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1
9
Weighing In: the Priapus Painting at the House of the Vettii, Pompeii
Barbara Kellum
For most of the twentieth century the unique image of Priapus weighing his giant
phallus against a plump money bag at the front entry to the House of the Vettii in Pompeii
(VI 15.1) (figures 1 and 2)1 was considered so obscene that it was covered with a slatted box
which was opened for the viewing pleasure of only a select few--mostly male--visitors.
Although only the brackets of the box remain today, the image itself (though featured on
many a postcard) remains decorously under-interpreted in scholarship. Only John Clarke has
boldly declared both the unforgettable titillation of the image -- at least to modern eyes -- and
its possible apotropaic function.2 For Clarke this image is a part of an overdone display ... in
a house in which the freedmen owners Aulus Vettius Restitutus and Aulus Vettius Conviva,
Augustalis “attempted to pack as many allusions to the world of aristocratic culture as would
fit.”3
In point of fact, however, this prodigiously endowed image of Priapus varies
markedly from the rough-hewn, usually wooden statuettes which are described in Roman
literature as guarding aristocratic gardens, orchards, and vineyards. Perhaps the most famous
1
Megow 1997, 1037 Nr. 112, and Carratelli 1994 vol. 5.
2
Clarke 1991, 210-12, 234. Clarke 1998, 174-77. The image is catalogued in Fröhlich 1991,
L71 279-80 and described in Archer 1981, 116-17.
3
Clarke 1991, 209-10. On Clarke’s notion of a Priapic axis for the house see note 43 below.
2
of these is the Priapus in the gardens of Maecenas on the Esquiline who speaks in Horace
Satires 1.8:
Once I was a fig trunk, useless wood, and then a carpenter, unsure whether
to make a stool or a Priapus decided that I should become a god.4
Time and again, in the early Imperial poems of the Carmina Priapea (C.P.), the god taunts
his would-be victims with his crude form:
Why the laughter, witless female? Neither Phidias nor Scopas nor Praxiteles
produced me, but some bailiff hacked a log and told me "Thou shalt be Priapus."
Nonetheless you look and giggle? It must strike you as suggestive that my crotch
supports this column.5
No piece of fine art, the garden statue Priapus stands guard naked through the
blistering heat of summer and the cold of winter, his wooden self threatened with becoming
firewood if it gets too cold, and “shaking the hail from my hair with each blustery gust,
4
1.8.1-3 Olim truncus eram ficulnus, inutile lignum, cum faber, incertus scamnum faceretne
Priapum, maluit esse deum. On Priapus in literature see Young in this volume. Like
Maecenas’ garden on the Esquiline, the gardens in the 1st century CE Carmina Priapea are
distinctly urban; see Uden 2010, 189-219.
5
C.P. 10: Insulsissima quid puella rides? Non me Praxiteles Scopasve fecit, non sum Phidiaca
manu politus; sed lignum rude vilicus dolavitet dixit mihi "tu Priapus esto." Spectas me
tamen et subinde rides? Nimirum tibi salsa res videtur adstans inguinibus columna nostris.
All translations from Hooper 1999.
3
finally finding my beard in a crystalline crust.” He allows that “among all the gods I’m the
last one (or near it), known all about as ‘the cucumber’s guardian spirit’”; but, god
nonetheless, he refuses to cover his cock which he proudly declares his weapon and fully
comparable to the sword of Mars and the arrows of Apollo.6 Ever at the ready, he swears he
will rape would-be female trespassers, bugger the boys, and force fellatio or anal sex on the
men.7
6
C.P. 63 on Priapus and the seasons and as the last among the gods: Parum est mihi quod hic
fixi ut semel sedem,/ agente terra per caniculam rimas siticulosam sustinemus aestatem?
Parum, quod hiemis perfluunt sinus imbres/et in capillos grandines cadunt nostros rigetque
dura barba vincta crystallo? Parum, quod acta sub laboribus luce/parem diebus pervigil traho
noctem? Huc adde, quod me fuste de rudi vilem manus sine arte rusticae
dolaverunt,/interque cunctos ultimum deos numen “cucurbitarum ligneus” vocor “custos.”
Accedit istis impudentiae signum,/libidinoso tenta pyramis nervo. Ad hanc puella--paene
nomen adieci--solet venire cum suo fututore, quae tot figuras, quas Philaenis enarrat, non
admovente pruriosa discedit. For threat of using the wooden Priapus as firewood C.P. 84:
Vera rosa, autumno pomis, aestate frequentor spicis; una mihi est horrida pestis hiemps. Nam
frigus metuo et vereor, ne ligneus ignem hic deus ignavis praebeat agricolis. Cf. Martial 8.40.
C.P. 9 for the comparison of Priapus’ exposed cock to weapons of the other gods: Cur
obscaena mihi pars sit sine veste, requiris? Quaere, tegat nullus cur sua tela deus. Fulmen
habens mundi dominus tenet illud aperte; nec datur aequoreo fuscina tecta deo. Nec Mavors
illum, per quem valet, occulit ensem; nec latet in tepido Palladis hasta sinu. Num pudet
auratas Phoebum portare sagittas? Clamne solet pharetram ferre Diana suam? Num tegit
Alcides nodosae robora clavae? Sub tunica virgam num deus ales habet? Quis Bacchum
gracili vestem praetendere thyrso, quis te celata cum face vidit, Amor? Nec mihi sit crimen,
quod mentula semper aperta est. Hoc mihi si telum desit, inermis ero.
