Fascinating!

"...a Roman boy was given a bulla, a locket containing a replica of an erect penis, to wear around his neck. Known as a fascinum, this penis replica signified the boy's status and power as a future vir [man]. The bulla marked him as off-limits to sexual approaches. The fascinum inside the bulla was probably the only penis replica not in public view in the city. Like Athens, depictions of erections were everywhere in Rome--on paving stones, at the public baths, on the walls of private homes--promoting good luck or warding off bad. A fascinum hung from a chariot shielded the triumphant general riding in it fro the envy of his peers at a Roman victory parade. So enduring is the magic attributed to the erect penis in Rome that during World War I, the Italian prime minister, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, wore a fascinum on a bracelet to ensure victory by the Allies. Today, fifteen hundred years after the fall of Imperial Rome, anything as powerful or intriguing as an erection is said to be "fascinating.""
- David Friedman in A Mind of Its Own pg 25