Flavia ran startled, flustered, short of breath, shouting: “It’s very big and full of hair. Long!  Maximus!” Flavia had never seen an adult man naked before and what had appeared in front of  her was remarkably different from what she was used to seeing on the body of her younger  brother. 

     How a naked man had ended up in the path of a twelve-year-old girl just before sunset on a  sunny spring day was explained differently in different versions of the fable. The earliest  accounts simply state that the man had spent the afternoon bathing with other men in a little  cove by the forest in naked camaraderie and that, when he came back from a swim, he found  all the men had gone and his robes had disappeared. Alternative, more modern versions explain  that he had actually gone behind the rocks to hide a rampant erection and allude to complex  psycho-sexual constructs that would have been alien to ancient Roman minds. In all versions  of the tale, the man's name is Florus.  

     Florus had searched for the shortest path through the forest to make his way home. When he  bumped into Flavia, her shouts alerted the women of the nearby hamlet, where she lived with  her mother, her aunts and a close-knit community of women, who had defied and escaped men's  rule and were governed by a rotating council of widows. It was a community where no man  was allowed, and procreation was condemned. The babies and toddlers populating the village  were tolerated only as an unfortunate product of the violence some of the women had  experienced before they were redeemed and accepted in the matriarchal settlement. When a  boy reached puberty, he was expelled without ceremony. 

     Spears in their hands, the women gathered at the entrance of the hamlet to confront Florus. But  the use of force was not needed. Claudia, the Eldest of the council, a topless huntress in her  50s, soon realised that the man’s flesh was indifferent to the women’s charms. Unambiguously  inoffensive, his penis remained limp as he stood naked in front of the beautiful Amazons.  

     In an unprecedented turn, Florus was welcomed by the tribe. The women took a fondness for  him. He had gentle manners, a fair face and a body of pleasant proportions. They agreed to  shelter him and make him part of the village on three conditions: 1) he had to forget his past;  2) he was to remain unclothed (except on the harshest days of winter, when he'd be allowed to  use a woollen cover); and 3) he was to undertake in the village the physical chores that the  women found too arduous to perform.  

     The years went by and Florus became a colourful asset of the matriarchy. He was easily  recognisable not only because his innocuous maleness was exposed but also because of a hat  he weaved with wide leaves and that he wore at all times.  

     One day, Isis, the goddess, visited the hamlet. She was on a European tour, in a campaign to  be syncretised with a Greek or Roman deity, somewhat resentful that she had fallen out of  favour in Roman lands after the rise of Venus and Ceres. But, being older, Isis knew she was  much more powerful than the local fertility goddesses.  

     She admired the strength of the women in this village. But when she was introduced to Florus,  the arrangement outraged her. She could not conceive a man's penis perpetually flaccid in the  company of women. When Florus tried to explain that there were objects of lust that would  make a different impact, she did not want to know. She, who once restored virility to the corpse of Osiris by the river Nile, was now determined to make this young man fertile and get him to  impregnate her.  

To that end, she deployed her most seductive female charms. But she failed.  She purchased the most powerful potion from a shop in Via Agra, where they had erected a  church to St. Pryapus, now enjoying a short-lived period of canonization by an early Christian  sect. But the potion also failed.  

She conjured up for Florus dreams populated by handsome male athletes. But this stratagem  failed as well. Florus always faltered when her body got too close to his.  

     Enraged, Isis cursed Florus for eternity. She turned him into a pink lip: the lobed lip of an  orchid, the labellum, which serves as a platform – like a trampoline – where every spring an  insect will land and will pollinate the orchid. And every spring since, hundreds and thousands  and millions of orchids will bloom with a lip bearing the likeness of Florus, forever fertile now,  forever reproducing himself. And this flower will get to be known as “Orchis italica”, “the  Italian orchid”. 

If you search for the “naked man orchid”, you'll see what Florus looks like: limp but very well hung; and wearing a fabulous hat.