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More on the ‘Priapeum’ of Jacobus Cremonensis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 July 2016
Extract
In 1969 Ian Thomson published the texts of two humanist poems with a selective commentary. One of them, Item 144 of the Toledo Cathedral Library MS 100.42, fol. 233r (henceforth T, following Thomson's designation), which also appears as Item 68 in Cod. Vaticanus Barberinianus latinus 42, fol. 328r–v (henceforth simply B, again following Thomson), is a 20-line work attributed to the lawyer Jacobus Cremonensis salaciously describing an erotic contest between Priapus and the nymph Dione. Although Thomson's article appeared two decades ago, I have only recently come upon it, and wish here, if somewhat belatedly, to reply to several of Thomson's textual and other notes on this Priapic poem.
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References
1 In Two Unpublished Items from Toledo MS 100.42,’ Traditio 25 (1969) 411–16. Subsequent references to Thomson will be made in the text by page number only.Google Scholar
2 Phalli, with faces or facial features had long been part of Graeco-Roman erotica. Penes, with the glans exposed, on which is painted a staring eye, appear on fifth-century Athenian vases. In satiric and epigrammatic literature a one-eyed penis can be a symbolum salacitatis (e.g., Mart. 9.37.10: mentula lusca; cf. 2.33.3). A whimsically fashioned phallus, on whose glans is a face complete with a mustache, is depicted in Dierk Wortmann, ‘Ein phallisches Priap-Rhyton aus Neuss,’ Bonner Jahrbücher 167 (1967) 283.Google Scholar
3 Cf. Priap. 48, where Priapus, having had a spontaneous ejaculation, compares his semen's texture to dew and hoarfrost.Google Scholar
4 Epistolario 1.214–18 (Letter 59).Google Scholar
5 See Hausmann, F. R., ‘Carmina Priapea,’ in Catalogus translationum et commentariorum edd. F. Cranz, E. and Kristeller, P. O., IV (Washington 1980) 423–50.Google Scholar