In rural districts, shrines dedicated to Priapus defied the spread of Christianity, while phallic forms, in marble and stone, adorned public buildings, baths, columns, churches. Priapus, to some extent, thus went underground. He became a furtive and then an obsolescent and forgotten figure: but in Switzerland and in Sweden, in Provence and in Germany, Priapus clung tenaciously, if only in an etymological sense. For Friday, Friga’s day, is merely a Teutonic or Anglo-Saxon form of the Day of Priapus. Strange how the antique charms and periapts, the old Roman fascina, were still suspended from the necks of children and women: often without any awareness of the actual significance of the talisman, but just as frequently, until late into the fourteenth century at least, ecclesiastical ordinances and prohibitions made it evident that there was official knowledge of the priapic survival. * * * * * Among the ancient Chaldeans, Assyrians, and Babylonians, the erotic cult was dedicated to the fertility deities Ishtar and Bel and Sin. Ishtar was the Mesopotamian Aphrodite: a goddess of love and at the same time a warrior deity. Bel is Baal-Peor, the phallic deity, while Sin is the moon divinity. * * * * * Aphrodite, as a universal goddess, with universal erotic functions that embrace all humanity, all elements of the cosmos, appears in different regions and centuries under a variety of names. She is Aphrodite Callipygos and she is Aphrodite Anosia: Aphrodite Peribaso and Aphrodite Anadyomene and Aphrodite Hetaira. Sometimes she is designated with reference to her beauty, or to her amatory functions, or to her epichorial association with temple worship dedicated to her person, or to the suppliants whom she intimately protects. She is thus Aphrodite Pandemos and Aphrodite Porne. She is Aphrodite Trymalitis and Aphrodite Stratonikis. She is Aphrodite Pontia and Aphrodite Urania. Then she becomes, retaining her essential character but merely transferring her rituals, Venus Fisica and Venus Caelesiis and Venus Erycian. She is the Cytherean and the Paphian, she is the Cyprian divinity. She is known, again, as Anaïtis and as Astoreth. She is Allat and Argimpasa and Atargatis. In later ages she is Milda in Eastern Europe and Merta and Freya in the North. But under whatever designation she appears, in Arabia or Scythia, in the Greek Islands or in Carthage, she is fertility incarnate and love. She is the alma Venus genetrix that the Roman poet Lucretius reverently invokes. * * * * *