Word: priapus
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Giovanni Bellini's Feast of the Gods has long been a puzzle as well as a masterpiece. The gods look more drunk than divine. Vesta, protector of virgins, lies dozing in one corner of the picture while Priapus fiddles with her skirt. A blowsy Ceres helps Apollo hoist cup to lip. Neptune is paired off with Gaea, who holds a quince -the symbol of marriage. Bacchus appears as a child, and his foster father Silenus looks more like a slender ascetic than a roly-poly satyr. Generations of art scholars have wondered...
...Island of Samothrace, the Argonauts were initiated into the sacred mysteries. The Goddess of All Being mated with the Serpent Priapus, and was delivered of a bull. Then the sacred nymphs leapt on the Argonauts and scratched and bit them until even Hercules passed out. Thereafter, the Argonauts glowed with "a faint nimbus of light...