"[Dionysos] cut the thickest branch from a fig tree, smoothed and crafted it into a male member, fixed it to the grave, exposed his buttocks, lowered himself and inserted it. In his horniness he moved his buttocks to suffer from the wood what he had promised."
Arnobius of Sicca Adversus gentes 5.28
🏛 Roman intaglio ring depicting #Dionysos with a winged phallus
@mythology@antiquidons For those of you who are experts in #Latin: I would love to have a proper translation of the original Latin:
"...ficorum ex arbore ramum validissimum praesecans (proesecans?) dolat, runcinat, levigat, et humani speciem fabricatur in penis, figit super aggerem tumuli, et posticû ex parte nudatus accedit, subsidit, insidit. Lascivia deinde surientis assumptâ, huc atque illuc clunes torquet et meditatur ab ligno pati quod jamdudum in veritate promiserat."
Something about a tree rising up from a bush . Glistening, floating, a penis .. which creates humans ? - or a human being made up out of a penis? A penis shaped like a human? - very erect. Tempting, moving towards, wavering. Taking a position towards.. [..] truly promising.
@djuuss@mythology@antiquidons My own Latin skills are about that level too :D
I just have the additional context of knowing that it's the story of Dionysos making the first dildo, so he fashions the figwood into the shape of a human penis. Latin grammar is a bitch.
@AimeeMaroux@mythology@antiquidons idk how close to the original you want it, but it goes roughly "bringing along a f branch of figwood, [someone] strips it, planes it, makes it smooth and fashions it into the shape of a human penis. They set it atop the grave, and having bared their buttocks, they step forward, mount it and let it inside them. Like a slut they wave their hips this way and that, and imagine they are getting from the wood what they once promised in the flesh."
@alischinsky@mythology@antiquidons Many thanks, Alon! It's Dionysos who is making the dildo in the text, the Latin is a passage left intentionally untranslated by a 19th century translator 😅
Would it be OK if I used your translation on my website with credit?
@AimeeMaroux@mythology@antiquidons happy to do that but then let me polish it beyond what my Saturday morning brain could manage on the spot! If you give me a reference to the original I can surely improve on this
It'd also help to know how you want the translation to sound — to fit with the text you have, or like something one would write these days?
@AimeeMaroux@mythology@antiquidons It is the legend of Prosymnos.
Prosymnos is a Greek guy who helped Dionysos to go to the Hades, so that he could take his mother Semele to the stars.
In exchange Prosymnos asked to perform anal sex to Dionysos, once the god would come back from the Hades.
When Dionysos came back, Prosymnos was dead. To fulfill his promise the god invented a dildo, planted it on the tomb and masturbated with it.
@AimeeMaroux@mythology@antiquidons you know, I'm lowkey thinking of learning Latin to translate "lewd" passages that prim and proper scholars of the past refused to.
But do we like... have a database of sexual passages in Latin? 🤔🧐 I think this would serve society's knowledge of the ancient Romans. nods