This poem, whoever its author may have been[89], testifies most explicitly that the Poet’s genital organs were seriously affected (by Phimosis and Ulcers?), that he from fear (_timerem_) of the Surgeon’s knife, from shame (_verebar_) before the regular physician in view of the part affected and of the way in which he had got the disease, had recourse to prayer and vow before the image of Priapus, and thereupon happily recovered without medical assistance! The veneration of Priapus was pretty well universal in Italy, as the Roman poets teach us, and equally so the Phallic worship, of which the frequent representations of the Phallus that we find at Pompeii bear witness; in fact the latter, as _Knight_ shows, maintained itself in connection with the veneration of Saints _Cosmus_ and _Damian_ down to the last Century at Isernia. The just quoted Poem from the Priapeia might perhaps serve to afford us an indication as to how the Phallus ritual has come to be connected with these Christian Saints; for probably patients attacked by the Venereal disease prayed to them, just as the Romans did to Priapus. Possibly examples of such cures by the saints in question are found in the “Acta Sanctorum Bollandi”. (Bollandist Lives of the Saints),—under Sept. 27.; but we are not able to consult the book. These Saints however were not the only ones that were venerated in the Middle Ages in the same way as the Priapus of the Ancients. In France unfruitful wives used to pray to St. Guerlichon, in Normandy to St. Giles, in Anjou to St. René, in connection with whom they practised rites which _Stephanus_ declares himself ashamed to specify[90]. Plague of Baal-Peor. § 8. Although the period at which the worship of Priapus was introduced among the different Peoples cannot be always definitely fixed, and although Classical Mythology invariably counts him as belonging to the newer[91] gods, yet he appears in quite early times to have played a not unimportant part in Syria[92],—if that is to say the conclusion[93], pretty generally believed on other grounds, is well founded, that the god Baal Peor was a sort of Priapus, in whose temple, situated on Mount Peor[94], young Maidens were offered up. The Rabbis[95] derive the name from פְּעוֹר _aperire_ sc. _hymenem virgineum_, (to open _sc._ the hymen of a virgin), as if it had sprung from the Phallus ritual, as still found in Italy. At Goa indeed a man’s member made of iron or ivory is fastened in the Pagoda, which in the case of every bride is pushed by the parents and relations into her vagina, until it brings away with it visibly the bloody traces of the rupture of the hymen[96]; a proceeding that is connected, as shown in § 4., with the belief in the malignity of the menstrual blood, and in that of blood coming from the ruptured hymen. On the Coromandel Coast likewise a wooden Priapus is to the present day most ardently venerated by the inhabitants[97].