Crepitus (mythology) - Sources of The Legend

Sources of The Legend

The origin of the myth of a god of flatulence is somewhat obscure, and it is possible that the existence of this god is an invention. No ancient polytheistic source appears for such a deity.

The earliest mention of a god of flatulence is as an Egyptian, not a Roman deity. This comes from the hostile pen of the author of the Recognitions dubiously attributed to Pope Clement I, in which it is reported that:

alii ... crepitus ventris pro numinibus habendos esse docuerunt.

"others (among the Egyptians) teach that intestinal noise (Latin: crepitus ventris) ought to be regarded as a god."

It is unlikely that Clement I was the author of the extant Recognitiones; these are extant chiefly in a Latin translation, presumably out of the original Greek, made by Tyrannius Rufinus in the late fourth or early fifth century. The passage of Pseudo-Clement stands within a Western Christian tradition of satire against the variety of minor deities worshipped by classical pagans; similar passages exist in The City of God by Saint Augustine of Hippo, and Tertullian's Ad Nationes.

Robert Burton, in The Anatomy of Melancholy, mentions a god Crepitus Ventris among a variety of other deities allegedly worshipped in classical antiquity:

Lilius Giraldus repeats many of her ceremonies: all affections of the mind were heretofore accounted gods, love, and sorrow, virtue, honour, liberty, contumely, impudency, had their temples, tempests, seasons, Crepitus Ventris, dea Vacuna, dea Cloacina, there was a goddess of idleness, a goddess of the draught, or jakes, Prema, Premunda, Priapus, bawdy gods, and gods for all offices.

Burton cites a work called Syntagma de Diis ("A Compendium of the Gods") by Lilius Giraldus as his source for the existence of such a god; by this reference, Burton probably meant Giraldus' Historia de diis gentium ("History of the Pagan Gods"); but because Burton wrote in what he called an "extemporean" style, quicquid in buccam venit ("whatever came into his head"), Burton's quotations and references are not always reliable. Because of Burton's mixed Latin and English style, this passage may not say that there was a god named "Crepitus Ventris", (Latin for "intestinal noise"), but only that there was a god of intestinal noise. The Latin word crepitus, moreover, did not exclusively mean the sound generated by intestinal gas; it referred to squeaks, groans, knocks, and any nondescript noise in general. In The City of God, Augustine elsewhere refers to crepitus cymbalorum, the clang of cymbals. Medical jargon gives the name crepitus to the creaking or popping noises made by the joints. The Latin word for "to fart" is pēdere.

Voltaire, in a passage of his Philosophical Dictionary devoted to changing conceptions of deity, alludes to a number of real or alleged Roman deities of a less exalted status:

La déesse des tétons, dea Rumilia ; la déesse de l’action du mariage, dea Pertunda ; le dieu de la chaise percée, deus Stercutius ; le dieu Pet, deus Crepitus, ne sont pas assurément bien vénérables. . . Il est sûr que deus Crepitus, le dieu Pet, ne donnait pas la même idée que deus divum et hominum sator, la source des dieux et des hommes.

"The goddess of breasts, dea Rumilia; the goddess of the marital act, dea Pertunda; the god of the toilet, deus Stercutius; the god Fart, deus Crepitus, were surely not quite objects of reverence. . . It is certain that deus Crepitus, the god Fart, did not give the same sort of idea as deus divum et hominum sator, the creator of gods and men."

— "Polytheism", entry in the Philosophical Dictionary of Voltaire.

Through these passages, the noun Crepitus moves from a common noun to a proper noun. Previous authorities had only claimed that the ancient polytheists, whether Egyptian or Roman, worshipped a god of intestinal noises. Perhaps in Burton's mention, and certainly in Voltaire, Crepitus is the name of a god of flatulence.