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Every Day Life in Ancient Rome was More Scandalous than Historians Let On

Khalid Elhassan July 8, 2022 38 min

sir lawrence alma tadema the meeting of antony and cleopatra

27. The Roman Flying Phallic God

The most famous Roman maiden supposedly impregnated by Fascinus was Ocrisia, the mother of Rome’s sixth king, Servius Tullius. Ocrisia was a foreign noblewoman captured in war, and made a slave in the household of Rome’s King Tarquinius. As the legend went, Ocrisia was a “maiden”, and one day, as she performed the sacred rites of the Vestal Virgins, a disembodied winged phallus flew in and impregnated her. The result was Servius Tullius, who was raised in the royal household. Although a slave, Tullius so impressed King Tarquinius that he eventually freed him and gave him his daughter’s hand in marriage. After the king’s death, he was succeeded on the throne by Servius, his son-in-law and son of the divine Fascinus.

Tullia drives over the corpse of her father, Servius Tullius. The Partial Historian.

Fascinus’ name gave rise to the Latin verb “fascinare“. It means the power to use the Fascinus, entrance, or cast a spell since the flying phallic god was supposed to have such powers. Fascinus’ worship declined with the rise of Christianity, and eventually vanished, along with the rest of antiquity’s pagan pantheon. Nonetheless, a trace of Fascinus is still with us today. The etymology of the English word “fascinate” traces back to the Latin word “fascinare“, and the flying Roman god.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.