7
C.P. 13 Percidere puer, moneo, futuere puella. Barbatum furem tertia poena manet.
4
The visual corollaries to these literary Priapus sentinels often appear in those
quintessentially aristocratic villa fantasy-scapes, sacro-idyllic landscapes. For example, in the
painting from the north wall of cubiculum 16 from the villa of Agrippa Postumus at
Boscotrecase a stalwart rustic bare-bones Priapus guards the periphery while the elevated
statue of a female deity at the center of the composition receives worshippers (figure 3).8 In
discussing similar representations, Peter Stewart has declared that when it comes to Priapus:
“No figure in Roman art or literature is so expressly defined as an outcast from the norms of
cult, art, and culture.”9
Clearly, however, at the front entry of the House of the Vettii what was, in aristocratic
context, marginal, has here become central. Unlike the crudely carved vulnerable wooden
images, the painted image--in addition to its gigantic phallus--sports a pair of high fur boots
which, save for those fashionable open toes, look fully capable of keeping the cold of winter
at bay. Equally, his diaphanous yellow tunic with its long blue-green sleeves, which just
slips to reveal his left shoulder, could accommodate the heat of summer. A red mantle
tucked around his left arm complements the red Phrygian cap atop his head; a golden torque
is just visible beneath his beard, as is a gold hoop earring in his left ear and a golden bracelet
on each wrist.10 Here the erstwhile lowly god is laden with nearly every conceivable sign of
luxuria. The gold jewelry most obviously, but so too the long-sleeved tunic which since the
8
Von Blanckenhagen and Alexander 1990, 12-13. Megow 1997, 1034 Nr. 66. For this
rudimentary type of Priapus see also Stewart 1997, 575-88 and the corresponding section on
Priapus in Stewart 2003, 72-77.
9
Stewart 2003, 77.
10
There are other clothed or partially clothed statues of Priapus. See Megow 1997, 1028-44,
although the Vettii image is arguably the most fully adorned.
5
second century BCE had been called by the Greek name chiridota and associated with
effeminacy and moral degeneracy. Cicero already in the 60s BCE described the Catilinarian
conspirators as wearing “tunics down to their ankles and wrists” and nearly a century later
Seneca condemned Augustus’ minister of culture Maecenas for his effeminacy by equating
the looseness of his speech with his ungirt attire.11 However, as is usually the case with
Priapus, this garment cuts two ways, for what is the quintessential effeminate attire for mere
mortals here frames the unmistakable evidence of his monumental virility. Moreover, as a
god who hailed from the Greek East and whose principal sanctuary was located at
Lampsacus in the Troad, the chitidota was appropriate garb, as was his Phrygian cap. Since
at least the time of the first emperor Augustus this headgear was a sign of the Trojan ancestry
of both the Roman people and the Julian gens.12 Priapus’ Phrygian cap, then, simultaneously
marks his foreign origins and his affiliation with the Romans and the first imperial family.
So why does this sartorially resplendent image of the obscene Priapus--in many ways
the polar opposite of those marginal, crudely formed statuettes described in literature--grace
the front entry of the House of the Vettii? That is the question which the remainder of this
11
Aulus Gellius 6.12 on the tunics called chiridotae. Cicero Cat. 2.22. Seneca Ep. Mor.
114.4.
12
As Rose indicates (2002, 339 note 5a, it is only in the first century CE that Priapus begins
to wear the Phrygian cap. Rose’s is a wonderful analysis of the problematics of Eastern dress
in imperial Roman visual arts where, depending on its context, it could be a sign of Trojan
ancestry or the dress of the Parthian enemy. The gold torque which the Vettii Priapus wears
may also be associated with the gold torque indicating Eastern origins worn by the patrician
youths who participated in the lusus Troiae at Rome. See Rose (2002, 334-35) who
persuasively argues that the use of the torque as a sign of Eastern origins at the lusus Troiae
derives from the costume of the priests of Cybele with their Trojan affiliation.
6
essay will seek to address by a yet closer reading of the god and his attributes in this
particular viewing context. For I believe this is not just another dirty picture, but one which
has much to reveal about the social and economic realities of first century CE Pompeii.
Three of the four objects associated with Priapus in this image are ones commonly
associated with him. In his left arm he cradles a shepherd’s crook (pedum), a rustic
implement which he often holds, here artfully placed at the same angle as his engorged male
member and therefore serving effectively as an extension of it. In Vergil’s 5th Ecologue the
pedum itself functions as a love token, but strategically positioned here, it serves as the visual
equivalent of Priapus’ boasts in the Carmina Priapea about the immense size of his cock
which he threatens to ram in up to “your seventh rib bone” or “to the hilt and hairline inside
thieving innards.”13
In this instance, what is to be found at the other end of the trajectory is a basket filled
with fruit to which his phallus points like an arrow. Pomegranate, pear, quince, apple, fig,
and bunches of grapes: these are fruits of several seasons over which the rustic Priapus in the
Carmina Priapea stands guard and receives as offerings.14 Placed before the god in the
painting, the basket of fruit functions both as an offering to him and as an affirmation of his
own teeming fecundity. Several of these fruits had multiple associations with love, sex, and
fertility--grapes with the god of wine Dionysus, pears, quinces, and apples with Venus the
goddess of love--but, on a more immediate level, these were all also common comestibles.
