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DOWN IN POMPEII: A SEXUAL GRAFFITO IN VERSE (CIL 4.9123)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2024

Olivia Elder*
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Abstract

This article revisits a famous graffiti poem from Pompeii (CIL 4.9123). It argues that the poem is both more erotically charged and more cleverly metaliterary than previously recognized; and that this reading of the poem offers new evidence for the literary richness of Pompeii's graffiti culture.

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Shorter Notes
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

This note concerns a famous and enigmatic Pompeian verse graffito (CIL 4.9123). A fresh reading of this text––with particular regard to its sexualized language and poetic form––offers new evidence of the literary richness of Pompeii's graffiti culture.

The graffito comprises a four-line poem in pentameters from beside a tavern doorway:

nihil durare potest tempore perpetuo
cum bene sol nituit, redditur oceano
decrescit Phoebe, quae modo plena fuit
uentorum feritas saepe fit aura l[e]uis
Nothing can endure for all time;
After the sun has shone, it returns to the ocean.
The moon shrinks, which was recently full.
The wildness of winds often becomes a light breeze.

Scholars have for a long time been intrigued by this poem. Its admirers and editors include A.E. Housman; more recently, Kristina Milnor offered a discussion of its literary dimensions in her book on Pompeii's literary landscape.Footnote 1

The poem is unusual in being composed entirely of pentameter lines; in mainstream literary texts, pentameter lines almost never appear alone.Footnote 2 The first of the poem's tricks is, however, a trick of the eye: it is inscribed with the second and fourth lines indented, so it appears at first glance to be a classically presented pair of elegiac couplets (see fig. 1).Footnote 3 But, as Milnor notes, once we start to read rather than just observe the poem, the recurring pentameter becomes central to the verses’ meaning.Footnote 4 In the first programmatic poem of his Amores, Ovid connects the pentameter line with ‘falling’ (sex mihi surgat opus numeris, in quinque residat; ‘let my work rise in six feet and slump back down in five’, Ov. Am. 1.1.27). Milnor uses this connection to argue for a ‘not coincidental correlation’ between the poem's form and theme, which she argues is a ‘mournful emphasis on transformation and completion’.Footnote 5

Fig. 1: Della Corte's line drawing of CIL 4.9123 (Vol. 4 Suppl. 3.2); reproduced with permission

Milnor grudgingly admits a tame erotic connection here (‘the poet may well have intended it to be seen as a lament on amatory loss’), though she is surprisingly eager to separate this amatory undertone from the poem's formal structure: ‘at the same time, however, it is important to note the poem's structural peculiarities’ [my emphasis].Footnote 6 One reason for Milnor's reluctance to see eroticism here is that some earlier erotic interpretations of the verses were founded upon Della Corte's original transcription of the final line as Venerum feritas saepe fit dura leuis (‘the hard fierceness of love often becomes light’). Housman, Todd and others pushed back on this reading because it fits neither the metre nor palaeography.Footnote 7 Existing erotic interpretations are also strikingly non-physical, focussing on the loss and transience of love.Footnote 8

The aim of this note is to revive the erotic interpretation of these pentameter verses, and indeed to argue that they contain an even stronger erotic charge than has been previously suggested.Footnote 9 Moreover, I suggest that this erotic charge makes the choice of pentameter even more salient––and more cleverly metaliterary––than Milnor implies.

The verses are full of potential sexual innuendo. The verbs durare (‘endure’ or ‘stay hard’, 1) and decrescere (‘grow small’, 3) have obvious application to the hardening and softening of a penis.Footnote 10 This is especially so in combination with the reference to Phoebe having been ‘recently full’ (modo plena), a possible allusion to a past erection.Footnote 11 Together, the three images of the poem––the sun shining and then setting; the moon waning; the ferocity (ferocitas) of the winds abating––can figuratively represent penile detumescence.Footnote 12

One possibility is to take this poem as a reflection on impotence.Footnote 13 Such a reading might be supported by the reference to the passing of time (nihil durare potest tempore perpetuo, 1)—potentially an allusion to the onset of old age––with several possible literary parallels. We might think of Catull. 16.11 on the old men who ‘cannot move their hard limbs’ (duros nequeunt mouere lumbos), where duros is pointedly ambiguous; it could mean ‘hard’ (because erect) or ‘stiff’ (with age). Another possible parallel is Prop. 3.5, where the poet turns to discuss winds and the waxing/waning of the moon after ‘old age has cut off love’ (Venerem grauis interceperit aetas, 3.5.23).Footnote 14 However, it is striking that our graffito poem is written in the present tense, and the cyclical imagery (of sun, moon and winds) gestures not to permanent deflation but to the possibility of future rearousal.Footnote 15 It is therefore equally likely that the poem is a wistful reflection on the aftermath of sex: the calm after the sexual storm.

Whether we read the poem as a reflection on impotence or on the post-coital slump, the unusual pentameter form reinforces an erotic reading of these lines centred on the physical form of the penis. Two associations of pentameters in literature are relevant here: first, the play between (metrical) ‘foot’ and ‘penis’;Footnote 16 and second, the link between pentameters and ‘deflation’ or ‘descent’. Ovid playfully aligns the rise and fall of hexameter and pentameter with the cycle of penile erection and detumescence, punning on the polyvalence of neruus (‘sinew’, ‘muscle’, ‘strength’, ‘literary vigour’, ‘penis’) (Am. 1.1.17–18):

cum bene surrexit uersu noua pagina primo
attenuat neruos proximus ille meos.
My new page rose well in its first verse;
the second verse diminishes my strength.

