Saturday, December 31, 2022
Savior of the House
Christopher A. Faraone, The Transformation of Greek Amulets in Roman Imperial Times (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), pp. 76-77, with note on p. 326:
The inscription on the back of the jar (in Cracow, Princes Czartoryski Museum, inv. 1239) reads ΣΩΣΙΟΙΚΟΣΙΣΠΕΤΑΙΧΟΣΗΚΑΛΗ, of which only the beginning (σωσίοικος) and the end (ἡ καλή) seem to make sense.
But cf. Henri Metzger, "Bulletin archéologique. Céramique," Revue des Études Grecques 95 (1982) 85-139 (at 113):
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But once again, it is only in the Roman period that these phalli begin to carry texts that tell us precisely that they were used for protection, and in some cases protection against the evil eye. A terracotta perfume jar now in Cracow was, for example, molded in the shape of a phallus (Figure 2.15); it is, moreover, topped with the frontal head of Priapus or Silenus and bears an inscription that begins with the word Sosioikos ("Savior of the house"), an epithet attested elsewhere for the god Hermes.163
The reference is to Kathleen Warner Slane and M. W. Dickie, "A Knidian Phallic Vase from Corinth," Hesperia 62 (1993) 483-505, from which I have borrowed their plate 86, because it is of better quality than Faraone's Figure 2.15:
163. Slane and Dickie (1993) 499.
G. Siebert et J. Schwartz, que j'ai consultés, lisent Σωσίοικος ίς πέταρχο(σ)ν καλή et suggèrent de comprendre Sosioikos est belle pour Pétarchos (?)
