signsThe phallusfascinum

said fas-KI-num

also: fascinus · fascinum · winged phallus · fist-and-phallus · palad khik

signRome and ItalyBritain and IrelandThe MaghrebGreece and the AegeanMainland Southeast AsiaItaly United Kingdom Libya Greece Thailand

An erect phallus, modelled in bronze, bone or wood and worn, hung or fixed. Roman versions are frequently winged, and turn up as pendants, finger rings, relief carvings, lamps and wind chimes. Thai palad khik are small carved rods worn at the waist. The sign is not decorative and was not treated as decorative.

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When

attested in Roman religion and magic; still carved in Thailand still carried cited

Period	Roman Republic and Empire, and living in Thailand
How the date is known	textual — a dated text describes it
Note	No start year is given in the sources read. Varro, Pliny and Augustine are the named Roman witnesses; the terracotta of the phallus-men is dated to the first century BCE.

Years are stored astronomically — 1 CE is 1, 1 BCE is 0, 500 BCE is −499 — and printed the way a reader says them. How these dates are made.

The thing itself

Form	Pendant
Made of	Copper and bronze · Bone and ivory · Wood · Fired clay
Goes	At the neck · At the waist · At the door · In a vehicle
Made by	Roman bronze workshops; in Thailand, monks and lay specialists
Note	Roman examples occur as pendants, finger rings, reliefs, lamps and wind chimes. No measurement is quoted because none was read.

What its carriers say it stops

Reported, attributed, not tested here. Each row below is somebody's claim, with their name on it.

The evil eye — harm carried by a look, often an admiring one citedsaid by Pliny, who called the fascinus a medicus invidiae — a remedy for envy and for the look
medicus invidiae
Envy — a neighbour's ill will, named as such citedsaid by Roman practice: the Vestals hung one under a triumphing general's chariot against invidia
Harm to a child — harm to an infant or a small child; common across the atlas, though not the largest class in it — see /story/most-of-them-are-for-children/ citedsaid by Varro, on the custom of hanging a phallic charm at a baby's neck; rings too small for an adult have been found
Harm to a house or a field citedsaid by Roman householders, who hung phallic wind chimes at doorways and thresholds
Another person's sorcery citedsaid by Augustine, reporting Varro: the image was carried in procession at the festival of Liber to repel fascinatio from the fields

The story

In Roman religion the fascinus was the divine phallus. Pliny called it a medicus invidiae — a doctor, or remedy, for envy and for the look that carries it. The Vestal Virgins tended the cult of the fascinus populi Romani, and when a general celebrated a triumph they hung an effigy of it under his chariot to protect him from invidia. Augustine, drawing on Varro, records a phallic image carried in procession at the festival of Father Liber to keep enchantment off the fields.

Who wore one is a narrower question than it looks. There are very few Roman images of people wearing a phallic charm. Varro notes the custom of hanging one at a baby's neck, and phallus-bearing rings have been found too small for anyone but a child. A 2017 experimental archaeology project suggested some types were designed to stay pointing outwards, in the wearer's direction of travel, so as to face whatever was coming.

The explanation Roman writers give is not only fertility. The protective function is usually tied to the regenerative power of an erect phallus, but in most cases what diverts the look is the shame or the laughter that obscenity produces. The victory is sometimes drawn literally: a phallus ejaculating at a disembodied eye, a motif known from reliefs at Leptis Magna in present-day Libya and from several places on Hadrian's Wall, and from a first-century BCE terracotta of two small phallus-men sawing an eyeball in half.

Soldiers carried a compound version, the fist-and-phallus amulet, with a clenched fist at the base of the shaft — often making the fig sign. The largest known collection is from Camulodunum.

The sign is not only Roman. In Thailand the palad khik is carved, blessed and worn at the waist, and Thai practice has its own account of what it is for, which this atlas records in that amulet's own file rather than folding into Rome's.

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