t. It was
thought to prevent vice and preserve the voice of prophets, singers,
etc. A seventeenth-century traveler, Walter Schultze of Haarlem, is
quoted, who describes an ascetic sect in Persia who renounced wine,
lived on gifts, and foreswore marriage. They were infibulated with a
ring.[1549]

+475. Was the phallus offensive?+ For more than two thousand years the
most obscene figure we know was used by the clown in popular farce and
by athletes as an emblem of their profession. It raised a laugh, but was
not otherwise noticed. An interesting question arises whether there ever
was any protest against it, or any evidence that anybody thought it
offensive. The passage in Aristophanes' _Clouds_ (530) has been so
interpreted. It appears, however, that in that passage the author is
comparing his comedy with that of others. He has admitted, he says, no
low tricks appealing to vulgar tastes, no phallus which would make the
boys laugh, no lascivious dance, no scurrilous stories, and no
"knock-down business." This is not a criticism of the phallus on grounds
of obscenity, but on grounds of buffoonery. In the _Acharnians_ (243 and
259) are matter-of-fact references to the phallus worn by the actor, as
he might have referred to his mantle. Other cases occur which are not so
outspoken. In the _Lysistrata_ the mention of the phallus in connection
with the motive of the play is of the last degree of vulgarity. We
cannot find that any Greeks, Romans, or Byzantines protested against
these exhibitions of the phallus, which to us are so obscene. The
_mimus_ was the lowest and most popular kind of theatrical exhibition,
and it was in it that the use of the phallus was most constant. Even
Christian preachers who denounced the _mimus_ as demoralizing, and who
specified in detail what they found objectionable in it, never mention
the display of obscene things. All people were accustomed to the phallus
as the archaic symbol of the servants of Dionysus.[1550] Christian
preachers would have made no allowance for it on that account,--rather
the contrary,--and they would not have refrained from objecting to it on
account of the archaic, or artistic, or traditional element, if they had
disapproved of it. It must be that everybody was indifferent to it.

The twin pillars which were common in front of Semitic temples and which
stood before the temple at Jerusalem are interpreted as phalli.[1551]

+476. Phallus as amulet.+ At Rome the phallus was