Cur pictum memori sit in tabella Membrum quaeritis unde procreamur? _Cum penis mihi forte laesus esset, Chirurgique manum miser timerem, Diis me legitimis, nimisque magnis_ Ut Phoebo puta, filioque Phoebi _Curatum dare mentulam verebar_. Huic dixi, fer opem, Priape, parti, Cuius tu, pater, ipse par videris:[88] Qua salva _sine sectione_ facta, Ponetur tibi picta, quam levaris, Parque consimilisque concolorque. Promisit fore: mentulam movit Pro nutu deus et rogata fecit.
(Why, you ask, is portrayed on the tablet the member whereby we are begotten? _When, as it befell, my penis was damaged, and like a wretched coward I dreaded the Surgeon’s hand, I was afraid to entrust myself and the cure of my organ to the great official gods, that were too high for me_, such I mean as Phoebus and Phoebus’ son. “To the member, I said, do thou, Priapus, give aid,—the member that thou art fashioned in the likeness of[88]. Then when it has been healed _without the knife_, a painted image of the part thou has relieved shall be dedicated to thee,—a match, a perfect match in form and in hue.” Thus he made his vow; the god nodded his penis in token of assent, and answered his prayers.)
This poem, whoever its author may have been[89], testifies most explicitly that the Poet’s genital organs were seriously affected (by Phimosis and Ulcers?), that he from fear (_timerem_) of the Surgeon’s knife, from shame (_verebar_) before the regular physician in view of the part affected and of the way in which he had got the disease, had recourse to prayer and vow before the image of Priapus, and thereupon happily recovered without medical assistance!
The veneration of Priapus was pretty well universal in Italy, as the Roman poets teach us, and equally so the Phallic worship, of which the frequent representations of the Phallus that we find at Pompeii bear witness; in fact the latter, as _Knight_ shows, maintained itself in connection with the veneration of Saints _Cosmus_ and _Damian_ down to the last Century at Isernia. The just quoted Poem from the Priapeia might perhaps serve to afford us an indication as to how the Phallus ritual has come to be connected with these Christian Saints; for probably patients attacked by the Venereal disease prayed to them, just as the Romans did to Priapus. Possibly examples of such cures by the saints in question are found in the “Acta Sanctorum Bollandi”. (Bollandist Lives of the Saints),—under Sept. 27.; but we are not able to consult the book. These Saints however were not the only ones that were venerated in the Middle Ages in the same way as the Priapus of the Ancients. In France unfruitful wives used to pray to St. Guerlichon, in Normandy to St. Giles, in Anjou to St. René, in connection with whom they practised rites which _Stephanus_ declares himself ashamed to specify[90].