi primam Virginibus timidis remisere noctem, vicinis tamen locis[1] ludunt.
[1. Lucretius often uses the word locus to designate a woman's pudendum. Also Cato, 'si ea lotio locas fovebit' (if she will foment her parts with wine); Cicero, 'cum in locis semen insederit' (when the semen has adhered in the sexual parts); Coel. Aur., 'indecenter ipsa in loca manus mittunt prurientibus verendis' (with itching members indecently place hands on the parts themselves); Tertullius, 'Foetus in locis matris tumultuatur' (The unborn child stirs in its mother's womb); Petronius, 'Quoniam, inquam, fidem scelere violasti, et communem amicitiam, res tuas ocius tolle, et alium locum, quem polluas, quaere' ('Villain,' said I, 'since you have broken the bonds of honour and our common friendship, pack up your things forthwith, and go seek some other part which you may defile.' Petronius here intends a play upon words. Encolpius had found the lad Giton, his favourite, in bed with his friend Ascyltos. Boiling over with wrath, he awakens them, and orders Ascyltos to depart, and 'find some other place to be the scene of your infamous misdeeds'; these words being intended to be construed both in their ordinary meaning, and with reference to the special application of the word locus to Giton's posteriors.)]
We know that abstinence of husbands, who, although they allow the first night to pass without enjoying the timid virgins, yet sport in neighbouring places.
In other words, they use their brides as lads. Martial maintains:
Paedicare semel cupido dabit illa marito,
Dum metuit teli vulnera prima novi.
At the same time that she fears the first wounds of a new weapon she will give her buttocks to her eager husband
and later he says to his wife,
Paedicare negas: dabat hoc Cornelia Graccho,
Julia Pompeio, Porcia, Brute, tibi.
You deny your buttocks; Cornelia gave this to Gracchus, Julia to Pompey, Portia, Brutus, to thee.[1]
[1. Sweet heart begone: Or use our ways with us,
I am no Curius, Numa, Tatius.
Nights spent in pleasant cups best please my sense,
Thou to drink water can'st rise and dispense.
Thou joy'st in darkness, I by light to sport,
Or else by day to loose my breeches for't.
Swathes or coats cover thee, or obscure sniff,
No wench to me can lie display'd enough.
Such kisses please like doves that are a billing,
Thou smackst me like Grandam so unwilling,
Nor towards the work dost voice or motion bring,
Nor band: But makest it as some offering.
The Phrygian boys in secret spent their seed
As oft as Hector's wife rid on his [her?] steed,
Whiles her sire [spouse?] slept, Penelope though chaste
Was wont to play her hand below her [his?] waist.
Thou'lt not be buggered: Although Gracchus' wife,
Pompey's and others did it without strife.
And when the boy not present was 'tis said
To fill wine: Juno was Jove's Ganymede
If gravity by day doth thee delight,
Lucretia be: I'll have thee Lais by night.
--Fletcher's Martial]
Quintus Serenus too, 'obscoenos si pone locos nova vulnera carpen' (if they inflict new wounds behind the privy parts). And see Ausonius's epigram on Crispa. Martial also records the kindness of a damsel who, after practising with him a thousand postures of coition, not only granted him the 'posterior' favours, but went till further in her complaisance, and accommodated her two lovers at the same time--one in anus the other in coynte. Apuleius says,
'Whilst we chatted together a mutual desire excited at once our minds and members. Having thrown off every garment, we revelled, nude and without covering, in venery; and on my wearying, Fotis, of her own accord, proffered me the puerile corollary.' Athenaeus cites several instances of sodomy with women. Modem erotic literature generally is full of this subject, and there is no doubt but that the vice is far more extensively practised in England than is currently imagined. I may conclude this note with a reference to Martial's epigram on the tribade Philaenis whose clitoris was so 'pronounced' a feature that she played the man with it, and not only exhausted eleven girls in one day but actually sodomised young men. This same Philaenis, although despising irrumation as a vice fit only for men to practise, nevertheless did not disdain to apply her mouth to the privities of her own sex. ... " Priapea
Garden of Priapus - 43
Tall Amazon sodomizes a man immobilized in a pillory and penis caged too
Burton has a brief description of the Tribade Philaenis who had a clitoris the size of a penis and sodomized both men and women with it.
Tribade is defined as " a lesbian, especially one who lies on top of her partner and simulates the movements of the male in heterosexual intercourse."
- Not sure that was a penis though - it was probably a mentule. And that was probably the norm for sex with the fibula or Roman penis cage still attached.
" ... I may conclude this note with a reference to Martial's epigram on the tribade Philaenis whose clitoris was so 'pronounced' a feature that she played the man with it, and not only exhausted eleven girls in one day but actually sodomised young men. This same Philaenis, although despising irrumation as a vice fit only for men to practise, nevertheless did not disdain to apply her mouth to the privities of her own sex. ... " Priapea
According to wikipedia Philaenis was a stereotypical tribade of ancient Rome - being understood as a phallic or pathic Greek courtesan or prostitute. The Roman brothels or "stews" were the domain of the stereotypical tribade; but in a general sense, the Roman and Greek wife was also a phallic Tribade or phallic Amazon as contrasted to her penis caged husband ... Ancient Egypt and Syria and Babylon and ancient Punt and other African countries too ...:
" ... Philaenis is the most frequently named of the ancient women who had an erotic treatise attributed to them and she is mentioned in a dozen ancient sources. According to one of the surviving fragments of the treatise from Oxyrhynchus, the work was written by "Philaenis the Samian, daughter of Ocymenes" – though Athenaeus calls her "Leucadian". Her mother's name is sometimes given as Gyllina. Modern scholars generally believe that Philaenis is a fictional character who was used as a persona, possibly by several different erotic writers.
It is commonly assumed among modern scholars that the Philaenis persona was one of a courtesan. According to Ian Michael Plant, the name Philaenis – a diminutive of "philaina", the feminine form of the Greek word "philos", meaning "love" – seems to have been a name commonly used by prostitutes in ancient Greece. Her association with Samos is also appropriate for a prostitute; In antiquity, the island was famous for its expensive hetairai. D. W. Thomson Vessey states that Philaenis is a fictional character representing a "prototypical harlot". Sandra Boehringer vehemently rejects the view of Philaenis as a courtesan, insisting that there is no evidence to support the argument that the name Philaenis was any kind of "courtesan's name" or that anyone ever thought of Philaenis as a courtesan in antiquity, instead arguing that the ancients merely regarded her as sexually debauched.
... Fragments of a work claiming to have been written by Philaenis were discovered at Oxyrhynchus and published in 1972 as P. Oxy. 2891. Although the book was formerly believed to have been a monograph on sexual positions, the discovered fragments suggest that the scope of the work was much broader; according to Edgar Lobel, it appears to have been rather "a systematic exposition of ars amatoria". The work does not seem to have been intended as a serious instruction manual, but rather as a parody of the genre.
The work is written in straightforward, everyday language and makes no attempt at literary artifice. It is divided into well-organized sections, each of which deals with a particular topic. Though Philaenis, purportedly the author of the work, was from Samos, the surviving portion of the work contains very few Ionic forms. This may be a result of the fact that, by the fourth century, when the work was probably written, Koine was starting to become the prevalent dialect in formerly Ionic-speaking areas of Greece. Alternatively, since "Philaenis" is likely to be a pseudonym for the true author, it is more probable that only a few Ionic forms were needed in order to lend superficial verisimilitude to the work.
Three fragments of the manual from Oxyrhynchus attributed to Philaenis have survived. All of them are exceedingly brief and the handwriting on them is barely legible in some places; in the second of the three fragments, only five letters can be securely identified. The fragments come from the very beginning of a scroll of papyrus, which was divided into two parallel columns. The first column begins with a preamble describing Philaenis's work:
Philaenis the Samian, daughter of Ocymenes, composed this book for those who wish to live their life with knowledge gained scientifically, not unprofessionally. She toiled...
The second and third fragments come from the beginning of the second column on the scroll:
On Seductions: Now, the seducer must come to the woman untidy and uncombed, so that he does not seem to the woman to be a man who takes much trouble...
[On Flattery]: ...with the intention..., while he says that she... is equal to a goddess, that she who is ugly is as lovely as Aphrodite and that she who is older is as Rhea.
Boehringer states that the discovery of these fragments only prove that a genre of sexual writings existed in antiquity and emphasizes that this treatise does not prove that Philaenis herself was a real person or that there was ever an "original" sex manual written by her.
