nd viticulture, of sailors and
fishermen, and in some places a god of war)[731] it may be surmised that
he was originally a local deity, charged with the care of all human
interests, in an agricultural community the patron of fertility, and at
some time, and under circumstances unknown to us, especially connected
with sexual life. Whatever his origin, his cult spread over Greece, he
was identified with certain Greek deities, licentious popular festivals
naturally attached themselves to his worship, and his name became a
synonym of sexual passion. In the later time the pictorial
representations of him became grossly indecent; his cult was an outlet
for popular and artistic license.[732] On the other hand, in the higher
thought he was made the representative of the production of universal
animal life, and rose to the rank of a great god.[733]

+403+. The Greek deities with whom Priapos was oftenest identified were
Dionysos and Hermes--both gods of fertility. They, as great gods of such
a nature, would naturally absorb lesser phallicistic figures; but they
were specialized in other directions, and Priapos remained as the
distinctest embodiment of phallicistic conceptions. Other such figures,
as Pan, Titans, Sileni, and Satyrs, were beings connected with fields,
woods, and mountains, products of a low form of civilization, to whom
realistic forms and licentious festivals naturally attached themselves.

+404+. Rome had its native ithyphallic deity, Mutunus Tutunus (or
Mutinus), a naive symbol of generative power.[734] Little is known of
his cult beyond the fact that he figured in marriage ceremonies in a
peculiarly indecent way; by later writers he is sometimes identified
with Priapos.[735] The Romans adopted the cult of Priapos as well as
other phallicistic forms of worship; his original character appears in
his role of patron of gardens.

+405+. Phalli as amulets occur in all parts of the world; as symbols
and perhaps as abodes of deities, they have been held potent to ward off
all evils.[736]

+406+. The female organ (_yoni_, _kteis_) appears frequently in figures
of female deities, ordinarily without special significance, religious or
other, except as a sign of sex. In the rare cases in which it is the
object of religious veneration (as in India) it is subordinated to the
phallos[737]--there is little or no evidence for the existence of a
yonistic cult proper.[738] Female deities act as fully formed
anthropomorphic P