Note 89 — FIRST SECTION.
Reading edition
In the Codex Coburgensis the Priapeia begin with the following words: P. Virgilii Maronis Mantuani poetae clarissimi Priapi carmen incipit feliciter, (the Song of Priapus by Publius Virgilius Maro, of Mantua, the renowned poet, begins happily). Comp. Bruckhusius Notes to Tibullus bk. IV. Eleg. 14. At any rate the majority of the poems belong to the golden age of Roman literature. For readers of the old poets it may perhaps not be out of place here to remark that Priapus as Cultor Hortorum (Patron of Gardens) is not unfrequently mentioned with an equivocal meaning, if indeed he has not come into the garden entirely through misunderstanding. So we read in Priapeia, Ode 4.,
Quod metis hortus habet, sumas impune licebit; Si dederis nobis, quod tuus hortus habet,
(What my garden has thou mayest take at will, if only thou give to us what thine possesses) and in the “Anechomenos” of Apuleius.
Thyrsumque pangant hortulo in Cupidinis,
(Let them plant the thyrsus (Bacchic staff) in the garden-plat of Cupid). Similarly Lucretius, Bk. IV. 1100., says, ut muliebria conserat arva, (to sow the woman’s seed-fields), and Virgil, Georgics III. 136., speaks of, genitali arvo, (the seed-field of generation). Possibly in this direction may be found a better interpretation of the, irriguo nihil est elutius horto, (There is nought more insipid than a new-watered garden), of Horace, Satires Bk. II. 4. 16. The Greeks used in the same way their word κῆπος (garden), e. g. Diogenes Laertius, II. 12, and Hesychius explains it by τὸ ἐφήβιον γυναικεῖον (the female organ of puberty). Similarly in Aristophanes καλὸν ἔχουσα τὸ πεδίον, (having the plain beautiful). The Koran also says, Thy Wife is thy field!