... The structure of the treatise attributed to Philaenis resembles that of the later poetic Ars Amatoria by the Roman poet Ovid and it is generally thought that Ovid probably drew on it for inspiration. To the ancient Romans, Philaenis and her writings symbolized the perceived profligacy of the Greek cities of Asia Minor. Philaenis is mentioned in the Priapeia, a collection of Latin poems originally associated with cultic statues of the god Priapus and later collected during the first century AD. In one of these poems, narrated in the first-person by Priapus himself, the god lists his misfortunates:
There comes in addition to these things the sign of shamelessness, this obelisque erected by my lecherous limb. Right up to it, the puella – I almost said her name – is accustomed to come with the one who shags her (cum suo fututore), and, if she has not completed all the positions described by Philaenis (tot figuris, quas Philaenis enarrat), she leaves, still itching for it (pruriosa).
According to Boehringer, this poem indicates that girls, or puellae in Latin, may have read some kind of writings or discourses attributed to Philaenis. This passage also associates Philaenis with both knowledge of sex and sexual excessiveness.
The Roman epigrammatist Martial, who wrote in the late first century AD, uses a fictional character named Philaenis in his satires, who may have been partially based on the persona of Philaenis of Samos. Martial's Philaenis is portrayed as figure of his own time, not as a person from the distant past. She is described a stereotypical tribade, who sodomizes boys, has sex with women, engages in cunnilingus, and lifts weights.[In epigram 7.67.1:
Pudicat pueros tribas Philaenis
et tentigine saevior mariti
undenas dolat in die puellas
That tribade Philaenis sodomizes boys,
and with more rage than a husband in his stiffened lust,
she works eleven girls roughly every day.
" ... Martial ironically describes Philaenis refusing to perform fellatio because it was "unmanly", but yet engaging in cunnilingus, an activity which Martial deems so utterly feminine that only the most demented person would consider it manly. Martial emphasizes Philaenis's Greek character by peppering his epigrams against her with Greek phrases and loanwords, such as harpasto ("handball"), haphe ("yellow sand"), halteras ("jumping weights"), palaestra ("wrestling ring"), and colyphia ("meat dishes"). His descriptions of Philaenis and other masculine women bear close similarities to the descriptions found in the writings of the poet Seneca the Younger, who lived about a generation before Martial, and indicate that Martial was probably drawing inspiration either from Seneca himself or from the same tradition from which Seneca also drew his inspiration. ... " Wikipedia
The early church fathers condemned Phiaenis - apparently in Rome her sexual postions were well known and may have included a strap-on dildo or Mentule:
" ...In late antiquity, Philaenis became the object of scorn and disapproval from Christian Church Fathers. In the second century AD, the Christian apologist Justin Martyr references the writings of Philaenis as works that provide people with shameful education. The theologian Tatian mentions the works of Philaenis and Elephantis as examples of horrible creations. Clement of Alexandria deplores those who display paintings inspired by the works of Philaenis as though they were portrayals of the Labors of Heracles. According to Vessey, Clement's equation of Philaenis's sex positions with the Labors of Heracles implies that he believed only a gymnast with "Herculean powers" could actually have sex in the positions described by her.
The fourth-century AD Pseudo-Lucianic dialogue Erotes cites Philaenis as an example of "tribadic licentiousness" and claims that she used a strap-on dildo for the sake of "androgynous loves".A scholium on the passage remarks that Philocrates, an Athenian comic playwright, had described Philaenis as a hetairistria and a tribas ("tribade").This is the only known reference to a comic playwright by this name. ... " Wikipedia
In this verse thieves in the garden of Priapus are warned of sodomy by wooden mentule - "...a fig tree grafted from this cypress ..." Figs being fruits equated with anal sex - - Female phallus as a man would not need a wooden phallus
by Marcus Valerius Martialis
Non sum de fragili dolatus ulmo,
nec quae stat rigida supina vena
de ligno mihi quolibet columna est,
sed viva generata de cupressu,
quae nec saecula centiens peracta
nec longae cariem timet senectae.
hanc tu, quisquis es o malus, timeto,
nam si vel minimos manu rapaci
hoc de palmite laeseris racemos,
nascetur, licet hoc velis negare,
inserta tibi ficus a cupressu.
I am not hewèd of the fragile elm
Nor is this post supine with rigid vein
Carved out of any wood thou please to take;
But 'tis engendered by live cypress-tree
Which fears nor hundred ages fully told
Nor the decaying of long, drawn-out eld.
Dread this (O evil one!) whoe'er thou be!
For an thou injure with thy greedy hand
The least of bunches by this vine-stock borne
Shall spring (howe'er thou may oppose) for thee
A fig-tree grafted from this cypress-stem.
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
Garden of Priapus - 44
Dmitrys: Three female Tribades sodomizing three male catamites dressed as women.
This was a Roman rite of passage despite the written propaganda against catamites and Tribades. Also Greek and Minoan and Egyptian and Ethiopian. The ancient world was ruled by a phallic goddess archetype.
A lot of this is lost in siloed Lesbian studies - for example I always assumed Sappho was exclusively a lesbian - but one of her major myths was her anal sodomy of the golden boy Phaon.
In Asia Minor this was just a fact of life: the golden boy sodomized by the pathic girl. My theory is it was a direct result of the penis cage which in Asia Minor seemed to be placed at a very young age like Egypt - as young as six years old.
One of many Asia Minor examples is the myth of Hermaphroditus who was sodomized by the nymph Salmakis.:
" ... Hermaphroditus, sometimes called Aphroditus was the god of effeminate men. According to Ovid, born a remarkably handsome boy, he was transformed into an androgynous being by union with the water nymph Salmacis. His name is the basis for the word hermaphrodite.
... Hermaphroditus was the son of Hermes and Aphrodite. Ovid's account relates that Hermaphroditus was nursed by naiads in the caves of Mount Ida, a sacred mountain in Phrygia (present day Turkey). At the age of fifteen, he grew bored with his surroundings and traveled to the cities of Lycia and Caria. It was in the woods of Caria, near Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum, Turkey) that he encounters the nymph Salmakis, who was overcome in lust for him. She tries to seduce him, but he rejected her. Shortly after, Hermaphroditus was bathing in a pool, when Salmacis, who was secretly watching him, jumped into it close to him, and asked the gods to unite them in only one body. From there, there are different versions of what became of Hermaphroditus:
In the most known, he becomes an androgynous being, usually represented as a woman with male genitalia.
In another version, his appearance is not exactly of a woman, but not completely male as well.
He is also, sometimes, represented as a man who is capable of completely transform into a woman.
After his transformation, he prayed to his parents, asking them that anyone who bathed in the pool had the same fate as him, and his wish was granted. ... " greekmythology.wikia
***
- Phallic but female Minoan "bull-jumpers" were probably the model of all later Asia Minor, Greek and Roman Tribades. In this Epigram Martial describes the athletic world of the Tribade Philaenis -
" ... In his seventh book of epigrams, Martial writes two poems about a woman named Philaenis. The first has much to say about Philaenis, though nothing good:
Pedicat pueros tribas Philaenis
et tentigine saevior mariti
undenas dolat in die puellas.
harpasto quoque subligata ludit,
et flavescit haphe, gravesque draucis
halteras facili rotat lacerto,
et putri lutulenta de palaestra
uncti verbere vapulat magistri:
nec cenat prius aut recumbit ante
quam septem vomuit meros deunces;
ad quos fas sibi tunc putat redire,
cum colophia sedecim comedit.
post haec omnia cum libidinatur,
non fellat (putat hoc parum virile),
sed plane medias vorat puellas.
di mentem tibi dent tuam, Philaeni,
cunnum lingere quae putas virile.
Philaenis the tribas anally fucks boys and, more raging than the lust of a husband, she bangs eleven girls in a day. Having been fastened, she also plays with a ball, and she becomes yellow in the sand, and she swings heavy weights with a more easy arm than athletes, and muddy from the putrid palaestra she is beaten with a flog by an oiled instructor: And she neither dines nor reclines before she has vomited seven deunces of undiluted wine; to which she thinks it right for her to return afterwards, when she eats sixteen pieces of meat. After all these things, when she gratifies lust, she does not suck dick (she thinks that this is not manly enough), but she wholly devours the middles of girls. May the gods give your mind to you, Philaenis, you who think that licking cunt is manly. ... " Female Homoeroticism in the Roman Empire: How Many Licks Does It Take to Get to the Disruption of a Phallocentric Model of Sexuality? By Nicole Speth. Hofstra University (2015)
***
In this verse Priapus mentions the "kitchen-fires" of his "belly weapons" - Thats' the mentule fire of the Roman brothel or the "stews"
93 On the Priapus of Hilarus
by Marcus Valerius Martialis
Non rudis indocta fecit me falce colonus:
dispensatoris nobile cernis opus.
Nam Caeretani cultor ditissimus agri
hos Hilarus colles et iuga laeta tenet.