This we now know not just from Roman agricultural writers, but also from the remains of
13
Vergil Ecl. 5.88-90 for the pedum as love token. C.P. 6: ad costam tibi septimam
recondam, and 25: intra viscera furis ibit usque ad pubem capulumque coleorum. Cf. C.P. 11.
14
Fruit Priapus guards or receives as offering: C.P. 16; 30; 42; 51; 53; 69; 71; 72; 85.
7
human waste recently excavated from a sewer beneath an apartment block in Herculaneum.15
The remains contained an astonishing number of fig pips since they pass through the human
digestive tract rapidly. The prominently displayed fig at the front of the basket, therefore,
might well have brought to mind the sensual pleasures of consuming a fig as well as the
visceral realities of Priapus’ admonition: “If your mouth is all set for fig fruit and you’re set
to grab a handful, look at me, thief, and consider how you’ll leave my cock beshitted.”16
Priapus rests his left elbow on a high pedestal and just to his left, propped on the same
pedestal, is the thyrsos--the phallic staff of Dionysus--which stands companionably at his
side. According to Pausanias, the people of Lampsacus, who revered Priapus more than any
other god, considered him to be the son of Dionysus and Aphrodite (Venus).17 And Priapus
sometimes appears as one of the randier members of the retinue of the god of wine in other
visual representations as well as in Ovid’s hilarious account of Priapus’ attempt to rape the
nymph Lotis which is foiled by the braying of the ass of Silenus waking her in the nick of
time and rousing the rest of the company to laugh at the god caught in the moonlight. For
this reason, as Ovid says, “A young ass is slain in honor of the stiff guardian of the country-
15
For useful entries on each of these fruits: “Plants: evidence from wall paintings, mosaics,
sculpture, plant remains, graffiti, inscriptions, and ancient authors” in Jashemski and Meyer
2002: Nr. 135 Punica Granatum L. (pomegranate) 152-54; Nr. 136 Pyrus Communis L.
(pear) 154-55; Nr. 46 Cydonia Oblonga Mill. (quince) pp. 106-07; Nr. 89 Malus sp. (apple)
124-25; Nr. 54 Ficus Carica L. (fig), 109-11; Nr. 183 Vitis Viniferna L. subsp. Vinifera
(grape) 171-74. For the sewer in Herculaneum: Squires 2011.
16
C.P. 69: Cum fici tibi suavitas subibit et iam porrigere huc manum libebit, ad me respice,
fur, et aestimato, quot pondo est tibi mentulam cacandum.
17
Pausanias 9.31.2.
8
side: the cause is shameful, but beseems the god.”18 Like the pedum or the basket of fruit,
then, the thyrsos of Dionysus was an ordinary attribute of Priapus.
That is decidedly not the case, however, for the fourth attribute which is a true pièce
de résistance: the balance scale with which he fastidiously weighs his giant phallus in one
pan against an overstuffed moneybag in the other. Throughout the Mediterranean world,
from time immemorial, scales were fraught with significance.19 For instance, in Book 22 of
Homer’s Iliad at the height of the final pitched battle between the Greek hero Achilles and
Troy’s defender Hector:
Then father Zeus balanced his golden scales and in them he set two fateful
portions of woeful death, one for Achilles and one for Hector, breaker of
horses. Balancing it in the middle, Zeus raised it high, and the fated day of
Hector sank down: it went toward the house of Hades, and the god Apollo
left him.20
The pans of Priapus’ scale are definitely in balance, however, so once again it is likely that it
would be the more immediate, quotidian use of the scales which would have come to mind.
Balance scales were a ubiquitous presence in the marketplace and were used to weigh goods
18
Ovid Fasti 1.391-92. The entire tale of the attempted rape of Lotis: 1.391-440. For visual
example see Megow 1997, Nr. 120, 1038: drunken Priapus supported by two satyrs on an
early Antonine sarcophagus in Naples.
19
Seidenberg and 1980, 179-226 with examples from the Egyptian Book of the Dead,
Mesopotamia, and other cultures.
20
Homer Iliad 22.209-13 (Richmond Lattimore trans.). See Morrison 1997, 273-96.
9
of all kinds, ranging from its industrial use for the weighing of the cash crop silphium
overseen by Arkesilas, the king of Cyrene, on a sixth century BCE Laconian cup, to the
weighing of loaves of bread on the late first century BCE Tomb of Eurysaces at Rome (figure
4), to the exquisitely refined artisanal multi-tiered scales visible on the worktable of one of
the Cupid goldsmiths in the decoration of the red and black room (room q) in the House of
the Vettii itself (figure 5).21
For commerce, accuracy of measurement was of fundamental importance, so much so
that the arm of one bronze steelyard balance from Pompeii has a punched metal inscription
which gives the year 47 CE and certifies that the weights are Articuleiana--the standard set
by the Roman aediles M. Articuleius and Gn. Turranius.22
It was not, however, just those in
high public office who were intimately involved with weights and measures in the everyday
world of the market. Take, for example, the freedman of a Numerius, Numerius Lucius
Hermeros Aequitas, one of the neighborhood magistrates (vicomagistri) for the Forum
Boarium (Cattle Market) in Rome who in 4-5 CE, when he was magister iterum, dedicated a
set of gold and silver commercial scale weights and a shrine to Hercules to house them. An
inscription added in 12/13 CE indicates that he continued “watching out for his
neighborhood” (invigulantes pro vicinia) by, along with his colleagues, checking and
revalidating the accuracy of the weights.23 This was one of three dedications he made in his
21
Arkesilas cup: Bresson 2000, 85-94. Tomb of Eurysaces: Petersen 2003, 230-57.
