Filling In Some Gaps: Misunderstood Jokes in <i>Priapea</i> 12.15 and Catullus 25.5

This paper concerns two images of yawning occurring in Priapea 12.15 and Catullus 25.5. Most interpretations of these instances of yawning take the language in a straightforward and innocent manner. However, this study shows that the gaping figures are comparably obscene jests playing on the notion of distended orifices. Recovering the sense of the jokes helps to delimit an interpretive framework for emending the badly corrupted state of Catullus 25.5, a cryptic line which ends in the textually secure participle oscitantes (“yawning” or “gaping”).