“Medals and engraved stones demonstrate that the hieratic prescriptions required that all those hills which were consecrated to Jupiter should be represented in a conical form. At Sicony, Jupiter was adored under the form of a pyramid.”

PRAYER TO PRIAPUS.
Delight of Bacchus, Guardian of the groves,
The kind restorer of decaying loves:
Lesbos and verdant Thasos thee implore,
Whose maids thy pow’r in wanton rites adore:
Joy of the Dryads, with propitious care,
Attend my wishes, and indulge my pray’r.
My guiltless hands with blood I never stain’d,
Or sacrilegiously the god’s prophan’d:
Thus low I bow, restoring blessings send,
I did not thee with my whole self offend.
Who sins through weakness, is less guilty thought;
Indulge my crime, and spare a venial fault.
On me when fate shall smiling gifts bestow,
I’ll (not ungrateful) to your god-head bow;
A sucking pig I’ll offer to thy shrine,
And sacred bowls brimful of generous wine;
A destin’d goat shall on thy altar lie,
And the horn’d parent of my flock shall die;
Then thrice thy frantic vot’ries shall around
Thy temple dance, with smiling garlands crown’d,
And most devoutly drunk, thy orgies sound.—Petronius.
HYMN TO PRIAPUS.
Bacchus and Nymphs delight O mighty God!
Whom Cynthia gave to rule the blooming wood.
Lesbos and verdant Thasos thee adore,
And Lydians in loose flowing dress implore,
And raise devoted temples to thy pow’r.
Thou Dryad’s Joy, and Bacchus’ Guardian, hear
My conscious prayer with attentive ear.
My hands with guiltless blood I never stain’d,
Nor yet the temples of the gods prophan’d.
Restore my strength, and lusty vigour send,
My trembling nerves like pliant oziers bend.
Who sins through weakness, is not guilty thought,
No equal power can punish such a fault.
A wanton goat shall on your altars die,
And spicy smoke in curls ascend the sky.
A pig thy floors with sacred blood shall stain,
And round the awful fire and holy flame,
Thrice shall thy priests, with youth and garlands crown’d,
In pious drunkenness thy orgies sound.—Petronius.
A TRANSLATION OUT OF THE PRIAPEIA.
The Complaint of Priapus for being Veiled.
The Almighty’s Image, of his shape afraid,
And hide the noblest part e’er nature made,
Which God alone succeeds in his creating trade.
The Fall this fig-leav’d modesty began,
To punish woman, by obscuring man;
Before, where’er his stately Cedar moved
She saw, ador’d and kiss’d the thing she loved.
Why do the gods their several signs disclose,
Almighty Jove his Thunder-bolt expose,
Neptune his Trident, Mars his Buckler shew,
Pallas her spear to each beholder’s view,
And poor Priapus be alone confin’d
T’obscure the women’s god, and parent of mankind?
Since free-born brutes their liberty obtain,
Long hast thou journey-worked for souls in vain,
Storm the Pantheon, and demand thy right,
For on this weapon ’tis depends the fight.—Petronius.

CHAPTER VI.

Circumcision, male and female, in various countries and ages.

Circumcision is one of the most ancient religious rites with which we are acquainted, and, as practised in some countries, there seems reason to suppose that it was of a phallic character. “It can scarcely be doubted,” says one writer, “that it was a sacrifice to the awful power upon whom the fruit of the womb depended, and having once fixed itself in the minds of the people, neither priest nor prophet could eradicate it. All that these could do was to spiritualise it into a symbol of devotion to a high religious ideal.” Bonwick says: “Though associated with sun worship by some, circumcision may be accepted as a rite of sex worship.” Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, speaking of the neighbouring nations as far as India, says: “Many of them practise divination, and devote their genitals to their divinities.”

It is not possible, perhaps, to speak with any degree of certainty about the origin of this rite; the enquiry carries the student so far back in history, that the mind gets lost in the mists of the past. It is regarded by some as a custom essentially Jewish, but this is altogether wrong; it was extensively practised in Egypt, also by the tribes inhabiting the more southern parts of Africa; in Asia, the Afghans and the Tamils had it, and it has been found in various parts of America, and amongst the Fijians and Australians. It has been argued, and with considerable plausibility, that it existed long before writing was known, and from the fact of its having been employed by the New Hollanders, its great antiquity may be inferred with certainty.

It has been noticed by historians that sometimes a nation will pledge itself to a corporal offering of such a kind, that every member shall constantly bear about its mark on himself, and so make his personal appearance or condition a perpetual witness for the special religion whose vows he has undertaken. Thus several Arabian tribes living not far from the Holy Land, adopted the custom, as a sign of their special religion (or, as Herodotus says, “after the example of their God”), of shaving the hair of their heads in an extraordinary fashion, viz., either on the crown of the head or towards the temples, or else of disfiguring a portion of the beard. Others branded or tattooed the symbol of a particular god on the skin, on the forehead, the arm, the hand. Israel, too, adopted from early times a custom which attained the highest sanctity in its midst, where no jest, however trifling, could be uttered on the subject, but which was essentially of a similar nature to those we have just mentioned. This was circumcision.[17] It was this special character which no doubt gave rise to the idea so common amongst the uninformed that it was a Jewish rite.

Herodotus and Philo Judæus have related that it prevailed to a great extent among the Egyptians and Ethiopians. The former historian says it was so ancient among each people that there was no determining which of them borrowed it from the other. Among the Egyptians he says it was instituted from the beginning. Shuckford says that by this he could not mean from the first rise or original of that nation, but that it was so early among them that the heathen writers had no account of its origin. When anything appeared to them to be thus ancient, they pronounced it to be from the beginning. Herodotus clearly meant this, because we find him questioning whether the Egyptians learnt circumcision from the Ethiopians, or the Ethiopians from the Egyptians, and he leaves the question undecided, merely concluding that it was a very ancient rite. If by the expression “from the beginning,” he had meant that it was originated by the Egyptians, there would not have been this indecision: and it is known that among heathen writers to say a thing was “from the beginning,” was equivalent to the other saying that it was very anciently practised.