Aspice quam certo uidear non ligneus ore
nec deuota focis inguinis arma geram,
sed mihi perpetua numquam moritura cupresso
Phidiaca rigeat mentula digna manu.
Vicini, moneo, sanctum celebrate Priapum
et bis septenis parcite iugeribus.
Carved me no rustic boor his artless sickle a-plying:
Here of the bailiff thou see'st noble and notable work;
For that the wealthiest swain who owns the lands Caërétan
(Hilarus) holds these hills sloping in sunniest folds.
See with my well-shaped face how seem I not to be wooden,
Nor do I bear belly-tools fitted for kitchen or fire:
Nay; my perpetual yard of cypress perishing never
Rises for ever and aye worthy the Phidian hand.
You, O ye neighbours, I warn to adore me, holy Priapus,
And to these acres twice seven show ye the highest respect.
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.
Garden of Priapus - 45
Third Style fresco depicting Pan playing the flute accompanied by a nymph playing the lyre, from the House of Jason in Pompeii, Naples National Archaeological Museum
Pan or goat man and Nymphs - Pompeii fresco. Pan is nude and penis caged and deeply tan. The nymphs are clothed but one of them is playing a lyre which usually indicated a pathic or phallic woman ... Probably three Triabes ...
Any sex here is going to be be female on male mentule goat sex ... That's the source of that deep tan.
The reason Traibes did not do fellatio or oral sex on men is because most men were in the Fibula or penis cage
The Roman brothel "stews" where Triabes sodomized Roman men were probably partly water based - hence the imagery of water over a fire ... That's probably where classic witch cauldron imagery also comes from...
(March 14, 2021) The following verse is about just that subject - Witches!. Although that's a pure coincidence! I did not plan it that way ...
Priapus was a lower or "chthonic" god - those are always hypersexual and also snake related which is connected to the rising of the Kundalini - but is also black magic ... and contact with the land of the dead ...
The old witches in this verse come to a garden of Priapus that was built over an ancient paupers graveyard with blood from a black lamb to feed to the bones of the dead in the hope that the dead will speak and will predict the future and cast evil spells. - Priapus scares them off with a loud fart that shatters a piece of fig-wood.
One of the old witches is called Sagana - that's a name still used in Kenya - maybe she was a black Roman! There are verses from the Priapea featuring dark Moorish skin color.
There was a Roman prohibition on feeding blood sacrifices to the lower gods like Priapus and Pan - and maybe it had a concrete basis in reality ... - Many of the dead want to continue living through the living and will use force to do so! The blood of black sacrificial victims - usually animal, but sometimes human is said to be a filling meal for them ! - That's pure vampire mythology ... And also modern Voodoo mythology too ...
by Quintus Horatius Flaccus
Olim truncus eram ficulnus, inutile lignum,
cum faber, incertus scamnum faceretne Priapum,
maluit esse deum. deus inde ego, furum aviumque
maxima formido; nam fures dextra coercet
obscaenoque ruber porrectus ab inguine palus;
ast importunas volucres in vertice harundo
terret fixa vetatque novis considere in hortis.
Huc prius angustis eiecta cadavera cellis
conservus vili portanda locabat in arca;
hoc miserae plebi stabat commune sepulcrum,
Pantolabo scurrae Nomentanoque nepoti:
mille pedes in fronte, trecentos cippus in agrum
hic dabat, heredes monumentum ne sequeretur.
Nunc licet Esquiliis habitare salubribus atque
aggere in aprico spatiari, quo modo tristes
albis informem spectabant ossibus agrum;
cum mihi non tantum furesque feraeque, suetae
hunc vexare locum, curae sunt atque labori,
quantum carminibus quae versant atque venenis
humanos animos. Has nullo perdere possum
nec prohibere modo, simul ac vaga luna decorum
protulit os, quin ossa legant herbasque nocentis.
Vidi egomet nigra succinctam vadere palla
Canidiam pedibus nudis passoque capillo,
cum Sagana maiore ululantem. Pallor utrasque
fecerat horrendas aspectu. Scalpere terram
unguibus et pullam divellere mordicus agnam
coeperunt; cruor in fossam confusus, ut inde
manis elicerent animas responsa daturas.
Lanea et effigies erat altera cerea; maior
lanea, quae poenis compesceret inferiorem;
cerea suppliciter stabat servilibus, ut quae
iam peritura modis. Hecaten vocat altera, saevam
altera Tisiphonen; serpentes atque videres
infernas errare canes, Lunamque rubentem,
ne foret his testis, post magna latere sepulcra.
Mentior at si quid, merdis caput inquiner albis
corvorum, atque in me veniat mictum atque cacatum
Iulius et fragilis Pediatia furque Voranus.
Singula quid memorem,? quo pacto alterna loquentes
umbrae cum Sagana resonarint triste et acutum,
utque lupi barbam variae cum dente colubrae
abdiderint furtim terris, et imagine cerea
largior arserit ignis, et ut non testis inultus
horruerim voces Furiarum et facta duarum:
nam, displosa sonat quantum vesica, pepidi
diffissa nate ficus: at illae currere in urbem;
Canidiae dentis, altum Saganae caliendrum
excidere atque herbas atque incantata lacertis
vincula cum magno risuque iocoque videres.
First a wild-fig-tree trunk was I, not useful as timber,
When the mechanic in doubt anent making me stool or Priapus
Chose me for being a god; so a god to the thieves and the birdies
Direst of dreads I became, my right the robbers restraining,
Eke with a ruddy pole from parts obscenely projected,
While th' importunate fowls affrights a reed on my head-poll
Planted, and hinders their flock from 'lighting in newly made gardens.
Erst to be hither borne from narrow cellules ejected
Corpses by fellow-slaves were coffined in biers of the vilest.
This was the common yard to ensepulchre wretched plebeians,
Pantolabus the buffoon and Nomentanus the rake-hell.
Frontage a thousand feet, three hundred fieldwards, a land mark
Here assigned, lest the ground monumental follow the heir folk.
Now 'tis salubrious made: one fives in th' Esquiliae, also
Walks on the sunny mound, where erstwhile showed to folk sad-eyed
Fields by bones deformed a-glistening ghostly and ghastly;
Yet for me never was aught, or thieves or ferals accustomed
This foul spot to behaunt, a cause of such care and such trouble
As are the hags who by spells and poisons upset and envenom
Spirits and minds of mankind; these nowise bring to perdition
Nor even hinder can I; no sooner doth wandering Luna
Show her full face than bones and ill herbs they hasten to gather.
I with these eyes espied in sables kilted a-pacing
Canidia, nude-foot, long hair bestrewing her shoulders,
Howling with Sagana th' elder (and paleness had rendered the couple
Horrid of mien); anon both the ground with their talons
Clawing, and black-fleeced lamb with teeth a-tearing to tatters
Either began; its gore in a ditch was spillèd, so thereby
Ghosts might be raised from graves and answers give to their queries.
Images too there were, this of wool, that of wax, and the greater
Woollen that seemed with pains about to punish the lesser
Suppliant standing in wax as one foredoomèd to perish
After a servile way. One calls on Hecate, th' other
Summons fell Tisiphone; then mightest thou look upon serpents
Wriggling with Hell-sluts around, whilst Luna ruddily blushing
Hid her behind the tall tombs lest she these doings might witness.
Now if I false in aught be, my head bewrayed with white mutings
Dropt by the crows and hither repair to bepiss and conskite me
Julius, frail Pediatia and eke Voranus the robber.
Why should I mention all and each? how chattered alternate
With Sagana these ghosts, now sad-toned then in sharp treble.
How too the head of a wolf with fangs of variegate adder
Furtive they buried in earth, whereat for the waxen imago
Fiercelier flamed the fire and how (no unavenged witness!)
I was o'erwhelmed by the words and the deeds of these Furies well-coupled;
For that like bladder that bursts with a loud explosion I farted
From my cleft buttocks of fig. Hereat they ran to the city,
Canidia's false teeth with Sagana's towering hair-tour
Falling aground and herbs and magical armlets on forearms
Showed to beholder's sight with many a joke and much laughter.
Aforetimes I was the trunk of a wild fig tree, useless wood,[1] 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.[2] 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
[1. The wood of a fig tree was very little used, on account of its brittleness.
