Priapus

In Greek Mythology, Priapus is the god of fertility, vegetables, genitals and garden. He is mostly believed to be the son of Dionysus and Aphrodite.

In Mythology
Birth

Priapus was described in varying sources as the son of Aphrodite by Dionysus; as the son of Dionysus and Chione; as perhaps the father or son of Hermes; or as the son of Zeus or Pan. According to legend, Hera cursed him with inconvenient impotence (he could not sustain an erection when the time came for sexual intercourse), ugliness and foul-mindedness while he was still in Aphrodite's womb, in revenge for the hero Paris having the temerity to judge Aphrodite more beautiful than Hera. The other gods refused to allow him to live on Mount Olympus and threw him down to Earth, leaving him on a hillside. He was eventually found by shepherds and was brought up by them.

Priapus joined Pan and the satyrs as a spirit of fertility and growth, though he was perennially frustrated by his impotence. In a ribald anecdote told by Ovid, he attempted to rape the goddess Hestia but was thwarted by an ass, whose braying caused him to lose his erection at the critical moment and woke Hestia. The episode gave him a lasting hatred of asses and a willingness to see them killed in his honour. The emblem of his lustful nature was his permanent erection and his large penis. Another myth states that he pursued the nymph Lotis until the gods took pity on her and turned her into a lotus plant.

Depiction
Priapus was depicted as an very ugly-dwarfish man with a huge member, symbolising garden fertility, a peaked Phrygian cap, indicating his origin as a Mysian god, and a basket weighed down with fruit.

Public Domain

 * A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus by Robert Payne Knight. (1786)
 * The Worship of the Generative Powers By Thomas Wright (1866)
 * The Priapeia Translated by L.C. Smithers, notes by Sir Richard Burton (1890)
 * Phallic Worship By Hodder M. Westropp (1870)