Priapus

Priapus was a minor god of gardens, vineyards and flocks, shown as a rustic figure with an erect phallus. His chief cult was at Lampsacus on the Hellespont, and later poets treat him as the guardian of gardens against thieves and birds. Strabo calls him a late addition to the Greek gods.

Priapus’ Family

The usual answer is that Priapus was the son of Dionysus and Aphrodite. Diodorus says that the ancients related this in their myths, and gives a reason: men who have been drinking find their bodies inclined to the pleasures of love (Diodorus Siculus 4.6.1). Pausanias says the people of Lampsacus revere him above any other god and call him a son of Dionysus and Aphrodite (Pausanias 9.31.2). In Lucian, Dionysus himself says that Priapus is his son, and that Hermaphroditus was the son of Hermes, with Eros another son of Aphrodite (Lucian, Dialogues of the Gods 23). Strabo reports a variant in which he is the son of Dionysus and a nymph (Strabo 13.1.12). Diodorus also reports that some writers use the name Priapus for the male sex organ itself, and that the Egyptians connected his honors with the myth of Osiris, whose phallus Isis could not recover and set up to be worshipped (Diodorus Siculus 4.6.2–3).

A Late Local God

Strabo says that Priapus was made a god by people of later times, since even Hesiod does not know him, and that he resembles the Attic deities Orthanes, Conisalus and Tychon (Strabo 13.1.12). The city of Priapus on the Propontis was named after him. His worship there was said to have come from Orneae near Corinth, or else the people took him up because he was called the son of Dionysus and a nymph, and their country, like that of Parium and Lampsacus nearby, was rich in vines. Strabo also says that Orneae had a temple of Priapus that was held in honor (Strabo 8.6.24). Diodorus adds that he was also called Ithyphallus and Tychon (Diodorus Siculus 4.6.4). Lucian mentions a Bithynian tale in which Priapus was a warlike spirit who took the young Ares from Hera and taught him to dance in armor before teaching him to fight (Lucian, On the Dance 21).

Guardian of Gardens and Flocks

Pausanias writes that Priapus is worshipped where goats and sheep pasture or where bees swarm (Pausanias 9.31.2). According to Diodorus, men set up his statue throughout the countryside to watch over their vineyards and gardens, and he was thought to punish anyone who cast a spell on something fair that another man owned. He also received honor, with laughter and sport, in the sacrifices of Dionysus and of other gods (Diodorus Siculus 4.6.4). Virgil calls him the guardian of a poor man’s garden, to whom a bowl of milk and cakes are due each year (Eclogues 7.33–34), and the lord of the Hellespont who protects gardens from thieves and birds with a willow-wood scythe (Georgics 4.109–111). Ovid calls him the red god of gardens and their protector (Fasti 1.415, 6.333).

Priapus and the Nymph Lotis

In Ovid’s Fasti, Priapus joins a feast of Bacchus, with Silenus and the satyrs and nymphs, and falls in love with the nymph Lotis, who scorns him. At night, when everyone is asleep from wine, he creeps up to her and has almost reached her when the ass on which Silenus had ridden brays out of time. The nymph wakes and pushes Priapus off, and the whole grove is roused. The ass was killed for the noise, which Ovid gives as the reason it is a sacrifice to the god of the Hellespont (Fasti 1.391–440). In another tale in the Metamorphoses, Lotis fled from the lust of Priapus and was changed into a lotus tree, keeping her name (Ovid, Metamorphoses 9.347–348).

Priapus and Vesta

Ovid tells a similar story about Vesta (Hestia). At a feast of Cybele on Mount Ida, with Silenus, satyrs and nymphs, Vesta lay down to sleep. Priapus, going from nymph to nymph and goddess to goddess, saw her and could not tell whether she was a nymph, and crept toward her. Silenus’ ass brayed at the wrong moment, the goddess woke in fright, and Priapus escaped from the angry crowd. Ovid says the people of Lampsacus sacrifice an ass to Priapus because of this, and that in Rome the ass is honored with a collar of bread at the Vestalia (Fasti 6.319–348).

Priapus Sources

Diodorus Siculus 4.6.1–4; Strabo 8.6.24 and 13.1.12; Pausanias 9.31.2; Ovid, Fasti 1.391–440 and 6.319–348, Metamorphoses 9.347–348; Virgil, Eclogues 7.33–34 and Georgics 4.109–111; Lucian, Dialogues of the Gods 23 and On the Dance 21.

See Also: Dionysus, Aphrodite, Hermes, Hestia, Silenus, Satyrs, Nymphs, Hermaphroditus