2. 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.]
nails, and a black ewe-lamb with their teeth to drag piecemeal; the blood in a ditch was poured that thence shades of the dead[1] might be raised, spirits to give them responses. And a woollen[2] effigy there was and another one waxen; the greater one wool which with punishments held in check the inferior. The waxen figure submissively stood as in servile mode now about to perish. On Hecate called this hag, on savage Tisiphone the other; and serpents might you behold roving with hell-begot bitches, and Luna, a-blushing lest her presence might witness these doings, behind the tall tomb stones did hide. But if I lie in aught, with white mutings of ravens may my head be befouled and on me to piss and to cack may come Julius and fragile Pediatia and Voranus the thief. Why should I set forth each thing? in what manner with alternate utterance these spectres with Sagana gave forth sounds both doleful and shrieking? And how the beard of a wolf with fangs of a speckled she-serpent they hid by stealth in the loam; and for the image of wax more greatly the flames burst up; and how, a witness not without strength to avenge, I was whelmed by the cries and the acts of the Furies twain? For, with sound like bursten bladder I farted, from cleft buttocks of fig-tree wood.[3] Whereat they scurried off to the city; Canidia's false teeth and Sagana's lofty head dress a-tumbling to the ground and the herbs and the bewitched bracelets on their arms with great laughter and joke might you see.
[1. Black victims alone were sacrificed to the infernal gods, nor was anything supposed more delicious to the souls of the departed than blood. They could not foretell any future events, or answer any questions, until they had drunk it. Ulysses was obliged to draw his sword, to frighten them away from the blood he had poured into the trench for Tiresias.
2. The image of wool represented the person they were willing should survive the other represented by that of wax. The images were made of different materials, that their fates might be different.
3. The heat made the wood crack with a noise which put the witches to flight.]
Garden of Priapus - 46
What probably happened to the tan pan with a caged penis from Pompeii - Boss lady sodomizing butterfly tattoo boy with his balls firmly in her hand.
Greeks called these hetairistriai as in the hetairistriai of Plato’s Symposium. Romans called them Tribade and there was an ancient belief that all Egyptian and Ethiopian women has enlarged clitorises ...
" ... Early constructions of tribadism, for example in ancient Greek society, linked the act to a masculinized woman who penetrated a woman or a man using a dildo, or who herself had an enlarged clitoris. Romans often attributed such behavior back to the Greeks, beginning a tradition that would construct the tribade as Other. In an epigram, the first-century-bce Latin poet Martial categorizes the courtesan Philaenis as "tribadum tribas" (famous among all tribades) and refers to her penetrating both females and males. ...
The question of the clitoris and its role in tribadism preoccupies medical texts. This is evident first through the 1573 treatise Des monstres et prodiges (On monsters and marvels) of French surgeon Ambroise Paré (1510–1590), and in English through, for example, Helkiah Crooke's Microcosmographia (1615), which stated that an enlarged clitoris would cause unnatural desires and designated those women as tribades. The anatomical feature that assimilated them to male-sexual practices (penetration), then, defined tribades. Unlike Egyptian and Ethiopian women who were cited as all having an enlarged clitoris, European women only rarely suffered from this disorder. ... " encyclopedia
To me that sounds about right! Greeks called that the Theban riddle ...
But it was not just Theban or Egyptian - Plato has a whole symposium on it, but stops short of actually describing what the hetairistriai did to men ...
To the Romans of the 1st century AD sex was the domain of the Triabe:
" ... The tribade emerges in two Latin texts, one mythical, one legal: Seneca the Elder’s Controversiae and Phaedrus’ Fabulae, which both appear in the first decades of the 1st cent. CE.
Children of a Drunken God: Phaedrus
Phaedrus’ Fabulae are short stories in verse, reminiscent of Aesop, connected to one another by overarching themes. One theme is the creation of mankind by Prometheus, and more precisely where that creation went wrong: The other asked why he (Prometheus) had created the tribades and the soft men [molles mares].
“That same Prometheus, who created people from clay,
Who were broken to pieces as soon as they met with ill fortune,
Having laboured all day separately creating the natural parts
That shame hides under clothing, so that he could fit them
To their bodies, was unexpectedly invited to dinner by Liber.
There he flooded his veins with much nectar and returned home late, unsteady on his feet. Then, his spirit half-asleep, drunken and clumsy, he put what belongs to girls [virginale] on the male sex [generi masculo] and the masculine members [masculina membra] on women [feminis]. Hence, nowadays, desire [libido] enjoys deformed [pravo] pleasure.” ... " The Tribadic Tradition: The Reception of an Ancient Discourse on Female Homosexuality by Thorsteinn Vilhjalmsson (2015)
My guess from fragments of from the Priapea and Christian condemnation of Roman Triabes is men were in an unremovable penis cage until 25 during which time they were exclusivly passive partners in anal sodomy - Anal sodomy by female Triabes mostly I would guess
" ... The Tribade in the Christian Tradition
The Tainted Cup: Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian
Though Paul the Apostle led the way for a number of Christian authors in condemning female homosexuality in his Letter to the Romans, neither he nor his immediate followers used the word tribade.
However, Christian author Clement of Alexandria (late 2nd – early 3rd cent. CE) comes close to the tribadic tropes in a passage of his Paedagogus. In a diatribe against the pagans’ “luxury that confounds nature”, in which “men suffer the womanly things, and women behave like men, so against nature women penetrate women and are penetrated by them.” This is “unspeakable” and “a spectacle”, a term also used by Ps.-Lucian.
Clement’s wording for tribadic sex, using the verb γαμ?ω in the active and passive is very rare. It had, however, been used in his contemporary Lucian’s True Stories, where he describes an all male society on the moon, in which males are penetrated until the age of 25 and thereafter become penetrators in turn. This is reminiscent of Greek pederastic practices, except that in
Lucian’s society, there are no women at all. ...
In the same period another early Christian writer, Tertullian, mentions tribades twice in passing, listing the pagan sinful to make a rhetorical point. Remarkably, he uses a Latin translation instead of the Greek word: frictrix, from frico, “to rub”. As will see, the astrological tome of Hermes Trismegistus used the closely related word fricatrix for tribade, likely in the same period. In a discussion of whether the body can be judged for its sins since it is just a vessel for the soul, Tertullian takes the analogy of a cup which has been “infected with the breath of a frictrix, a eunuch-priest [archigalli], a gladiator or a hangman”, maintaining that such a vessel is disgusting, just like the sinful body, vessel or no. Elsewhere he laments that high-class women’s dress cannot be told apart from that of prostitutes or frictrices.
Connecting tribades and prostitutes is a familiar tactic, likewise, astrology paralleled tribades and eunuchs. The gladiator and the hang-man are more novel, but they were both despised figures in ancient Rome; the presence of each, and by analogy that of the tribade, was a source of pollution. Both Clement and Tertullian use tribades to differentiate between the new Christian order and the old pagan one; they describe the tribade as belonging to the immoral, pagan other in their societies, a real and present danger as long as paganism survived. Accordingly, as Christian power grew, Christian writers shifted their representations of the tribade from the present to the dark pagan past ... " The Tribadic Tradition: The Reception of an Ancient Discourse on Female Homosexuality by Thorsteinn Vilhjalmsson (2015)
The Greek and Egyptian model was the hetairistriai - again the cause was the penis cage that was unremovable before 25 resulting in passive anal sex from phallic women for all Greek and Egyptian men :
" ... Egyptian Tales: Synesius of Cyrene
The Christian moral use of the tribade is evident in our next author. Around 400 CE,120 Synesius, an ambassador from Cyrene to the court of Emperor Arcadius in Constantinople, wrote an allegorical work called Egyptians; or, On Providence, which fictionalized the Constantinopolitan political intrigues that were bringing catastrophe upon the Eastern Roman Empire. In it, the mythical Egyptian brothers Typhos and Osiris contend for the throne of Egypt. Their characters are stark and simple: Osiris is the ideal ruler, Typhos a caricature of a tyrant.
Synesius reserves most of his venom, however, for Typhos’ scheming wife and her sexual proclivities, which involved, among other things, hetairistriai.
In translations of Synesius, this word has been
bowdlerized as “women of perverse morals” or oddly rendered as “whorish women”; if that is Synesius’ meaning, then he would be using the word without knowledge of its prior application thinking it merely a synonym for hetaira.
However, Synesius, though he became a Christian, was
educated as a Neoplatonist; he must have been quite familiar with the Symposium and its hetairistriai, who are manifestly not hetairai pure and simple.
Typhos’ unnamed wife was “ambitious to distinguish herself in the most contradictory ways”, being “more feminine than women in discovering yet another luxury, in adding to her beauty, and in surrendering to her nature”, yet “she was more reckless than men in applying herself to a scheme and in a daring enterprise .
This mixture culminates in Synesius’ claim that she had assembled women who were hetairistriai and male clients to enjoy their unanimity and use them according to her natural propensities at home or elsewhere.”
