A mosaic of a young man holding his erect penis has been found in a Roman toilet in Turkey. But portraying the male member is a tradition that stretches much further back in human history When excavations began at the ancient Roman city of Pompeii in the 18th century, the place turned out to be full of penises. The ancient art preserved under ash from the 79 AD eruption of Vesuvius was so rich in willies that the English antiquarian Richard Payne Knight argued for the existence of an ancient fertility cult there. After all, there was one still alive in southern Italy at the time. His 1786 book An Account of the Remains of the Worship of Priapus has an engraved frontispiece showing an array of contemporary wax phalluses made as votive offerings. More than 200 years later, the priapism of the ancient world can still astound us. Archaeologists have uncovered a Roman public toilet in southern Turkey with some filthy and funny floor decorations. As they hitched up their togas or reached for sponge on a stick, users of this men’s loo could look down at a mosaic of a young man holding his cock. He is labelled in the mosaic as Narcissus, who in Greek myth fell in love with his own reflection and wasted away gazing at it. Here, his attention is more focused: he’s obsessed with his own erection. As he plays with it, he looks sideways to reveal a ludicrous phallic nose. “Narcissus, what are you doing in that _latrina_?” his _mater_ might be demanding from outside the door, in a gag that anticipates Portnoy’s Complaint by around 1,800 years. Continue reading...
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