POET and satirist Alexander Pope once wrote that ‘a king may be a tool, a thing of straw; but if he serves to frighten our enemies, and secure our property, it is well enough; a scarecrow is a thing of straw, but it protects the corn’.
Comparing a king to a scarecrow might have raised a few eyebrows at the time, but imagine describing the son of a Greek goddess known for her incredible beauty as being anything less than handsome—and then using his effigy as a scarecrow.
Yet Greek mythology has it that Priapus, the son of Aphrodite, was considered to be so ugly that birds intent on thieving cereal