Her contradictions are visible in not only sleeping with both women and men but in taking the active role with both. After a setback in their plans for Typhos’ ascension to the throne, the couple build a luxurious water-garden with islands and hot baths to keep their minds off their ill-fortune, in which they
“could strip for one another among the women and mount them without restraint”. Whether these women are the same as the recently-mentioned hetairistriai is unclear; again, they are passive to the active sexual attentions of both Typhos and his wife.
Yet this life of luxury is not enough. Typhos’ wife hatches a scheme which earns her husband the kingship. He is uninterested in the daily affairs of the state, so the citizens must have recourse to his wife: “She held court quite openly, like a brothel, and used the hetairistriai as pimps or her body and her business… Whoever had intercourse with her found Typhos gracious - he was tame and submissive toward the women's quarters, especially since he was grateful for their having obtained his throne for him.”
Synesius contrasts images: The wife’s governance is public and shameless in its injustice and in its all-female character; a woman rules and women-oriented women carry out her business and service her body – though whether it is with their own bodies or those of others is unclear.
This open government is characterized as “the women’s quarters”, traditionally an enclosed space. The comparison has echoes of Ps.-Lucian: the women’s quarters have become like a public, perverse brothel, but here the brothel rules the land. ... "
***
" ... The Monstrous Enigma: Pseudo-Lucian
The Pseudo-Lucianic Loves (Amores), the date of which is debated, but placed somewhere between the end of the 2nd and the beginning of the 4th cent. CE, is another Platonic frame story in dialogue form. Its theme is the relative merit of the love of boys versus the love of women.
The Athenian Callicratidas advocates boys, the Corinthian Charicles women, in the style of Plato’s Laws.
These cities are not chosen at random: Athens was known for her pederasty; Corinth, as we have seen, for her female prostitutes. Tribadism turns up briefly in Charicles’ speech against boy-love: If men's sexual encounters with other men are good and proper, then let women also desire each other.
Well, now! You harbinger of a new era, you legislator of strange pleasures! Having thought up new ways for men's luxury, grant that same power to women, and let them have sex with each other like men do. Let them strap themselves with licentious, artificial organs – seedless, monstrous enigmas – and let them make love woman on woman, like men do!
Let that word which seldom reaches our ears - I am ashamed to utter it - the name of tribadic licentiousness be paraded freely around, let every one of our women's chambers become Philaenis, disfigured by androgynous desires. And how much better is it that a woman is forced into male luxury than that the nobility of males is made effeminate, made into a woman?
Charicles’ rhetorical flourishes paint tribadism as an utter abject, monstrous and mysterious, a threat to the integrity of the Greek home, whose secluded women’s chambers would turn into a page from a pornographic manual if the boy-lovers’ views would prevail.
All this is presented as an enforced, violent change from a natural state; a theme we will see again. If men become
passive and effeminate, then women will be forced to become masculine and active, creating their own, self-sufficient sexual society. If there is one author whom Ps.-Lucian has read in detail, it is the real Lucian, and his description of Megillus’ tribadic party is no doubt on his imitator’s mind when he spoke of androgynous desires” disfiguring the women’s chambers.
This degradation is exemplified by Philaenis the sex-manual writer, whom Martial had described as the epitome of the tribade, showing a continuity between the Latin and the Greek way of thinking about the tribadic tradition in the Greco-Roman world.
Unusually, however, Charicles is quite clear on what, in his mind, the tribadic method consists of: the use of strap-on dildos, already mentioned in Seneca’s court-case. These he describes with fantastical, gleeful disgust, stretching the rules of syntax and grammar to make his point; they are characterized in two apposite phrases, one decrying their artificial, man-made nature, the other their almost supernatural uncanniness. First, he calls them a τ?χνασμα, simultaneously implement, artefact” and “trick, artifice”, with an object genitive in ?ργ?νων, which are simultaneously “tools” and “organs” of the body; the dildos are trick penises, workshop genitals.
Secondly and more abstractly, he calls them an enigma worthy of a monster or a prodigy; this enigma, confusingly, takes the genitive adjective ?σπ?ρων, “seedless”, to which a noun must be supplied – the “organs” of the previous description.
Martial’s monstrous riddle was “how can there be adultery with no man present?” but Ps.-Lucian’s is “how can a penis emit no seed?” The answer, seemingly, is: because it is a monstrous hybrid, at once mythical and man-made.
Charicles seems, like Lucian in his Dialogue, to be satirizing the Platonic side-lining of male-female love for that of men and boys, a position implicit in his Athenian opponent’s stance: the
disfigurement of the women’s chambers is a consequence of sending the symbolic flute-girl off to play for the women within”.
These texts invoke an anxiety about the Greek world’s practice
of confining women in the house: what if, by confining them, the patriarchy is creating the very conditions it is attempting to prevent? Those conditions are brought about by the invasion into this private space of a book, Philaenis’ sex manual; by reading it, Ps.-Lucian seems to hint, women may become insatiable. Other sources on Philaenis present similar fears. If Megillus was right, and tribadic sex is really much more pleasurable than sex with men, then no house is safe: Women will immediately wish to turn to tribadism if they learn of its existence, through Philaenis’ book.
Did this book have a section on tribadism? There is no direct evidence; it is possible that Philaenis was exemplary for the tribade simply as a woman who publicly expressed herself about sex; a public persona of this kind was seen as a role for a man, an active role, and a woman with an active role when it came to sexual matters was perhaps automatically associated, in this period, with tribadism. ... " " The Tribadic Tradition: The Reception of an Ancient Discourse on Female Homosexuality by Thorsteinn Vilhjalmsson (2015)
***
Lucian of Samosata’s 5th Dialogue of the Courtesans c. 160 AD : A platonic discourse on sex between a Triabe and a surprised woman - the actual sex is not described however. My guess is this secrecy but also familiarity with Triabes came from direct experience of female on male sodomy in the Gardens of Priapus which were spread thoughout the Roman world.
For men in the penis cage rough anal sodomy under an athletic female Triabe was almost certainly a formative sexual encounter.
- That's the Theban riddle - Horus or Harpocrates was a Triabe or phallic woman ...
As was Aphrodite - who is invoked to keep the secret - The temple of Aphrodite employed prostitutes who like Triabes were phallic and required to act as men in her sexual rituals ...
" ... The Other Symposium: Lucian
Only one text from antiquity takes tribadism as its central theme and gives it a substantial treatment. This is Lucian of Samosata’s 5th Dialogue of the Courtesans (written c. 160 CE). These Dialogues are short, fictional talks about or between hetairai, mostly about topics dear to the also hetaira-centric New Comedy, such as pimps, jealousies, comic misunderstandings and love advice. However, the fifth Dialogue is very much the odd one out; it is the only one to explicitly discuss sex, and very transgressive sex at that: to use anachronistic terms, it is a threesome between a prostitute, another woman and her transgender, cross-dressing wife/husband, set in the form of a satire of Plato’s Symposium.
In the Platonic manner, it is a frame story: the hetaira Leaena is asked by her friend Clonarium about strange rumours to the effect that “Megilla, that rich woman from Lesbos, loves you like a man, and that you two have sex, doing God knows what to each other!”
Leaena admits this, but says she is “ashamed, because it’s not normal ”. Clonarium then immediately asks the question that Martial had refused to answer: “What is it that you do when you have sex ?” When Leaena falls silent, Clonarium gets passive-aggressive: “See? You don’t love me. If you did, you wouldn’t hide such things from me.” This prompts Leaena to offer a contrast: “I do love you, if I love any woman. But that woman is terribly manly.”
As was implicit in Aristophanes’ speech in the Symposium, there is a normal and an abnormal way for women to love women. Leaena’s feelings towards Clonarium are good and proper, but the masculinity of the rich Lesbian Megilla makes her love excessive and improper. Clonarium, well versed in Plato, picks up on this division immediately: “I don’t understand what you mean - unless it could be a hetairistria! They say that there are women like that in Lesbos, with manly faces who refuse to submit to men, but make love to women like they themselves were men.” Leaena agrees that it is “something like that”.
Here, Lucian creates a preliminary definition of the hetairistria, placing her in Lesbos, characterizing her as manly in character and aggressively active in her sexual behaviour. Except for the reference to Lesbos, which is novel, this agrees with the tribadic tropes already discussed. In this period, writers on Sappho started focusing more on her sexuality than her poetry; this could explain the Lesbian reference. Clonarium asks Leaena to tell the whole story, creating the dialogue’s second frame. Leaena explains that Megilla the Lesbian had organized a drinking party along with another woman, Demonassa of Corinth (a city known for its prostitutes). She is described as similarly rich and “of the same trade/art” as Megilla; what trade or art is meant is left to the reader’s imagination.
