Sportive Epigrams on Priapus (in prose) (66-70)

Thou who, lest thou behold the virile sip, hence withdrawest, as becomes a maiden of modesty: forsooth, unless what thou fearest to see, in thy bowels to have thou longest

Let the first syllable of PEnelope be followed by the first of DIdo, the first of CAmus by that of REmus.[*] What is made from these thou to me, when caught in my garden, O thief, shalt give; by this punishment thy fault is atoned for.

If I, a rustic, shall seem to say anything unlearnedly, pardon me: I gather not knowledge from books, I gather apples. But, untaught, I have often listened to my master, who constantly reads here, and have learnt by heart the Homeric vocabulary. He calls psolen [the virile member], what we call psoloenta. What we call culum [the fundament], he culeon. And surely, unless an unclean thing be called smerdalos [merde], the mentule of a sodomist is smerdalea

What? had not the Trojan mentule gladdened the Spartan coynte he would have had no theme for his song.[*] If the mentule of the descendant of Tantalus[*] had not been of renown, the aged Chryses would have had naught of complaint. The same [mentule] deprived his ally of a tender mistress,[*] and she whom the grandson of Achilles possessed it desired for itself. Achilles chaunted his woeful dirge to the strains of the Pelethronian lyre, himself more 'rigid' than its strings. His ire, thus aroused, verily unfolds the famous Iliad: this was the origin of that immortal poem. The subject of the other [the Odyssey] is the wandering of the crafty Ulysses. If you would know the truth, love inspired this also. Hence is given [to Ulysses] a root from which a golden blossom springs: which, when called moly [by Homer], moly means mentule.[*] Whence we read that Circe and Calypso, daughter of Atlas, bore children by the mighty implement of the Dulichian hero; and the daughter of Alcinous [Nausicaa] marvelled that his member could scarcely be covered by a leafy branch. Yet he hastened to his little old woman, and all his thoughts were centred in thy coynte, Penelope. Thou who keepest so chaste that in the meantime thou givest banquets and thine house is filled with futterers. And, that of these thou might'st ascertain which wight was the most vigorous, with these words spoken, thou art asking the nerve-extended crew: 'No man stretched his bow-string[*] better than my Ulysses, whether 'twas by reason of his side-muscles or of his skill. Who being dead, do ye now stretch forth yours. Thus shall I see if there be a man like unto him; that that man be mine.' With such a treaty, I could have Pleased thee, Penelope: but at that time I was not yet made.

When the sweetness of the fig shall come into thy mind and thou shalt long to stretch forth thine hand hither, glance mindfully on me, O thief, and calculate what weight of mentule will be voided by thee