Priapea 68

The eighty poems lack a unified narrative, but share Priapus, an ithyphallic god of fertility worshiped in both Ancient Hellenic and Roman religions, as by turns a speaker and subject.

While the Priapeia's author is unknown, Franz Bücheler has claimed that the poems are Augustan in style, and probably were the work of a single writer in the circle of Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, a Roman general and art enthusiast who, "like other distinguished men of that age, occupied himself with amusements of this kind".

[2] Priapeia 68 considers the events of the Iliad and the Odyssey from the point of view of a wooden statue of Priapus, a common sight in Roman gardens as a protector of fruits and a symbol of fertility.

According to the poem, lust, sexual aggression, and male arousal, themes often associated with Priapus, are the driving forces behind such plot points as the abduction of Helen of Troy, Penelope's faithfulness, and Odysseus (Ulixes in Latin, whence Ulysses)'s entanglements with mortal and divine women in the course of his homecoming.

The statue argues that the memory of her husband Odysseus' "fine tool" left Penelope reluctant to settle for the less-impressive suitors courting her, but also attracted the attentions of women—Circe, Calypso, and Nausicaa—for both good and ill in the course of the poem.

If bloody Agamemnon's prick had been less stout, He'd given old Chryses damn nowt to moan about; Nor would he then have snatched the maiden from his friend, And she'd have been Achilles' own until the end: Who now upon his Pelethronian lyre must sing A woeful tune, himself stretched tenser than its string.

Yet, all the same, to his old woman back he goes: His mind is in your cunt, Penelope, who chose To remain true, yet you’d invited many a guest, So with a crowd of would-be fuckers you were blessed; The idea being, I dare say, to find out who Was best at doing it of all that eager crew.