Leaena was taken along to play the cithara for the revellers, but when the party had ended, the drunken Megilla invited Leaena to sleep between her and Demonassa. Leaena related that they started to “kiss me like men, not just with the lips but with open mouths, and they put their arms around me and squeezed my breasts.” Demonassa even bit her between kisses. Her next remarks are difficult to translate - “I had no idea what to make of it” is the closest one comes: Literally, she was unable to make a comparison between what was happening and anything else she had experienced or heard about. The all-female threesome in foreplay was unprecedented both for her and indeed for ancient literature in general.
Then a shocking turnaround happens. Megilla takes off her wig, revealing a shaved athlete’s head, and asks Leaena whether she has ever seen “such a beautiful young man”. Leaena answers that she cannot see any young man anywhere, to which Megilla replies “Do not make a woman out of me, for my name is Megillus and I’ve been married to Demonassa here for ages – she’s my wife.”
The final word of the sentence comes as a shock. In the beginning of this passage, a variety of demonstratives, participles and pronouns in the feminine gender mark Megilla out as female. But when Megilla introduces herself as Megillus, all such markers disappear. Being a frame story, this revelation is framed by two instances of the verb of saying. Before the revelation, Megilla’s gender is marked by a feminine personal pronoun before the verb; after it, this verb stands alone without an expressed subject. The language of the passage refuses to contradict Megillus’ masculine identity. This has an extraordinary effect on the last word of the sentence, γυν?, which has the root meaning “woman”, but when used by a man and modified by a possessive pronoun, means wife.
As so often, the reaction to shock is laughter. Leaena is amused by Megillus’ words and starts to ask him a series of questions in a parody of the Socratic elenchus, trying to define him out of the ambiguity which he has created by using the Greek world’s common frame of reference, myth. “So, Megillus; you were fooling us and you were really some man all the time, in the same way as Achilles when he hid among the girls, and you have that thing that men have and you do Demonassa like men do?”, she asks. “No, Leaena”, he answers, “I do not have that. I don’t need it at all. You’ll see that I have a certain method of my own which is much more pleasant in love-making.” Leaena attempts another myth: “But you’re not a Hermaphroditus, like many people are said to be, having both parts ”? Megillus replies: “No; on the contrary, I’m all man .”
Leaena makes a final attempt, asking Megillus if he is like Tiresias, metamorphosed from one sex to the other by a god. Up until this point, the text has remained gender-ambiguous as regards Megillus, but in this answer, the tension breaks and the feminine gender wins out. “No, Leaena”, he says, “I was born the same as any other woman, such as yourself. However, my mind and desire and everything else belongs to a man.” Leaena cannot resist a joke: “And is that desire of yours big enough?” Megillus starts pleading: “Just give it a chance, Leaena, if you don’t believe me; you’ll soon know that there’s nothing lacking in me that men have; I have something instead of the male part . So give it a chance, you’ll see!”
Leaena is then careful to disclaim that she was not only begged but also paid for doing what Megillus wanted – in the end, Leaena was a hetaira and Megillus a client. Then “I threw my arms around her like I would around a man, and she did me and kissed me and breathed hard, and seemed to me to enjoy herself excessively” The gender ambiguity is utterly broken: All pronouns are in the feminine. The reader’s interest has reached a fever pitch, and accordingly Clonarium asks “What did she do Leaena? What was “the method” ? Please, please tell me!” But Leaena refuses to say any more: “Do not ask for any details – it’s shameful. By the heavenly Aphrodite, I won’t tell!” So ends the dialogue.
Demonassa disappears completely as soon as Megillus takes off his wig. In that moment, the sexual encounter changes from a three-woman threesome engaged in non-penetrative foreplay to two-partner tribade-tribomena sex, with penetration hinted at but left in doubt. Leaena describes the first part as unprecedented, but does not shy away from describing it in detail; the latter, however, she calls shameful and refuses divulge anything about it, leaving the reader to fill in the gaps and simultaneously assuming that the reader has a frame of reference with which to fill those gaps. That frame is the tribadic tradition, and this kind of playful reticence to divulge information is one of its hallmarks.
Of course, the word tribade is not used in the Dialogue, but rather the much older word hetairistria. Nevertheless, it is clear that the cultural image of the tribade saturates Lucian’s characterization of Megilla/Megillus. In the same period, as we shall see, Ptolemy the astrologer talked about hidden and public tribades; Megilla/Megillus plays both roles, passing as a woman at first but later “shows off her conquest” – Demonassa – “as if she were her lawful wife”, to use Ptolemy’s formulation. The masculine character arrogated by Megillus fits in well with Seneca’s “would-be man” and Martial’s Philaenis, who outdoes men in their stereotypical pursuits. Like Philaenis, Megillus is said to resemble an athlete. Megillus is certainly performing what the astrologers, discussing tribades, called “the acts of men” in seducing, paying and making love to Leaena, and the connections between tribades and prostitutes fits in well with our astrological sources as well. Finally, lexicographers had already or were shortly about to publish works claiming the tribade and the hetairistria to be synonymous, and later readers of Lucian took Megillus as a tribade.
Yet Lucian goes further than any previous source, teasingly almost bringing the reader to a definition of tribadism through the method of elimination. The tribade, according to Lucian, is neither a transvestite (like Achilles) nor a hermaphrodite (like Hermaphroditus) nor a metamorphosis (like Tiresias). She is something else: Physically a woman born with the desires and mind of a man, with a sexual method all her own – but right at the moment when this method is about to be revealed, Lucian pulls back. It is a model of successful pornographic writing, and the tribade’s sexual method – her riddle – is the perfect pornographic object. It is purposefully never quite uncovered; the reader is to excitingly look for it, but, always maintaining the sexual tension, never quite find it.
Boehringer has argued that Lucian’s goals are much more ambitious than just repeating the tribadic tropes we have seen in other authors. His account is much more playful, artful and complex than anything that we have hitherto seen or will see hereafter in this research. This, however, does not mean that the Dialogue has nothing to do with the tribade, as Boehringer has implied. In playing with the tribadic tradition, Lucian gives us the most interesting version of it that has survived into our age. He pokes fun not only at the image of the tribades but of his contemporary readers who are insatiably curious about them, reflected in Clonarium’s frantic, erotic questioning of Leaena.
As if to continue Lucian’s joke, modern scholars are mirrored in Clonarium: they have long attempted, as with Bassa’s “monstrous lust”, to guess precisely what Leaena refused to tell her: the details of the tribadic method. Brooten takes Megillus’ reference to his “mind and desires of a man” as the heart of the matter and argues that “for Lucian sexual love between women does not originate from women’s having male genitals. For Lucian, the mind seems to be the most powerful sex organ”. Against Brooten, Winkler confidently claims that the method was the use of a strap-on dildo; Gilhuly suggests the phallic, hypertrophied clitoris which later ages took to be the tribade’s defining feature. Younger, seemingly basing his argument on a translation, claims that Leaina referred to the sex acts as “unspeakable” which “always alluded to oral sex (since it stopped one from talking)”, and goes on to suggest that “Lucian is making a joke: Megilla's penis-substitute is her tongue, and the sex was cunnilingus, which was always characterized in the ancient world as "shameful.” In fact, Leaina called it α?σχρ?, “shameful”, but used no Greek word that means “unspeakable”, and it is quite bold, if amusing, to claim that “unspeakable” always suggests oral sex. In short, scholars have tended to focus on Megillus’ crotch.
In fact, Lucian pokes fun at this tendency. Leaena’s refusal to divulge the secret of the tribade is accompanied by an invocation of the Heavenly Aphrodite. As Blondell and Boehringer point out, this references Pausanias’ speech in Plato’s Symposium, where he differentiates between the Heavenly (Uranian) and the Common (Pandemian) loves; the former non-physical and philosophical, the latter carnal and simple. The invocation serves to remind the reader, burning with a decidedly Pandemian desire to uncover the tribadic method, that according to stern Plato he should lay all such things aside.
Lucian’s satire of the Symposium does not stop there. Plato’s symposiasts had hired a flute- player, who was often a prostitute as well, but decide, in the spirit of their celebration of love between males, to send her off “to play the flutes to herself or the women within”. Leaena is also a musician-hetaira; perhaps Lucian imagined his Dialogue as exploring the full consequences of the symposiasts’ decision. If men renounce the love of women for that of boys or the Beautiful and send all the courtesans to the women’s chambers, what would happen? Perhaps Lucian hints that while philosophers discuss Heavenly Love in the men’s room, there could be a tribadic orgy taking place in the women’s quarters.