22
Naples Inv. 74039: 1999, Nr. 370 298-99. On the use of the balance in the Roman
marketplace and its function: Hill 1952, 51-55 and Damerow 2002, 93-108.
23
See Lott 2004, 162-64 and Appendix Nr. 28=CIL 6.282: Sacrum Hercul(i)/mag(istri) vici
anni XI/A.A. (= Auli) Marcii Athenodor(i0/lib(erti) Hilarus et Bello/N(umerius) Lucius
Hermeros/Aequitas mag(ister) irer(um)/pondera auraria et/argentaria/viciniae posuerunt/idem
10
neighborhood. In the first of these--a 7-6 BCE statue base for August Mercury--his is the first
name listed on initial board of vicomagistri, but at that point he had only his former slave
name Hermeros as cognomen.24 Because of the precious gift of the gold and silver scale
weights, however, he was honored by his neighbors with the honorific cognomen Aequitas-Mr. Fairness--which appears on both the Hercules and weights dedication and also on his
third and final dedication on a statue base for Venus Augusta.25 This honorific cognomen
was no mean accomplishment for--as we will have reason to see in a moment--Aequitas was
to become one of the most celebrated virtues of the emperors. During the Republic,
aristocratic generals vied for honorific cognomina to trumpet their victories, but, by the early
imperial period, competition in the commercial arena took on a life of its own and weights,
scales, and standards were of fundamental importance.26
This is the environment in which Priapus weighing his phallus against a plump
money bag operated as a veritable embodiment of good fortune and prosperity.
As their sumptuously appointed house and the two large bronze strong-boxes on
display in the atrium attest, the Vettii themselves were wealthy entrepreneurs. Like other
prominent businessmen, Aulus Vettius Conviva was listed as one of the witnesses to loan
transactions in the wax tablets found in the house of the banker Caecilius Iucundus and he
tuentur/anno XIX/ pro parte in/vigul(antes) pro vicin(ia)/una cum magistr(is)/contulerunt.
Text in italics added in year XIX=12/13 CE.
24
Lott 2004, 161-65 and Appendix Nr. 6=CIL 6.283: [Mercuri]o Augusto sacrum mag(istri)
vici/[qui k(alendis) Aug(ustis) primi magister(ium) inier(unt)/N. Lucius N. l(ibertus)
Hermeros/L. Sutorius L. l(ibertus) Antiochus/Q. Clodius Q.Q. l(ibertus) Nicanor.
25
Lott (2004), p. 164 and Appendix Nr. 48 for final dedication AE 1980 54: Veneri
August(ae) sacr(um)/N(umerius) L. Hermeros/Aequitas mag(ister) ter(tium).
26
On honorific cognomina during the Republic: Linderski 1990, 157-64.
11
was also a member of the Augustales, the municipal organization for wealthy freedmen
which provided major benefactions to the town.27 To judge from three inscriptions on
amphorae found in the house that record with precision the storehouse and dolia from which
the wine was drawn, at least a portion of the wealth of the Vettii came from vineyards they
owned outside of Pompeii and from their participation in the wine trade.28 It is probably not
coincidental that grapes, the fruit of the vine, overflow from the basket of fruit to which
Priapus’ phallus points. Equally, as Rostovtzeff pointed out long ago, the scenes of Cupid
wine dealers and of Cupids gathering grapes and pressing them to be found in room q of the
House of the Vettii may have been artful allusions to one portion of the family business
(figure 6).29 Like most men of means, theirs was likely a diversified portfolio, so they may
well have been invested in the other luxury industries represented including Cupid fullers,
goldsmiths, and perfume makers.30 These scenes were displayed at eye level for seated or
reclining guests and would have been playfully appropriate both for the wine drinking that
would have taken place in the evening or the business deals that were cut in room q during
the day.31
27
Andreau 1974, 172, 190, 194, 205, 277. For the Augustales: Ostrow 1985, 64-101 and
D’Arms 2000, 126-44.
28
Day 1932, 190-91 and Table E. See also Andreau 1974, 266-67.
29
M.I. Rostovtzeff The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire 2nd ed. rev. P.M.
Fraser Oxford, 1957, 1998 electronic ed. vol. 1 p. 92. J. Andreau (1974, 229) for an
opposing view that Bacchic motifs are common. True enough, although especially the wine
dealers scene is quite distinctive.
30
Rostovtzeff (1957/1998, 96) also makes this point.
