Musings on a phallic tomato

As I write today, one of my main interests in Roman material culture is the depiction of sexual imagery. Given the dataset available this, predominantly, means that I spent a lot of time looking at phalluses. Vulvate imagery does, of course, feature in Roman artefactual assemblages, but when it comes to images, figurines, pendants, mosaics, and carvings it was the boy parts which get all the attention. I am in the process of creating a database of all magical / amuletic things from Roman Britain as part of my PhD and this includes all objects which depict male or female genitalia in some form. The data gathering remains in progress, but as an indicator (rather than any hard-and-fast rule) my current database includes phallic objects as the largest single class of objects within the framework of my research.

My home-grown, ‘phallic’ tomato. Here immortalised in blog form.

That there was a lot of it around is, I should think, a fair comment to make about the presence of phallic imagery in the Roman world but this blog is not about phallic imagery, per se – it is about ephemerality. The catalyst for joining these two issues together was, in all honesty, the tomato plant growing on the windowsill next to my desk. One of its fruits was an unusual shape – with a large, tapering projection (a secondary tomatoey growth) extending from its side. It was an entirely natural product and ended its brief sojourn as a research tool on the side of the cheesy omelette that I’d made for lunch. One could certainly be forgiven for finding the form of the tomato somewhat phallic. I did; to me it looked very similar to this copper alloy pendant from Kent. Now this observation is entirely subjective and anthropomorphises the tomato in a rather unnatural way, but it did get me thinking – would this sort of weird, pseudo-human appendage have been regarded in the same way in the 2^nd Century? Thanks to the ephemeral nature of such things available to the modern archaeologist I am choosing to speculate on the subject. Wildly. (Editorial note: I’m just writing and speculating in this blog, no references – just thoughts).

Tomato plants are native to western South America and Central America so aren’t directly comparable, but the same process could occur naturally in native European fruits, vegetables, plants etc. I’m quite aware that my opinion of what constitutes an unusual or acceptable shape for a fruit or vegetable is entirely effected by the 21^st Century western, capitalist world in which I live and have been brought up. This world, perhaps bizarrely, favours standardisation and grading of its foodstuffs. Thanks to my vegetable patch I’m not ignorant to the artificial nature of supermarket greenery. The resurgence of the ‘wonky veg’ aspect of supermarket sales does suggest that I am at least a step removed from the natural and organic shapes of such things, but even within the natural range of shapes this tomato is quite unusual.

I find the idea tantalising that an association between the image of an apotropaic device and a natural product could have regarded as magical, supernatural, apotropaic or however else you wish to classify it. Could it have been selected above others explicitly for its unconformity, for being something beyond the common variance of nature? Could it have been curated, stored, or prepared in a different way? The issue of ephemerality comes into play at this point; whilst environmental remains are present and identifiable in the archaeological record we are (generally speaking) not privy to a fully representative corpus of the shapes, sizes, and colours of whole plants that may survive. These images, filtered through the artistic lens of painters or mosaicists, may have be idealised rather than accurately representing the grubby, bumpy, stringing, or oddly shaped fruits of the Roman world.

Phalli themselves were used as apotropaic devices to protect against the Evil Eye, bad luck, and other supernatural nasties and were worn about the body or carved into building stones in order to achieve an area-of-effect efficacy. A strange and unusual fruit with a phallic element may have been suitable for internal protection, though its consumption, by an inversion of the same logic. The colour could also be of import. It is particularly true of stones (and gemstones) that colour could be related to function, hence green schist or steatite are dominant as the stones used for collyrium stamps (themselves used in the preparation of eye medicine), and that yellow gemstones are connected with stomach ache etc. Perhaps this link is true also of the food that could be eaten. Sore eyes = more greens? What if the fruit or vegetable encountered was a different colour to the familiar one? Perhaps a different variant traded from the other end of Empire or the effects of temperature, humidity, or genetics. Exoticness does not, necessarily have to relate explicitly to form or familiarity.

Humour is also frequently invoked as an important element in the perception of Roman (and modern!) phallic imagery, fending off Evil though by an application of the adage “laughter is the best medicine”, and could have had a part to play in the use of wonky and humour plantstuffs.

[Image from Scandinavian and the World Comic]  (Thanks to Anthony Lee for sending this to me)

Within the world of Roman magic, ritual activity does often include combinations of mundane and exotic objects together; mixed up with some arcane knowledge, magical words, special images, repetitions, gestures etc. To my mind wonky veg fits the bill. There are few human activities which could affect the shape of the growth, short of selective cross-breeding on an industrial scale or growing within a specifically-shaped container (e.g. the modern demand for square melons) so for non-conformist shapes it is left to the vicissitudes of the natural world to throw up some mutant shapes on an ad hoc basis. This rarity could, potentially, have engaged human interest moreso than the familiar. Indeed, it is a fundamental constant in the Theory of Evolution that mutations and subtle changes may, ultimately, be beneficial to the continuation of a genetic line and in this case this is one microcosmic example of such a mutation.

It is certainly feasible that the weird and wonderful bounty of nature, phallic or not, was retained in the Roman world to show to other people or, perhaps, exotic forms, shapes or colours, of mundane plants were sought or desired because of intrigue relating to their unusual qualities. Malinowski called this idea “the coefficient of weirdness” and alluded that it is part of human nature to be curious and drawn to the unusual and non-conformist objects or practices when we compare them to those within our normal lives. I am guilty of the same for being so invested in my unusual tomato.

Could a phallic tomato, for the sake of argument, have been regarded as the supernatural equivalent of a copper alloy pendant or gold ring depicting a phallus in the Roman world? Clearly I can’t answer this question, but the ephemeral nature of the organic in this scenario places it in a unique position to be temporally or spatially significant in a way that the inorganics could not. This is an idea I was drawn to in an earlier discussion about the collection and use of Stag beetles  in magical/medicinal practice. The fleeting nature of the fruit offers an opportunity for it to be considered as a rare or exotic gift, born of nature itself rather than crafted by hand and thus connected to the season or the space in which it was found or to the person who grew, harvested, or found it in the first place. My tomato was phallic, but the same issues may be true of an apple with an (evil) eye on it, or a particularly vulvate lemon to give but two hypothetical examples.

Perhaps the vast majority even of these most unusual crops ended up on a plate eventually, seemingly devoid of supernatural content. I guess it depended upon the reactions of the individuals who came across them.

Food for thought.