The Winged Phallus in Pompeii

To invoke all its magical power, the winged phallus must be reproduced, immense, enormous, propitiatory, capable of warding off evil spirits, able to provide protection to the home and workplaces, a force of nature against evil, punishing demons, and the fascinum : the negative power of the dry eye.

Winged phalli , twisted phalli , phalli resembling animals, phalli intertwined with phalli, phalli grafted onto phalli. And it truly seems like an endless race, a real obsession, to reproduce 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 the desire to possess a talisman against that oculus malignus , always lurking and already codified in its essence by Pliny the Elder ; a centuries-old source of human suffering. It is for this reason that, as Varro recounts in De lingua latina , a bulla containing a phallic-shaped talisman was hung around children's necks against the evil eye .

The imagination of Roman artisans often tended to take flight, and the magical power of a symbol is also seen in its ability to give it enchanted or grotesque connotations — 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 (eds.), Reflections of Rome. Roman Empire and Baltic barbarians , 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 the sky, resting on 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 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 because 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 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, 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 thus 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 harder to understand but remains in some expressions or symbols such as the winged phallus.

In Italian the penis is called “uccello” (bird), just as in English “cock”, in American English “canary”, in Spanish “polla”.

Precisely to emphasize its fertility and creative power, an enormous 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 people. The importance of this symbol came 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 crops and harvests took on 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 countryside, and then carried into the city itself. […] In this way, it seems, the god Liber was to be appeased, to ensure the growth of seeds and repel the enchantment (fascinatio) of the fields.” [2]

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

Purinega tie duro (from Latin: “Difficult to punish”) 1470-1480 (approx.). British Museum

used for two centuries. This witch persecution 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 one think of witches who collect virile members, sometimes even in considerable numbers, twenty or thirty, and place them in bird nests while 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 to regain his integrity he went to a witch. She ordered him to climb a tree and allowed him to take what he wanted from a nest where many members were found. And since he had grabbed a large one, the witch told him: 'do not take that one!' " and added that it belonged to a commoner".

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 festival of the holy doctors Cosmas and Damian , phallic symbols of various types and sizes were sold in large quantities . These objects served a propitiatory and auspicious function, especially for the women attending the festival, often to remedy their infertility .

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 and worn as an amulet for protection against bad luck and the evil eye, that is, envy, jealousy, and malice. It is very common both in Neapolitan homes and in shops and restaurants.

Belief holds that if the horn breaks it means it has neutralized the evil eye or bad luck, in short, it has had an effect.