Priapus at the House of the Vettii: Pompeii's Phallic Art

Introduction: The Priapus Fresco at the House of the Vettii

Excavation of entranceway a-b of Pompeii's grandest single residence, the House of the Vettii, which opens onto the Vicolo dei Vettii and is positioned directly opposite the House of the Golden Cupids, revealed a somewhat astonishing wall fresco (De Carolis, 42). The frankly obscene nature of this painting is at odds with what we might expect for an entrance hallway: it depicts Priapus, the Roman god of the erect penis, weighing his outsize phallus on a balance used by moneychangers or tradesmen. This essay inquires whether the iconography of this painting bears any relation to other existing Roman artifacts, and ultimately interprets it in light of research into Roman literary sources.

Roman Wall Painting and the Iconographic Context

In analyzing this painting, it is worth recalling Ling's discussion of Roman wall paintings, which he breaks down into four basic points. The first is ubiquity: by our standards, an individually commissioned mural is reserved for the wealthy, but in Pompeii it is not. As Ling puts it, "the extent to which ancient houses were painted far exceeds that in later societies" (1–2). The second emphasizes visibility: more highly visible rooms would be decorated with paintings of higher quality, and "lesser rooms were progressively simpler" (2). The third emphasizes architectural context, reminding us that the paintings should be understood within the functional context of the room and that we should ask "how they are adapted to the size, shape and function of the room" (2). Finally, Ling emphasizes the relation between owner and painting, arguing that they must be understood as a display of "tastes and aspirations of the householders who commissioned them" (2).

In the case of the House of the Vettii, there is a relatively clear understanding of most of what Ling requires. The Vettii have been identified as a pair of wealthy freedmen, and the house itself is one of the more lavish within Pompeii. The expensiveness of the painting is evident from its level of detail; indeed, the painting's representation of the weighing of coins and of the fruits associated with a cornucopia announces the wealth and commercial success of the Vettii. It is also worth noting that the style of the painting suggests it was executed much earlier than many of the other frescoes in the house, implying that it had been retained from a previous owner or maintained because it was considered a particularly fine decoration for the foyer. The only one of Ling's stipulations requiring additional explanation is clearly the third: how does this depiction of Priapus — clearly expensive and, like the massive penis of Priapus, designed to impress — function within the context of an entry hall?

Priapus: Origins, Cult, and Apotropaic Function

Richard Payne Knight was the first to describe in detail the phallic representations discovered in the remains of both Pompeii and Herculaneum. Payne Knight somewhat oversubscribed to a later neo-Platonist reading of the imagery, which saw it as representative of the Platonic "demiurge" — the creator of the world whose great characteristic attribute was represented by the organ of generation in the state of tension and rigidity necessary to the due performance of its functions. He argued that many small images of this kind, found among the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii, were attached to bracelets worn by chaste matrons of antiquity around their necks and arms, and that in these the organ of generation appeared alone, or accompanied only by the wings of incubation, "in order to show that the devout wearer devoted herself wholly and solely to procreation, the great end for which she was ordained" (27–28).

As a way of sidestepping the general prudishness of his audience, Payne Knight suggests that the phallic art of Pompeii is all susceptible to this kind of allegorization. It is true, however, that a statue of Priapus was also discovered in the excavation of the House of the Vettii, in Room w. This statue features a large phallus as well and is overall comparable in style to the entryway painting; a carved hole in the phallus indicates that the original placement of the statue was in the garden, where it functioned as a fountain.

This is how Payne Knight justifies reading it as an abstracted fertility symbol, but all other extant historical evidence suggests that the sexual element is hardly a metaphor. Younger describes Priapus as "apotropaic," which is surely the original function of the erect phallus on such statues. Another wall painting in Pompeii depicts Priapus with the caduceus of Hermes, and the assumption is that the two gods were likened to one another by analogy with the Greek "herms" — statues used as boundary markers which depicted a bust of the god Hermes with an apotropaic ithyphallos affixed to the front. The flashy Athenian politician Alcibiades had been ostracized from Athens in the fifth century BCE when the herms were defaced and their phalloi knocked off, proving that there was still a very active sense of religiosity attached to these figures (Younger, 160).

Younger notes that the cult of Priapus is attested in Hellenistic Lampsacus in the third century BCE, and that the cult "spread to Rome by 90 BCE" (Younger, 160). Watson notes, however, that the Roman cult of Priapus differed substantially from the earlier Greek cult, with "the emphasis on the god's intrinsic ridiculousness and obsessive pursuit of sexual gratification being a radical departure from the Greek tradition of Priapea" (Watson, 207–208). The graphic sexuality of the depictions fits within the Roman understanding of sexuality as defined not by gender but by the roles of activity and passivity; Conway writes that in the Roman sexual ethos, to be active often involved expressing one's dominion over another, while to be passive meant to submit to that domination. In the Roman setting, the popularity of Priapus illustrates the importance of this aspect of masculinity:

Priapus was an extraordinarily well-endowed fertility god, frequently depicted in paintings and statues with his oversized member ready to defend the garden or household against intruders through penetration of the enemy. Aside from depictions of Priapus, phallic images were found throughout the empire on a wide variety of objects — jewelry, pottery, masonry, and street-corner plaques. As a sign of fertility and strength, the phallus was venerated, and the symbol was used as an apotropaic charm. Phallic wind chimes and front-door plaques graced the home, so that the phallic image was ever present in one's comings and goings in the Roman world. Its ubiquity reminded those who would be men that generation and domination through penetration was an essential part of the social act. (Conway, 22)

In other words, the depiction of Priapus ordinarily carries a sense of threat or menace. The painting in the entrance hall at the House of the Vettii is, then, a highly domesticated version of the ordinary representation.

Works Cited

Carolis, Ernesto De. Gods and Heroes in Pompeii. Los Angeles, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2001. Print.

Conway, Colleen. Behold the Man: Jesus and Greco-Roman Masculinity. New York and London: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.

Knight, Richard Payne. A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus. Leeds: Celephais Press, 2003. Print.

Ling, Roger. Roman Painting. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Print.

Petronius. The Satyricon. Translated with an introduction by J. P. Sullivan. New York and London: Penguin Books, 1986. Print.

Priapeia. Translated with an introduction by Leonard C. Smithers and Sir Richard Francis Burton. London: John Lane, 1890. Sacred-Texts.com: n. pag. Web.

Rosen, Ralph M. "Comic Aischrology and the Urbanization of Agroikia." In Rosen, Ralph M. and Sluiter, Ineke. City, Countryside and the Spatial Organization of Value in Classical Antiquity. Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2006. Print.

Watson, Lindsay. "Epigram." In Harrison, Stephen (ed.). A Companion to Latin Literature. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. Print.

Younger, John G. Sex in the Ancient World. New York and London: Routledge, 2005. Print.