Priapus

 

I have decided to take a day off from writing today.  I was concerned that very few people had read the conclusion of the House Party, published on Friday.  But my readers are playing catch-up today, according to the analytics I am seeing.

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I wanted to be an archeologist as a kid.  My mother saved a kindergarten drawing I had carefully done of me with a shovel.  The teacher, used to writing fireman, policeman or doctor on other student’s pictures, had had to look up ‘archeologist’ for mine.   

I liked dinosaurs, of course, but was drawn to ancient civilizations.  I vividly remember the National Geographic article on the then current excavation at Pompeii.  All those plaster casts of people dying from the blast.  No mention, back then, of the erotic side of Pompeii.

Priapus was a rather minor Greek fertility god.  He was the protector of fruit trees, livestock and male genitalia. The Romans loved to use him in erotic art, what with his supersized and permanent erection.  Two frescos of him from the walls of Pompeii.