31
Clarke (1991, 214) notes the graffiti on the columns of the peristyle across from entry to
room q and suggests that the Vettii may have met clients there since the house has no
12
Although Pompeii was a port city, we have no evidence to suggest that the Vettii
invested in that most lucrative, but the riskiest of enterprises: seaborne trade.32 This,
however, was yet one more sphere over which the god presided, protecting harbors and
merchant ships. As a Greek inscription from Thera says: “I, Priapus, the Lampsacan, am at
hand to help the city in any way, I who embark and return bringing wealth.”33 Wherever a
profit was to be made, clearly Priapus was the god on which to rely and his richly attired
image guarding the entry to the house simultaneously asserted and insured the wealth of the
Vettii.
Just as Horace, or Catullus, or Martial--or even the young Octavian/Augustus--could
take on the persona of the sexually aggresive rough-hewn rustic Priapus in poetry, so too the
well-endowed opulently clad Priapus at the front door of the Vettii served as an image
tablinum. For the graffiti: Sogliano 1898, cols. 270-71: north portico: second column from
northeast corner column: CHYSEROS, IOSIMUS, OC, CIILIIR FIICITII; second column
from northwest corner column: SALV SAL; west portico middle column: VITALIO VA;
ACTIUS COSSINIAII; MAMMII SVAII; PLURIMA SALUT. De Angelis (2010, 62-73) is
an apposite reading for room q when it was in use as a banqueting space since many of these
goods also functioned in that context. So the possibilities for riffs on what was represented
were many.
32
The notorious fictional freedman Trimalchio in Petronius’ Satyricon combines agricultural
investments and banking with seaborne commerce, as did many real life counterparts. See
D’Arms 1981.
33
IG 12.3.421c=1335 Thera. For translation as well as some fascinating shipwreck evidence
for Priapus as a deity brought on board Roman merchant ships see: Neilson 2002, 248, 24953.
13
parlante broadcasting their financial success in no uncertain terms.34 For freedmen, one other
aspect of Priapus’ story may have made him a particularly evocative choice as their agent. In
several versions of the story, his mother Aphrodite (Venus) abandons him at birth because of
his deformity--his grossly oversized genitals--but shepherds find the infant, raise him, and
establish a cult to his virility. An early second century CE altar in Aquileia dedicated by the
freedman Eupor juxtaposes Venus’ abandonment of the infant Priapus on one side with a
scene of his worship on the other.35 Tales of the varying fates of abandoned infants are as
old as the time of Rome’s founders Romulus and Remus, and by the first century CE,
foundlings were a mainstay for supplying the Roman slave system.36 The origins of Aulus
Vettius Conviva and Aulus Vettius Restitutus are lost to us. They have traditionally been
dubbed brothers, but there is no evidence they were blood relatives. All that their
nomenclature reveals is that they were manumitted by the same individual and therefore were
a part of the same slave familia. Were one or both foundlings? Impossible to know. What
can be said with certainty is that they surrounded themselves with images of heroes and gods
34
For Octavian/Augustus: Martial 11.20. The Octavian poem is true to details of the 40-41
BCE conflict between Octavian and Mark Antony’s wife Fulvia at Perusia and accepted as
his, see Kay 1985 110-14, and Hallett’s classic article on the related obscenities on the slingbullets from the conflict (1977, 151-71). The literature on Priapus in poetry is vast, see
especially Richlin 1992 and O'Connor 1989. For Horace: Sharland 2003, 97-109; Habash
1999, 285-97; Edmunds 2009, 125-31. For Catullus: Uden 2007, 1-26.
35
For the altar: CIL 5.833 In honorem/L Valeri/Nymphodoti et/C. Stati Primigen/et in
memoriam/ C. Stati Hevreti/ Eupor Lib and Museo archeologico di Aquileia Catalogo delle
sculture romane Rome, 1972 Nr. 554, 181. For all literary sources on the birth of Priapus as
well as the altar: M. Olender 1983, 141-64. The most complete version of the birth of
Priapus: Brock 1971, 147-48.
36
Harris 1999, 62-75 and Madden 1996, 109-28.
14
who had been abandoned at birth, but then gone on to accomplish great things, and Priapus
was first among them.37
To freedmen who had themselves undergone the most fundamental of transformations
from being a thing to being a citizen owner of things, Priapus may have been a particularly
strategic representative, for his near-fatal defect--his giant phallus--proved to be his greatest
asset; a laughingstock among the gods, he was an object of worship among men. And I
would argue that it is exactly the same work which this image of Priapus accomplishes for
the Vettii, as it literally strikes a balance between the god’s penis and that overstuffed bag of
coins--between manliness and money. For wealthy freedmen their fortune was their claim to
fame, but, according to every senatorial code of conduct known from Roman literature, an
overt interest in profit was to be disdained. Only agriculture on one’s own estates was
considered an acceptable occupation and other money-making professions were sordid by
comparison.38 Even Roman senators had to maintain a senatorial fortune to remain in rank,
but they engaged in profit-making activities obliquely through a network of freedmen agents
and other businessmen.39 Yet the Vettii have it both ways: Priapus is in origin a rustic
fertility god whose agricultural oversight--as well as the vineyards of the Vettii--are indicated
by the basket of luscious fruit at his feet. Simultaneously, however, he is an urbane sort,
dressed to the nines, and extending in his right hand the scale which brings phallus and
37
In addition to Priapus, those include: Amphion and Zethus in room n; the infant Hercules
in room n (cf. Diodorus Siculus 4.9.6); Telephus (his conception in the Hercules raping Auge
scene room t ); Perseus (his conception Danae and the rain of gold room e); and Paris
(abandoned on Mt. Ida and raised by shepherds, statue as boy hunter in peristyle).
