Priapus's Two Rapes in Ovid's Fasti

Abstract

This essay considers the dynamics of joking discourse in two passages in Ovid's Fasti (1.391-440; 6.319-348): both are attempted rapes by Priapus and both are offered by the narrator as humorous tales. I explore the social implications of making a woman the Butt of a joke and the object of an attempted rape. That the second woman here is Vesta, one of Augustus' primary religious concerns, necessarily adds a further dimension: now the joke can be read by some Audience members as imagining a world that looks nothing like the one offered by Augustus to his contemporaries.

Catullus’ Priapean Poem (c. 17)

“…10.92.12, the goddess Flora successfully escapes his lustful attentions by fleeing into her laurel grove. In short, it appears that the god far more often pursues than catches his intended prey; 53 or as Frazel (2003) 64 puts it, ‘ancient religious thought imagined Priapus as the embodiment of constant and unfulfilled [my emphasis] male sexual desire’. Worst of all, in Priapea 2 of the Appendix Vergiliana (85 Bücheler), after the garden god has threatened a would-be thief that he will sodomise him with his wooden mentula , his erect organ is violently ripped ( ualente … reuulsa bracchio ) from his groin by a brawny uilicus who repurposes it as a cudgel ( claua ) – thereby giving a risible literalness to Martial's figurative expression Gallo turpius est nihil Priapo , ‘there is nothing more shameful than an emasculated Priapus’ (1.35.15) 54…”

“… 52 For the point see Murgatroyd (2002) and Frazel (2003). The flight of the amator is reminiscent of the mime, by which the Lotus and Vesta episodes have often been thought to be influenced.…”