Talk:Priapus

Greek versus Roman attitudes

Perhaps it should be worth mentioning that Priapus was treated with much less respect in Rome than he was treated with in Greece? - Frank Keizer —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.142.33.102 (talk) 21:40, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Satyricon

Would it be possible for someone to add something to this article about the portrayal of Priapus and his priests in the Satyricon? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.15.127.254 (talk) 20:21, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Seems like sources need to be cited on this. -JH —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.106.254.170 (talk) 00:11, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

In The Ancient World

I find it hard to believe that the ancient Romans would prefer small penises on men. I'd love to see some citations on this.

I can see that they represented warriors, etc. with flaccid penises but had they preferred smaller penises on men, surely they would have scuplted guys with small (but obviously erect) penises? As I said, I'd love to see some citations on this.

I'm not even sure that "straight women" really care much either way about the size of men's genitalia but once again, it'd be cool to see some citations on this. (And anyway... straight women? What? ALL of them? Which country or society are we talking about?) Vince In Milan 03:27, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Personal essay "Modern confusion and ancient meaning"

I'm quite sure that if I had written this essay on the "ancient colorization [sic] of Priapus", it would have elicited reproaches of original "research" and demands for citations. Is it the amateurish character that makes this excursus on penis size and gods who can't get a date so reassuringly familiar and acceptable? --Wetman 11:40, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Categorization

Would it be appropriate to move this article from Category:Sexuality in the classical world to its newly created subcat Category:Ancient Greek eros? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 23:55, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

herm -> herma

I'm changing herm, which links to the island, to herma, which links to the marker. I'm pretty sure that's the right place for it to go.. herma is a variant spelling of herm and I'm going with how the articles are named. Perel 03:55, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Mutinus, Mutunus, or Tutinus but not Priapus

I'm not a scholar on ancient Greek mythology, but I have done a lot of reading on it lately. It seems to me that there's a pretty clear differentiation between Mutunus (however you care to spell it) and Priapus, at least in early mythology. Mutunus was a god of fertility, sought by new brides or childless wives; Priapus a protector and sometimes a humorous exaggeration. The best I can find are secondary sources (http://www.albany.edu/faculty/lr618/1mut.html for instance), so maybe those sources are wrong. But it does seem like Mutunus should at least get a short page of his own. Revdrace 08:18, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Depictions

Under the Depictions subsection, the following translation of an epigram is provided:

"I warn you, my lad, you will be sodomised; you, my girl, I shall futter; for the thief who is bearded, a third punishment remains."

No source is identified for the above quote, and I'm questioning the word "futter," since I can't find a definition or even a listing for such a word. Among other sources, I searched via the Oxford English Dictionary and the closest word I found was regarding "futter" as the early spelling representing the pronunciation of Maori whata, a food-store raised on posts.

The Maori word makes no sense in this context, at all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Neddy merrill (talk • contribs) 00:33, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

"Futter" is apparently a coining of Sir Richard Francis Burton, deriving from the Latin word "futuere", "to fuck". Presumably it was a bowdlerisation of the true meaning of the word. At any rate, I've replaced the existing unsourced quotation with a translation from a modern source, along with the original Latin. -- ChrisO 01:02, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Redundancy

The story of Lotis is written twice. These should be merged! Honkahonkin' hootie hoo, here's some animé for you! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.150.43.97 (talk) 18:55, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Garden gnome?

Based on the statuette it would seem obvious that he is the ancestor of modern day garden gnomes. That is, if there's any documentation about him being placed in gardens for ornamentation or superstitious reasons. Wormwoodpoppies (talk) 20:10, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

The resemblance is striking indeed. Judging from the image description however, it is not even certain that the statuette is in fact a depiction of Priapus. I have seen quite a lot of images of similar hooded Gallo-roman statuettes that are commonly believed to depict the Genius cucullatus (who is also associated with fertility/shown with oversized phallus, reference: http://books.google.co.jp/books?id=K6wOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA185&dq=Genii+Cucullati+phallus&hl=nl&ei=W0XmTYrqBoiaOoaP8dgJ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Genii%20Cucullati%20phallus&f=false ), or sometimes Telesphorus. Can anyone confirm this, or explain why it is in fact more likely to be a statuette of Priapus? Timusuke (talk) 14:01, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

All that I can find is the description from the museum that holds the artifact itself:

Priape, dit de Rivery, 2e. moitié du 1er. siècle après J.C. Musée de Picardie, Amiens.

I don't get it

Sometimes the article says that he's impotent, while other times it says he always had an erection. I don't get it which one is it???--The REAL Teol (talk) 01:50, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Ah well, that was the curse of Priapus. He always had an erection but he lost it every time he actually tried to have sex... -- ChrisO (talk) 01:53, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Then the article should say that! Right now it's confusing. --NickDupree (talk) 20:42, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely. This is a real point of confusion in the actual article. I'd try to fix it, but I don't know enough about it to avoid getting it right. The explanation given here is crucial and would be very helpful at the top of the real article. Tojasonharris (talk) 08:30, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

This is still really unclear in the article. Four years later. Why is Priapus a symbol of sex and fertility? The myth, as written here, says he could never sex because he was impotent. Surely then he should be the symbol of impotence. Anna (talk) 16:02, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Wordplay

Also, I'd like to commend whoever wrote this article for this sentence, "He was best noted for his huge, permanent erection, which gave rise to the medical term priapism." The play on words has not gone unnoticed. --Chili  — [Unsigned comment added by Nofxrasta (talk • contribs) 04:40, 24 April 2010 (UTC).]

Article Needs Moderator Attention

This sentence seems unlikely, at best:

I find no supporting docs on the net Hogwaump (talk) 05:53, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Hoax, of course. It's gone now. -- ChrisO (talk) 07:45, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

I took the liberty of deleting the sentence: "His Roman equivalent was Biggus Dickus. " —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.47.199.115 (talk) 06:04, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I suspect vandalism of the translations in the "Depictions" section. 67.142.172.22 (talk) 15:01, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

He is from roma

lol, he is italian hero, in karabiga the talented youth only into classic arts especially girit or yörük backround youth until midages before being busy muslim and dads moms — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.47.137.126 (talk) 20:15, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

this source seems questionable at best

In Greece, the phallus was thought of to have a mind of its own, animal-like, separate from the mind and control of the man.

It quotes some

Csapo, Eric. 1997. "Riding the Phallus for Dionysus: Iconology, Ritual, and Gender-Role De/Construction." Phoenix 51.3/4: 260.

That doesn't look as a serious source but as a some bullshit book, I would like to see actual *ancient* source that greeks thought that the phallus had 'a mind of its own', not from second/third hands in the interpretation of modern 'scholars'.

Also I delete this line

Represented in its erect form, the phallus was present in almost every aspect of daily life, reaffirming the male-dominant state of affairs in its overt presence.

from some

Keuls, Eva C. 1985. The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens. University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles: 4-5.

It sounds both gender-biased and not related to Priapus.217.118.64.57 (talk) 02:03, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Lanercost Chronicle

That statue was surely the Germanic God Freyr (Ing) rather than the Greek Priapus? They were depicted similarly, and shared an association with agriculture and fertility. "Priapus" here is just the Latin "translation". Walshie79 (talk) 01:59, 21 January 2017 (UTC)