38
Cicero Off. 1.150-151. See D’Arms 1981.
39
Augustus set the census requirement for senators at one million sesterces: Dio 54.17, 3 and
54.26, 3. On the oblique profit-making networks of senators, see D’Arms 1981, esp. 168-71.
15
money bag into balance. Just as the scrappy Priapus of the Carmina Priapea refuses to cover
his prick as decorum requires, asserting it is just as worthy as the weapon of any other god,
so the money bag insists that wealth is an achievement to be celebrated in itself.40 So is this
just one more indicator that the Vettii were tasteless freedmen boors, just like their fictional
counterpart Trimalchio? Certainly not, for the entry corridor of the house of one of
Pompeii’s most prominent freeborn elected officials duovir P. Vedius Siricus featured a
mosaic which read: Salve lucru[m]--welcome profit!41 What is apparent, however, is that it
is high time to call into question the all too ready assumption that senatorial sentiment
gleaned from Roman literature somehow represented a universal for freeborn office-holding
elites. In Pompeii office-holders and successful freedmen alike were a part of larger
community of businessmen, bankers, and traders and this was the audience to whom images
like the Priapus were addressed.
For anyone who handled currency on a regular basis one last playful visual analogy
would have leapt to mind: the balanced scale extended in Priapus’ right hand--minus the
money bag and phallus--exactly mimics the personification of Aequitas on contemporary
imperial coinage (figure 7). Ultimately the most common of the imperial virtue types,
Aequitas made her first full appearance as a reverse under Galba in 69 CE and was continued
40
The money bag is also an attribute of the god of commerce Mercury, another Vettii favorite
as Mercury’s cadeuceus served as Aulus Vettius Conviva’s signet device. The attributes of
Mercury appear in a small vignette just to the right of the Priapus image at the entry --money
bag on the table closest to the image of Priapus. In room e there is also a roundel with a
Cupid riding a ram and extending a plump money bag to the viewer.
41
On P. Vedius Siricus and his house VII 1.25, 46, 47 see Franklin, Jr. 2001, 87-89, 98, 129,
170.
16
by Vespasian and Titus.42 It celebrated the “fairness” of the emperor and his mint in
maintaining the financial system and issuing coins that were true to value. Such standards
were of course those on which business in Pompeii and other cities and towns throughout the
empire were predicated and reason enough perhaps for the Vettii’s appropriation. It may be,
though, that the borrowing was originally in the other direction, since long before Aequitas
became an official virtue of the emperor the maintenance of local standards of weights and
measures in the marketplace had been a priority for local freedmen like N. Lucius Hemeros
Aequitas in the Forum Boarium in 4-5 CE.
Jaunty allusion to the emperor’s own virtues and all, this ribald image of Priapus
weighing in must have inspired an appreciative smile of recognition from every businessman
who saw it, most especially perhaps the Vettii themselves. And this brings us to one final
revelation. Like many houses in Pompeii, the House of the Vettii had both a large main
entrance and next to it a smaller one of lateral access. During the day when the main door
was open passersby could catch a glimpse of the well-appointed atrium and the verdant
peristyle beyond it, but the famous image of Priapus would have been hidden from view by
the right door wing (figure 8). It was only those who entered by the smaller lateral door who
would have seen the image of Priapus directly, quite an arresting epiphany especially for the
first time visitor!43 Presumably it was the Vettii, their familia, and invited guests and
42
Wallace-Hadrill 1981, 20-39; Noreña 2001, esp.157-58; Wallace-Hadrill 1981, 298-323.
As early as 41-42 CE quadrantes of Claudius show a right hand holding scales in balance and
is also likely refers to the mint and a renewal of weights and measures: see MacDowall
1968, 80-86 and Wallace-Hadrill 1981 29-31.
43
Kastenmeier 2001, 301-11. This is a thorough archaeological analysis of the entryway and
the cuttings of the door sill. Kastenmeier’s discovery alters John Clarke’s notion of the
17
business associates who would have had this experience--an in-joke if ever there was one.
For others the god would have remained invisible and only the blessings of his presence in
the form of the bronze strong boxes in the atrium or the plantings and fountains and statuary
of the peristyle gardens would have been perceived.
Consummately orchestrated in every detail, the unique image of Priapus at the lateral
entry to the house of the Vettii transformed the last god into the first, much as the owners
themselves had metamorphosed from slaves to successful businessmen. Taking the guise of
one of the emperor’s own virtues, this Priapus equally vaunted the importance of the Vettii’s
claim to fame: their monetary worth. On stage for a select audience this image marshalled
all the humorous assertive power of Priapus which was performed each time a visitor entered
that small lateral door and discovered the god. Varro claimed that “Obscaenum ‘foul’ is said
to be from scaena ‘stage’” and such an etymology seems particularly apt in this instance.44
Gloriously and outrageously, Priapus was the self-professed obscene god extraordinaire, but I
would argue that the Roman sense of obscene and ours are not necessarily one and the same
and that too must factor into the interpretation of this image.45
Priapic axis of the house. Clarke attempts to link the image of Priapus at the entry with an
ithyphallic marble statue found dismantled in the house which Clarke reconstructs in the
peristyle. See Clarke (1991, 212) and for a color reconstruction, Clarke 2003, 106, fig. 72.
