CIRCA 1ST CENTURY A.D.

Priapus was a god regarded with both 'amusement and affection' (C. Johns, Sex or Symbol? Erotic Images of Greece and Rome, London, 1982, p.52). Endowed with the ability to increase fecundity and fertility, whilst simultaneously serving an apotropaic function against evil spirits and malevolence, the deity was the ultimate protector of the home and its inhabitants, a fact most famously elucidated by the wall-painting of Priapus weighing his phallus which greets visitors in the House of the Vettii in Pompeii. Representations where a large phallus is rendered identifiable as the god by the addition of human features appear to be confined to Roman Gaul. For comparable examples, cf. a small bronze phallic pendant with human legs now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (res 8.320), and a bronze statuette of Priapus, made in two parts with the top section concealing a torso comprised of a giant phallus, in the Musée de Picardie, Amiens. This piece's relatively diminutive size allows us to imagine it serving as the harbinger of good fortune and vitality at the entrance of a home or commercial property.