Priapus's Two Rapes in Ovid's Fasti

This essay considers the dynamics of joking discourse in two passages in Ovid's Fasti (1.391-440; 6.319-348): both are attempted rapes by Priapus and both are offered by the narrator as humorous tales. I explore the social implications of making a woman the Butt of a joke and the object of an attempted rape. That the second woman here is Vesta, one of Augustus' primary religious concerns, necessarily adds a further dimension: now the joke can be read by some Audience members as imagining a world that looks nothing like the one offered by Augustus to his contemporaries.