44
Varro LL 7.96.
45
For Priapus as obscene god see C.P. 1: “Dear reader though my uncombed verse be queer,
unfurl at once that supercilious sneer. Both Vesta and Apollo’s twin have fled, and she who
sprang forth from her father’s head. Here stands instead the openly obscene, red garden god,
more membered than the mean. So either draw the tunic down I’m wearing or else read on (I
notice that you’re staring).” Carminis incompti lusus lecture procaces, conveniens Latio
pone supercilium. Non soror hoc habitat Phoebi, non Vesta sacello, nec quae de patrio vertice
18
First of all, for Romans at all social levels, humor and the obscene were inextricably
intertwined. On the one hand, as a novus homo (new man) in the Roman Senate, Cicero
could pontificate in his De officiis ("On duties") -- ostensibly written for the instruction of his
son -- that “the distinction between the elegant and the vulgar jest is an easy matter: the one
kind, if well timed (for instance, in hours of mental relaxation), is becoming to the most
dignified person; the other is unfit for any gentleman, if the subject is indecent and the words
obscene.”46 In his letters to his friends, however, Cicero bragged about the sexual jokes he
has made in public and bantered with his genial friend L. Papirius Petus about the Stoic
doctrine of nothing being obscene when the potential for obscenity is everywhere as they
discuss the relative merits of the use of the archetypal obscenity mentula or the more
reserved penis when referring to the male organ. Even an eloquent consular, Cicero
maintains, appeared to say the most vulgar of words--landica (clitoris)--simply by happening
to juxtapose the second syllable of illam with the word dicam.47
nata dea est, sed ruber hortorum custos, membrosior aequo, qui tectum nullis vestibus inguen
habet. Aut igitur tunicam parti praetende tegendae, aut quibus hanc oculis aspicis, ista lege.
46
Cicero Off. 1.104.
47
Cicero Att. 2.1.5 and Quintilian 6.3.75 for sexual jokes. Letter to Petus ad Fam. 9.222-23:
“I remember an eloquent consular using these words in the Senate, Hanc culpam maiorem an
illam dicam? ['Shall I say that this or that was the greater fault?'] Could he have said
anything more obscene? ‘Not at all,’ you say, ‘for that is not what he meant.’ So then there is
no obscenity in the word; but I have explained that there is none in the thing; therefore there
is none anywhere.” Landica also appears on the sling bullets from the 40-41 BCE siege of
Perusia: Hallett 1977, 154.
19
In terms of visual contexts too the differences between the obscene in the modern
world and in the Roman could also not be more marked. For any man, woman, or child in
first century CE, the phallus was a ubiquitous presence, from the phalluses incised on paving
stones marking the way to the nearest brothel to the most inventive of bronze doorbells
featuring winged phalluses hung with bells (tintinnabula), so the well-endowed Vettii
Priapus would have had a lot of competition.48 His oversized male member surely still
commanded attention, but the balance scales, money bag, and basket of fruit would have as
well and the unique ensemble savored as a consummate realization of the obscene in its
spatial dimension: the private made public precisely at that liminal point of entry into the
house. By contrast, in a far more restrictive visual environment, the Vettii Priapus spent
most of the twentieth century imprisoned in that slatted box and the notorious Gabinetto
Segreto in the Naples Museo Archeologico Nazionale, which houses much of the other erotic
material from Pompeii, has only been open to most of the public since 2000. In matters of
interpretation, I think, that latter-day sense of the forbidden has lingered and has made it far
too easy to continue to read the Vettii Priapus as just one more instance of the atrociously
bad taste of wealthy Roman freedmen.
Roman literary sources of the first century CE are universal in their condemnation of
millionaire freedmen. Petronius’ fictional Trimalchio is of course the most infamous, but
there were numerous real-life examples as well. For instance, the usually mild-mannered
Pliny the Elder declares that all those in the imperial era who “w[on] lasting reputation for
wealth” were “liberated slaves,” but then, so as to assure his readers that he himself is a
gentleman of good taste, he adds snidely “it is a pleasant task to stigmatize insatiable
48
Grant 1975, 31, 140-42; A. Mulas photographer.
20
covetousness of that sort.”49 Even if this was the aristocratic pretense, however, Pliny’s good
friend the emperor Vespasian (69-79 CE) loved money and was known by the nickname “the
Muleteer” for at one point in his career having had to mortgage his estates and go into large
scale trading in mules in order to rebuild the fortune necessary to maintain his societal rank.50
His father, a municipal man from Reate, had been a tax-collector and a banker, and even as
emperor Vespasian “never tried to conceal his former lowly condition, often even parading
it,” just as he continued to jest about sex and his own acquisitiveness.51 Had Vespasian ever
visited the Vettii, I am certain he would have laughed out loud at the wonderful conceit of
their Priapus and pointed out that the joke was at least a double or triple one since both
testicles and penis could be described as a weight (pondus)!52 Clearly when it came to the
importance of sex and money, the emperor Vespasian and the freedmen Vettii were on the
same page, recognizing that the membership in the ruling oligarchy was an ever-shifting one
and that in essence Rome was a plutocracy in which wealthy freedmen were players.
