Sexual life in ancient Greece : with thirty-two full-page plates

RELIGION AND EROTIC

have their fling. Priapus was especially struck with the beautiful but shy Lotis, who, however, refused to have anything to do with the god, who was assuredly not distinguished for his beauty. Yet the night drew on, and Lotis, overcome by wine and weariness, lay almost defenceless there on the soft grass under the shadow of a maple-tree. Priapus creeps up, gently, gently, holding his breath ; already he fancies himself near the accomplishment of his wishes, the beautiful sleeper does not move, now he is pulling her clothes up high, when—the ass of Silenus brays “‘ very inopportunely ; Lotis wakes up alarmed, pushes the importunate Priapus away, and wakes up all the sleepers with her cries, who, by the lightof the moon, stare at the disappointed lover amid general merriment’. In his rage Priapus kills the guilty-innocent donkey, and that is the reason why from that time asses are sacrificed to him.

Priapus, who here plays such a regrettable part, is the personification of the sexual impulse in its most brutal form.

Priapus was generally regarded as a son of Dionysus and a nymph (or Aphrodite) and was the protecting spirit of meadows, gardens, and wineplantations, of the rearing of goats, sheep, and bees. One may also say that he is the underlying, though coarse, principle of the form of Eros; indeed, Eros in the oldest times was worshipped at Thespiz (Boeotia) in a form similar to that of Priapus. The sacrifice of the ass to him is, of course, not to be explained from the fabulous stories of Ovid; the real reason is that the ass 1 was regarded as specially possessed of generative power, and for the same reason the goose also was sacred to him. Priapus was worshipped at nearly all mysteries, not only the Dionysiac, according to Diodorus (Diod. Sic., iv,

* On the ass cf. Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie; on the goose,

Petronius, 137; Keller, Tiere des Altertums, p.288 ; and the constellation of the ass, Hyginus, Poet. astron., ii, 23.

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