The Winged Phallus in Pompeii

To invoke all its magical power, the Phallus must be reproduced, immense, enormous, propitiatory, capable of warding off evil spirits, capable of giving protection to the home and workplaces, a force of nature against evil, scourging demons, and the fascinum : the negative power of the evil eye.

Always phalluses , twisted phalluses , phalluses in the shape of animals, phalluses intertwined with phalluses, phalluses grafted onto phalluses. And it truly seems like an endless chase, a real mania, that of reproducing this protective symbol on a thousand objects, hung everywhere.

Religion and superstition intertwine in a world where everything seems to revolve around sex, which, as a source of life and joy, is for the Romans a positive, magical phenomenon, sometimes endowed with a spiritual power that guides life and, through reproduction, transcends it.

We would define practical superstition or simple magic as that desire to possess a talisman against that evil eye , always lurking and codified, in its essence already by Pliny the Elder ; a centuries-old source of tribulation for human beings. It is therefore for this reason that, as Varro recounts in De lingua latina , a bulla containing a phallic-shaped amulet was hung around children's necks against the evil eye .

The imagination of Roman artisans was often inclined to take flight, and the magical power of a symbol is also seen in its ability to confer enchanted or grotesque connotations — the wings, in this case.

For those who want to learn more:
Eva Björklund, Lena Hejll, Luisa Franchi dell’Orto, Stefano De Caro, Eugenio La Rocca (editors), Reflections of Rome. Roman Empire and Barbarians of the Baltic, exhibition catalog (Milan, AltriMusei at Porta Romana, from March 1 to June 1, 1997), L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1997.

Megan Cifarelli, Laura Gawlinski (eds.), What shall I say of clothes? Theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of dress in antiquity , American Institute of Archaeology, 2017.

Carla Conti, Diana Neri, Pierangelo Pancaldi (eds.), Pagans and Christians. Forms and attestations of religiosity in the ancient world in central Emilia, Aspasia editions, 2001.

Jacopo Ortalli, Diana Neri (eds.), Divine Images. Devotion and Divinity in the Daily Life of the Romans, Archaeological Evidence from Emilia Romagna , exhibition catalog (Castelfranco Emilia, Civic Museum, from December 15, 2007 to February 17, 2008), All’Insegna del Giglio, 2017.

Adam Parker, Stuart McKie (eds), Material approaches to Roman magic. Occult objects and supernatural substances, Oxbow Books, 2018.
Varone, Erotica Pompeiana (Love inscriptions on the walls of Pompeii) , L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2002.

In the most famous depiction of the Christian God, Michelangelo's Creation, God and Adam are in heaven, resting on the clouds.

Reaching the sky was impossible for most living beings on earth until just 100 years ago. It is therefore clear how for much of the cultures developed over the centuries , the sky was seen as the place where what could only be imagined resided.

The only ones able to access the sky, this place considered supernatural, were the birds .

Birds, since the Bronze Age, have been considered capable of connection with the divine . The divination of birds was their supposed ability to provide elements to foresee the future. The flight of birds, their appearance in dreams or at particular moments could contain omens and be interpreted to make predictions .

The ability to fly gave birds a special character , otherworldly as it allowed them access to a world inaccessible to all other living beings on earth.

In Greco-Roman religion , we find the attribute of wings in the God Hermes/Mercury as the messenger of the gods , the one who connected the sky with the real world. Cupid, the son of Venus, used wings to reach humans and make them fall in love by shooting his arrows.

The symbolism of wings extended to Christian iconography , where angels are men with wings, acting as intermediaries between God and humanity. The archangel Gabriel, for example, brought the message of Jesus' birth to Mary. Even the owl, an animal sacred to the goddess Juno, is today a symbol of good luck.

Today , we have lost that perception of the sky as an unknown, magical, divine, inaccessible place and therefore a place to imagine the Gods of Olympus, paradise, the Christian God, the deceased. The expression " has flown to heaven " is linked to the need to identify a place "other" than the earth, the everyday life of all mortals.

After the invention of airplanes , this identification of the sky as the seat of the divine is more difficult to understand but remains in some expressions or symbols such as the Phallus.

In Italian the penis is called "bird", just as in English "cock", in American "canary", in Spanish "polla".

Precisely to emphasize its fertility and creative power, an Phallus is an attribute of Priapus , God of fields and harvests in Greco-Roman religion.

Phallic representations were placed at the entrances of fields , both to gain divine favor and to ward off thieves and ill-intentioned individuals. The importance of this symbol derived from its association with fertility and the protection of the harvest, a fundamental concept in an era when agriculture was the foundation of society.

In agriculture, being heavily influenced by unpredictable weather events, there was great attention to the effects of good or bad luck . For this reason, the attribute of the God of the harvest and crops assumed a very important role in ensuring good harvests. Phallic symbols were mandatory at the entrances of fields in Roman times. Even today, it is common to see huge horns protecting the countryside, direct descendants of the Phallus of Priapus .

with great honor at the crossroads of the fields, and then transported to the same city. [...] In this way, it seems, the god Liber was to be propitiated, to ensure the growth of the seeds and to repel the enchantment (fascinatio) of the fields.”. [2]

At that time, although considered obscene by the Christian clergy, fascinum continued to be used to ward off evil. They were worn as protective amulets, particularly by children and soldiers (at the time the groups with the highest mortality).

Purinega tie duro (from Latin: "Difficult to punish") 1470-1480 (circa). British Museum

was used for two centuries. This witch-hunting manual contained references to phallic symbolism, highlighting how superstition was still deeply rooted in the popular culture of the time.

The association between bird and Phallus is also found in this manual which explains: "finally, what should be thought of witches who collect virile members, sometimes even in considerable numbers, even twenty or thirty, and put them in bird nests eating oats or other things as has been seen done by many and as is commonly rumored? A man in fact reported that he had lost his member and that to recover his integrity he went to a witch. She ordered him to climb a tree and allowed him to take whatever he wanted from a nest in which there were many members. And since he had his hands on a large one, the witch told him: 'do not take that one!' " and added that it belonged to someone from the people."

In the same letter, Hamilton testifies to the survival at the end of the 18th century of the Cult of Priapus in the city of Isernia and its fusion with the Christian cult . During the annual feast of the holy doctors Cosmas and Damian , phallic symbols of various shapes and sizes were sold in large quantities . These objects had a propitiatory and auspicious function, especially for the women attending the feast, often to remedy their sterility .

Women with flying phalluses, illustration from the Pompeii tourist album, c.1880. Image courtesy of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction.

The horn is given as a gift and worn as an amulet for protection against bad luck and the evil eye, that is, against envy, jealousy, and malice. It is very common and frequently found both in the homes of Neapolitans and in shops and restaurants.

The belief is that if the horn breaks it means it has neutralized the evil eye or bad luck, in short, it has worked.