Mutunus Tutunus

During preliminary marriage rites, Roman brides are supposed to have straddled the phallus of Mutunus to prepare themselves for intercourse, according to Church Fathers who interpreted this act as an obscene loss of virginity.

[7] Lucilius offers the earliest recorded instance of both forms: at laeva lacrimas muttoni[8] absterget amica ("A girlfriend wipes away Mutto's tears — his left hand, that is"),[9] and the derivative mūtōnium.

Through examining these connections, Robert Palmer concluded that the old cult of Mutunus was merged with that of Father Liber, who was variously identified with or shared attributes with Jupiter, Bacchus, and Lampsacene Priapus.

Palmer further conjectured that it was Mutunus, in the form of Liber, to whom Julius Caesar made sacrifice on the day of his assassination, receiving the ill omens that the conspirator Decimus Brutus urged him to ignore.

In Palmer's view, the evident ill favor of the god gave Augustus license to reform the cult during his program of religious revivalism that often disguised radical innovations.

[21] Varro seems to have associated Titinus with the Titii, in an etymological collocation that included Titus Tatius, the royal Sabine contemporary of Romulus; the Curia Titia; or the tribus of the Titienses, one of the three original tribes of Rome.