Senatorials made a pretense of distancing themselves from both obscenity and profit-making,
while participating in them indirectly. By contrast, the utter bluntness of the unique Vettii
Priapus is as effective in its owning the power of the obscene as are any of the poetic Priapic
lambasts. The very existence of such a painting--as sophisticated as it is outlandish-furthermore suggests there might be some point in attempting to read those vituperative texts
49
Pliny NH 33.134. See Petersen 2006, 6-10 on her concept of “Trimalchio vision.” Even
Petersen, however, takes it as a given that freedmen were still stigmatized by being barred
from election to public office (20, 125), which perpetuates the literary freedmen-as-lesser
model.
50
Suetonius Ves.16 (loved money) and 4.3 (Muleteer). See also Shaw 2007, 132-38.
51
Suetonius Ves. 2-3 (his father); 12 (never conceals lowly origins); 22-23 (jokes).
52
Adams 1982, 51, 71 and 71, n. 2.
21
aimed at the appalling tastelessness of freedmen as evidence in themselves of the threat that
wealthy freedmen--especially imperial freedmen--posed to senatorials contending to maintain
rank. Accusations of tastelessness were not incontrovertible, after all. We owe the
preservation of Octavian/Augustus’ wanton ditty to Martial’s making a case for his own
erotic verses as an example of old-fashioned Roman frankness (simplicitas) newly redefined
to include obscenity as well as plain-speaking.53 The Vettii could have made much the same
claim for their inimitable Priapus, at one and the same time the perfect apotropaic device for
warding off envy as well as the most straightforward of advertisements for the family
fortune.
Just how high the stakes might be in the equation of money and manliness posited by
the Vettii Priapus can best be teased out in a comparison to none other than that most
outrageous fictional freedman of all: Trimalchio in Petronius’ Satyricon. As John Bodel has
noted, Trimalchio and his freedmen dinner guests are obsessed with hard cash, they “inhabit
a world where value is conceived of and expressed by its precise equivalent in coin.”54
Toward the end of Trimalchio’s interminable dinner party when the very drunk and very
maudlin freedman is narrating his own transformation from frog to king, he sums up his
philosophy of life in humble economic terms: “Believe me: have a penny, you are worth a
penny; if you have, you will be regarded as having.”55 But the next moment Trimalchio is
calling for his grave-clothes and staging his own mock funeral, so he is as ludicrous and-from an aristocratic perspective--ultimately as dismissible a freedman “Other” as ever. Oh so
53
Martial 10.22. See also Lavigne 2008, 275-311, esp. 289-91. See also Young, in this
volume.
54
Bodel 2003, 271-282, esp. 277.
55
Petronius 77.6: Credite mihi: assem habeas, assem valeas; habes, habeberis.
22
comfortingly different from the ruling elite. Or was he? As early as the second century BCE,
Lucilius--the inventor of Roman satire, property holder, member of the equestrian order, and
friend of the powerful Scipio Aemilianus--went to the heart of the matter when he
characterized those seeking election to public office in terms very similar to Trimalchio’s :
“Gold and going the rounds for votes are a token of a man and his manliness. See that you
hold so much, are yourself so much, and are held to be worth so much.”56 Whether or not the
ruling elite deigned to mention it, money and manliness went together. Fully aware of how
the world operated in every arena, the actual freedmen Vettii in selecting the wonderfully
salacious image of Priapus weighing in as their entry sentinel chose to make blatantly visible
to a select audience one of the operating principles of Rome’s ineffable plutocracy while at
the same time confirming that their family was worth its weight in gold.
Figures
1. Priapus on wall section north of the atrium door House of the Vettii (VI 15, 1),
Pompeii 62-79 CE (photo author).
2. Entry door area House of the Vettii (VI 15,1), Pompeii 62-79 CE (photo author).
56
Lucilius frag. 1194-95: Aurum atque ambitio specimen virtutis virique est. Tantum habeas
tantum ipse sies tantique habearis.
23
3. Sacro-idyllic landscape with rough hewn Priapus at far right from north wall,
cubiculum 16 Villa of Agrippa Postumus, Boscotrecase late 1st c. BCE (Naples,
Museo Archeologico)
4. Weighing of bread, west frieze Tomb of the Baker Eurysaces, Rome late 1st c. BCE
(after Petersen 2003, 233, fig.7).
5.
Cupid goldsmith with scales on worktable detail from Cupid and Psyche goldsmith
scene, east wall, northern portion room q, House of the Vettii (VI 15, 1), Pompeii 6279 CE (photo author).
6. Cupid wine sellers from west wall, northern portion room q, House of the Vettii (VI
15, 1), Pompeii 62-79 CE (photo author).
7. Aureus of Vespasian 70 CE Roman mint: obverse laureate Vespasian; reverse
Aequitas standing holding scale in right hand.
8. Reconstruction of entry House of the Vettii (VI 15, 1), Pompeii 62-79 CE (after
Kastenmeier 2001, Abb. 10, 309).
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