Finally, Megillus identifies himself as a “beautiful young man”; as such, he should represent the passive, sought-after boy of Plato’s symposiasts. Instead, he is an active seducer, a satirical inversion of the Platonic world-view. However, the influences of New Comedy are also important here; in Menander, the typical protagonist is also a young man seeking, tricking or raping women, especially hetairai. To top off the Platonic connection, Megillus’ name is the same as that of the Spartan in Plato’s Laws, which also discusses female homosexuality. In this context, Lucian’s choice of the word hetairistria over tribade is yet another wink at the ancient author he is satirizing. Lucian was also a consummate Atticist; he may simply have felt that the word tribade was vulgar and beneath him. If Lucian did not see these two words as synonyms, it is possible that his Dialogue is in itself a kind of aetiological myth explaining Plato’s hetairistriai on the basis of the etymology of their name, similar to my own excursus above: Megillus the hetairistria indeed “associates with courtesans” and even pays one for her favour.
It seems curious that Lucian does not render any direct judgment on tribadism, compared to the vitriol directed against it in most of our other sources. However, there are hints at a characterization of tribadism as dangerous: Leaena describes Megillus’ excessive pleasure in the sexual act, and Megillus himself boasts of his method being “much more pleasant” than anything men can offer. This reminds the reader of the myth of Tiresias, mentioned in the Dialogue, who had spent time as both a man and a woman and so was asked by Zeus and Hera which gender had the greater enjoyment of sex. Tiresias answered that women enjoyed it much more than men and was consequently blinded by Hera and given the gift of foresight by Zeus. The anxiety that tribadic sex could actually be preferable to sex with a man, that men cannot compete with women in the field of sexual performance, and that women would become sexually autonomous if they could, is humorously stoked by Lucian.
This short dialogue would become one of the most important links in the tribade’s reception chain. A blueprint for the literary genre of “lesbian” pornography, it would become one of the prime sources for the pornographic tribade in the ancient and the Early Modern worlds. ... " " The Tribadic Tradition: The Reception of an Ancient Discourse on Female Homosexuality by Thorsteinn Vilhjalmsson (2015)
Garden of Priapus - 47
200 AD Roman Septimius Severus Ithyphallic Priapus coin
"MOESIA INFERIOR, Nicopolis ad Istrum. Septimius Severus. AD 193-211. Æ Assarion (18mm, 3.83 g, 2h). AV KAI CE CEVHPOC, laureate head right / NIKOPOLI TWN PROC IC, ithyphallic Priapus standing left, pointing downward with right hand at his characteristic attribute, left hand on hip. AMNG I 1380; SNG München -; Mouchmov 987; Varbanov 1789. EF, dark green patina." cngcoins
- My intuition is that is a female Triabe with an erect penis/mentule - or Priapus inhabiting a woman's body. The converse would be Roman catamites and eunuch-priests or archigalli - Men and boys who were sodomized by phallic women.
Septimius Severus was from North Africa and had a dark tan - maybe African skin, but more likely from life-long application of the penis cage.
In this verse we are introduced to the ruddy or red protector of "our gardens" The red mentule or penis of Priapus was detachable and inserted with the right hand in the rectums of men violating the garden of Priapus.
Since only women were allowed in the garden of Priapus that right hand was attached to a woman!
The Epigrams: To the Reader
Carminis incompti lusus lecture procaces,
conveniens Latio pone supercilium.
non soror hoc habitat Phoebi, non Vesta sacello,
nec quae de patrio vertice nata dea est,
sed ruber hortorum custos, membrosior aequo,
qui tectum nullis vestibus inguen habet.
aut igitur tunicam parti praetende tegendae,
aut quibus hanc oculis adspicis, ista lege.
Thou, who be ready to read these cultureless sallies of singing,
Lower awhile yon brow suiting the Latian pride:
Here in this fane dwells not or Phoebus' sister or Vesta,
Neither the deity sprung forth of the patrial poll;
But the red guard of our garths, with organ grosser than rightful
Aye of his privities nude, guiltless of covering gear.
So with thy tunic hide what part is made to be hidden,
Or with what eyes see the parts deign these my lines to peruse.
Do thou, who art about to read these wanton sallies of careless verse, lay aside the brow befitting Latium.[1] Not Phoebus's sister, not Vesta in her sanctuary, nor that Goddess sprung from her father's brain,[2] dwells here: but the ruddy Protector of our Gardens, larger membered than is usual, and who has his groin covered by no garment. Therefore, either spread thy tunic over that part which 'tis meet to conceal; or with the same eyes that thou lookest upon it, peruse these.
[1. The poet commemorates the three goddesses, Diana, Vesta and Minerva, whose perpetual virginity knew no man. 'Callimachus, in a Hymn to this Goddess [Diana], represents her as asking Jove for perpetual chastity and many names; attributes which seem rather discordant to us, who are taught to esteem a number of aliases as not connected with any virtue. However, she thought the distinction of value, for she preserved it more carefully than Jove's other gift. Minerva is, I believe, of all heathen goddesses the only one of quite unimpeached chastity, except the Furies.'--The Poems of Caius Valerius Catullus, trans. George Lamb, 1821.
2. It has been thought that the penis of Priapus was reddened by its exposure to the weather, and its normal condition of rigid tension. This is not so. It was painted red. Pliny has a curious passage on the custom practised by the early Romans of adorning the faces of their gods, and even the bodies of their triumphant generals, triumphantumque corpora, with red paint. Camillus, he says, followed that fashion when he triumphed. The Hindus use vermilion extensively in painting their gods.]
Garden of Priapus - 48
Sardax: Amazon in black forcing a kneeing and nude man in a dog collar to lick the clitoris of a giant woman or goddess
Irrumation - punishment for older bearded men in the garden of Priapus. That's evidence that women controlled the Gardens of Priapus. And the high priest of the cult was always female.
Younger men and boys were anally sodomized in the garden with the Mentule.
Mentule probably derives from mental or psychic female phallus - a dream reality though at the more basic "chthonic" layers of the psyche.
Egyptian and Ethiopian women were said to have large clitorises. Those are routinely cut off today though in large parts of Africa - both muslim and christian. - Irrumation is a long forgotten "luxury" of African women!
In this verse a young girl giggles uncontrollably on being exposed to the crude erect wooden phallus of Priapus in the garden
- Tribades do not form naturally - like the Vestals a long growth period was required and money too - Tribades were always from the upper classes ...
Insulsissima quid puella rides?
non me Praxiteles Scopasve fecit,
nec sum Phidiaca manu politus;
sed lignum rude vilicus dolavit,
et dixit mihi: 'tu Priapus esto'.
spectas me tamen et subinde rides?
nimirum tibi salsa res videtur
adstans inguinibus columna nostris.
Why laugh such laughter, O most silly maid?
My form Praxiteles nor Scopas hewed;
To me no Phidian handwork finish gave;
But me a bailiff hacked from shapeless log,
And quoth my maker, 'Thou Priapus be!'
Yet on me gazing forthright gigglest thou
And holdest funny matter to deride
The pillar perking from the groin of me.
Why, most foolish girl, do you laugh? Neither Praxiteles[1] nor Scopas[2] has given me shape, nor have I been perfected by the hand of Phidias;[3] but a bailiff carved me from a shapeless log, and said to me, 'You are Priapus!'[4] Yet you gaze at me, and laugh repeatedly. Doubtless it seems to you a droll thing--the 'column' standing upright from my groin.
[1. Praxiteles, according to Pliny, lived in the time of Pompeius: his statue of Venus was very famous.
2. Scopas was a celebrated sculptor in marble and carved in relief on the Mausoleum.
3. Phidias was a renowned ivory sculptor.
4. The statue was so badly carved that the sculptor had to explain what his work was intended to represent.]
Garden of Priapus - 49
Nude woman and basket full of large dildos or Mentules Archaeological Museum of Syracuse
Attic red figure amphora, Myson Painter, 480-475 BC.
Attic Greek lust was like Roman lust - female not male.
My guess is "phallic" monuments like the Obelisks are female phalli, not male ... Egyptians like Romans associated the erect phallus with women not men - the Mentule ....
- The dildos are erect but still "locked" - that's a sign of Priapus - the penis cage or Fibula prevents full erection. That's also the cause of the female lust ! And also points to female on male anal sex ...
In this verse Apples are offered to Priapus by a person who has lost his wealth. Meaning unclear, but apples in sexual terms meant balls - In other words he is offering himself for sexual uses in the garden
The "sacred way" is probably code for his penis being caged by a female member of the Priapus cult. There are examples of this from ancient Egypt although they are labelled as circumcision ceremonies - older women present at the caging of the young penis ...
Copia me perdit: tu suffragare rogatus
indicio nec me prode, Priape, tuo,
quaeque tibi posui tamquam vernacula poma,
de sacra nulli dixeris esse via.
