Introduction
Priapus is a minor god of fertility, associated especially with gardens, orchards, livestock and male generative power, a son of Dionysus and Aphrodite. He is depicted with permanently and exaggeratedly enlarged genitals, an image both comic and apotropaic (protective through shocking or startling effect), and small statues of him were commonly placed in Greek and Roman gardens as guardian figures.
Family
Origin and appearance
Different traditions offer various explanations for Priapus's unusual, ugly appearance, generally attributing it to a curse placed on his mother Aphrodite by a jealous Hera during her pregnancy, punishing her for her many affairs by ensuring her child would be born deformed and grotesque rather than beautiful like herself.
Role as protector
Statues and images of Priapus, showing him with his characteristic exaggerated form, were commonly placed in gardens, vineyards and orchards throughout the Greek and, especially, Roman world, functioning both as a scarecrow-like deterrent to thieves and birds and as a genuine fertility charm meant to encourage abundant crops and livestock.
Later literary tradition
Priapus became a particularly prominent, often comic and deliberately crude figure in later Hellenistic and especially Roman poetry, including a surviving collection of short, humorous poems (the Priapea) written in his voice, warning off potential garden-thieves with often obscene threats, reflecting his position as a lower, more folk-religious and less solemn deity than the major Olympians.