Wealth is my loss! Do thou vouchsafe lend aid to my prayer,
Nor, by thy signal shown, me, O Priapus, betray:
Whatso before thee I laid, of home-grown apples the firstlings,
(Prithee, be pleased not to tell!) from Via Sacra be ta'en.
All my wealth have I lost; be propitious when I ask thee, nor betray me, Priapus, by word or deed. Tell it to none, that these home-grown apples, which I have placed on thy altar, are from the Sacred Way.[1]
[1. Cheaply purchased in the market: not grown in the donor's orchard. The Via Sacra was a market street in Rome, in the fourth region leading from the Forum to the Capitol. The sense of this epigram is somewhat obscure. Priapus's master, who has suffered reverses, is making an offering to the god, and wishes Priapus to keep up the deception apropos his wealth by concealing from enquirers that the offering of fruit was not from the orchard of the giver, but purchased in the public market.]
Garden of Priapus - 50
Dmitrys: An athletic cat lady with a large phallus as she finishes ejaculating on a young man she has just been anally sodomizing.
Probably a Tribade as Sehkmet-Min being pacified by a Greek Egyptian !
An ancient struggle between Athens and her man on boy lust and Corinth with her Tribade on boy and woman lust was won by Athens - The Catholic church inherited the man on boy anal sex tradition while the Tribade on boy or woman sex tradition - or Garden of Priapus cult, has gone extinct!
" ... The Monstrous Enigma: Pseudo-Lucian
The Pseudo-Lucianic Loves (Amores), the date of which is debated, but placed somewhere between the end of the 2nd and the beginning of the 4th cent. CE, is another Platonic frame story in dialogue form. Its theme is the relative merit of the love of boys versus the love of women.
The Athenian Callicratidas advocates boys, the Corinthian Charicles women, in the style of Plato’s Laws.
These cities are not chosen at random: Athens was known for her pederasty; Corinth, as we have seen, for her female prostitutes. Tribadism turns up briefly in Charicles’ speech against boy-love: If men's sexual encounters with other men are good and proper, then let women also desire each other. ... "
" ... Well, now! You harbinger of a new era, you legislator of strange pleasures! Having thought up new ways for men's luxury, grant that same power to women, and let them have sex with each other like men do. Let them strap themselves with licentious, artificial organs – seedless, monstrous enigmas – and let them make love woman on woman, like men do!
Let that word which seldom reaches our ears - I am ashamed to utter it - the name of tribadic licentiousness be paraded freely around, let every one of our women's chambers become Philaenis, disfigured by androgynous desires. And how much better is it that a woman is forced into male luxury than that the nobility of males is made effeminate, made into a woman? ... "Charicles, Pseudo-Lucianic Loves (Amores) c 300 AD
... "
The Tribadic Tradition: The Reception of an Ancient Discourse on Female Homosexuality by Thorsteinn Vilhjalmsson (2015)
In this verse robbers in the garden of Priapus are informed of their punishments: for women vaginal sex, for boys anal sex and for men irrumation or oral sex
Femina si furtum faciet mihi virve puerve,
haec cunnum, caput hic praebeat, ille nates.
An fro' me woman shall thieve or plunder me man or a man-child,
She shall pay me with coynte, that with his mouth, this with arse.
If a woman, man, or boy, thieve from me, let her coynte, his mouth, the latter's buttocks, be submitted [to my mentule].
Garden of Priapus - 51
Bearded Greek sodomizing a penis caged Greek youth. (Until 25 all upper class Greeks and Romans were penis caged and restricted to passive anal sex)
That's the shocking truth of ancient Athens - access to the lower or "chthonic" gods was homosexual ... Pan, Priapus and the Kundalini or serpent energy have become the Christian satan!
But as seen above - there was another stream or access to the chthonic or "lower" earth worlds of eros in ancient Rome and Greece - The phallic female Triabes sodomizing penis caged Greek and Roman male youths.
Garden of Priapus - 52
- "Statue of Priapus from the House of the Vettii (VI, 15, 1), Pompeii. Luna marble, 1st cent. A.D. This statue, with others, formed a fountain, placed in the garden of the house. You can see the hole made for the water pipe, which traversed the phallus."
Priapus with a caged semi-erect phallus - Pompeii. The cult of Priapus was not homosexual - there is a verse above where Priapus fails to produce an erection for a man trying to sodomize a golden boy. The caged phallus was designed to stimulate formation of the mentule or female phallus not the male erection - Priapus was erect but impotent all at once!
Man-boy love was problematic in Rome - little boys were given rings to ward off men trying to sodomize them. The Priapus cult probably formed as a result of women trying to prevent men raping their boys ...
In this verse: wax apples to real apples - maybe a prayer for real balls - or a fruitful ass for sportive girls to mount anally!
Laetus Aristagoras natis bene vilicus uvis
de cera facili dat tibi poma, deus.
at tu sacrati contentus imagine pomi
fac veros fructus ille, Priape, ferat.
Bailiff Aristagoras of his grapes high-pedigree'd boasting
Apples moulded in wax giveth, O Godhead, to thee:
But thou, pleased with the fruit in effigy placed on thine altar,
Genuine 'fruit' vouchsafe he, O Priapus! shall bear.
The steward Aristagoras, rejoicing in his promising grapes, offers to thee, O God, apples formed from wax. Do thou, O Priapus, contented with the semblance of a votive apple, cause him to bear genuine fruit.[1]
Garden of Priapus - 53
"A woman with a dildo. Red figure amphora attributed to the Flying-Angel Painter c. 490 BC; City of Paris Museum of Fine Arts"
Nude pathic Greek matron with a large dildo or Mentule in her right hand. In the Priapea that's the hand that inserts the Mentule into the rectums of male violators of the garden of Priapus ...
The other sexual side of Attic Greece that we do not see - The Amazon Triabes that sodomized boys ... Maybe penis caged Greek and Roman boys were asked to choose who would mount them anally ...
Athens changed the model - they introduced the male sexing male "Aryans" to the world stage - before this in Minoan Crete and Egypt and most of the rest of the ancient world eros was the domain of the phallic Amazons ...
In this verse repeat robbers in the garden of Priapus are assured of being irrumated - or forced to give oral sex on the Triabe "watchmen" of the garden
Nolite omnia, quae loquor, putare
per lusum mihi per iocumque dici.
deprensos ego ter quaterque fures
omnes, ne dubitetis, irrumabo.
Refrain from deeming all my sayings be
In sport bespoken for mine own disport;
Thieves taken thrice or four times in the fact
(Believe my word) I'll surely irrumate.
Think not that everything I say is spoken in jest and for my own amusement. That ye may not be in doubt, I tell ye this, that all thieves who are often caught I shall irrumate
***
Again: In the Satryion Priapus acts through a priestess, not a priest, who he appears to in her dreams. By strapping on a Mentule the priestess of Priapus becomes Priapus
" ... As a priestess of Priapus in Cumae, Quartilla has been identified as a parody of Aeneid’s Sibyl . Scholars have noted the links between theatrical performance and the episode’s sexual content but the ritual framework of the pervigilium Priapi within which the episode unfolds has not been examined. I argue that Quartilla’s religious identity is an empowering force, enabling and abetting the destruction of male sexual agency and potency.
Despite the fragmentary nature of the episode, ritualistic elements abound and attest to the importance of the Priapic religious framework for its satirical impact. The episode begins with Quartilla’s servant addressing Encolpius and his companions by employing language properly belonging to the realm of ritual and ends with a hieros gamos between Pannychis and Giton. Quartilla’s identity as a priestess of Priapus enables her to take Priapic vengeance on Encolpius and his company, who intruded into the gods’ secret rites.
Priapus’ symbolic penetration by Encolpius is reflected in Quartilla’s initial representation as a helpless woman, which is conveyed in ritual terms as a supplication. Other important elements that intensify the ritual framework of the narrative are: the priestess’ special relationship with the
god, who appears to her in dreams; the employment of the word cella to describe the room where the pervigilium takes place, a term which could also refer to a temple; the cymbals
Quartilla’s female musicians employ at the banquet, typically used in Bacchus’ and Cybele’s rites. The distorted wedding ceremony between Giton and Pannychis with its mockery of ritual protocol forms an apt ending to the ritual context of the pervigilium.
Quartilla, cast as a ritual agent of the phallic god, is thus rendered capable of repeatedly causing the sexual penetration of the men during the pervigilium. Yet, as other scholars have
noted, the penetrators are women, a cinaedus, and possibly a eunuch, all unlikely Priapic agents
The female or feminized figures thus assume the male role of the sexual aggressor and penetrator of the male heroes. In turn, Encolpius and Ascyltos are feminized, robbed of their capacity to operate as sexual agents and thus of the constitutive performance of their male identity. ... "
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