As Judith Hallett notes, Ovid here ‘characterizes the elegiac metre as … alternatively soaring and sinking, like the physical equipment, alternatively turgid and detumescent, that men require to perform acts of love’.Footnote 17 The string of four deflated pentameters in this graffitied poem could thus be read as a mimetic reflection of the now flaccid penis that the verses evoke: no longer rising and falling but in a steady ‘sunken’ and ‘shrunken’ state. The verses are all ‘lighter measures’ (numeris leuioribus, Ov. Am. 1.1.19) like the ‘light’ breeze that they describe (l[e]uis, 4).

Notably, quotations and calques of verses by Ovid and other poets appear frequently amongst the graffiti of Pompeii, suggesting a broader literary familiarity with elegiac motifs.Footnote 18 It is thus plausible that at least some readers of these verses would have recognized their metaliterary connections and drawn the link between the pentameters’ form and content. The visual arrangement offers further clues to a reader: the imitation of elegiac couplet form would immediately signal an amatory context.Footnote 19 However, the shock absence of the upright hexameter draws attention to the isolated and deflated pentameters: another signpost to the poem's underlying meaning.Footnote 20

These erotic connections offer one plausible answer to the enigma of these verses. This does not mean that they are the only way to read the poem: given its allusive, figurative nature there may be some deliberate ambiguity here, inviting the reader to offer different guesses about the poem's subject. Yet on the reading presented here, the connections between form and content, and between this graffito and the literary world, are stronger and more meaningful than has been previously suggested. If we accept this interpretation as at least possible, these pentameter verses contribute not only another penis to Pompeii's teeming landscape but also further evidence for the literary sophistication of the reading and writing culture of Pompeii's graffiti.

Footnotes

I am especially indebted to Thomas Nelson and Talitha Kearey for their inspiring suggestions and discussion. Katherine Backler, Rebecca Benefiel, James Hua, Gregory Hutchinson, Alison John, Leah Lazar, Anthony Vickers-Collins and seminar audiences in Oxford offered perceptive comments on spoken and written versions. I would also like to thank CQ's anonymous reader, the editor Bruce Gibson and Clare Roberts for their assistance. All translations are my own.

References

1 Housman, A.E., ‘An African inscription’, CR 41 (1927), 60–1Google Scholar; Milnor, K., Graffiti and the Literary Landscape in Roman Pompeii (Oxford and New York, 2014), 6972CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The graffito was first published in Corte, M. Della, Pompeii, the New Excavations: Houses and Inhabitants (Pompeii, 1925), 80Google Scholar; Della Corte's own drawing (an ‘esatto apografo’) made on the day of discovery (M. Della Corte, ‘Scavi sulla Via dell'Abbondanza (epigrafi inedite)’, NSA [1927], 89–116, at 116, reprinted in CIL) is the only surviving record of the graffito because the wall on which it was written collapsed in 1915. Other editions include Diehl, E., Pompeianische wandinschriften und verwandtes (Berlin and Boston, 1930), no. 1100CrossRefGoogle Scholar; CLE 2292. For full references to earlier discussions of this graffito, see A. Varone, Erotica Pompeiana: Love Inscriptions on the Walls of Pompeii (Rome, 2002), 109 n. 175.

2 On the isolated pentameter, see P. Cugusi, ‘Spunti di polemica politica in alcuni graffiti di Pompei e di Terracina’, ZPE 61 (1985), 23–9, at 25–6; Morgan, L., Musa Pedestris: Metre and Meaning in Roman Verse (Oxford, 2010), 363CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the pentameter in ‘folk poetry’, see Kruschwitz, P., ‘Five feet under: exhuming the uses of the pentameter in Roman folk poetry’, Tyche 35 (2020), 7198Google Scholar. West, M.L., Greek Metre (Oxford, 1982), 45Google Scholar offers a few Greek examples.

3 Todd, F.A., ‘Two Pompeian metrical inscriptions’, CR 53 (1939), 168–70Google Scholar, at 169. The pentameter lines of elegiac couplets are not always indented in Pompeian graffiti: one prominent example where they are is the sequence of quotations of elegiac couplets by Ovid and Propertius from the basilica (CIL 4.1893–5). The sequence of literary quotations is followed by an original couplet (CIL 4.1896), laid out visually in the same way with pentameter line indented; however, these verses convey the author's love of pork, so playing with expectations of the elegiac form in a similar way to our poem. For this sequence of verses, with illustrations, see Benefiel, R.R., ‘Magic squares, alphabet jumbles, riddles and more: the culture of word-games among the graffiti of Pompeii’, in J. Kwapisz, D. Petrain and M. Szymanski (edd.), The Muse at Play: Riddles and Wordplay in Greek and Latin Poetry (Berlin and Boston, 2012), 6580CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 75–7.

4 Milnor (n. 1), 72.

5 Milnor (n. 1), 72.

6 Milnor (n. 1), 70.

7 Housman (n. 1), 61; Todd (n. 3), 170; cf. Wick, F.C., Vindiciae carminum Pompeianorum (Naples, 1916), 18Google Scholar and Diehl (n. 1), 80. For discussion of different readings and justifications of this line, see Gigante, M., Civiltà delle forme letterarie nell'antica Pompei (Naples, 1979), 238Google Scholar, who prefers uentorum over Venerum but also proposes the reading Austrorum.

8 So, for example, Gigante (n. 7), 237–9; Funari, P.P.A., La cultura popular en la antigüedad clásica (Seville, 1991), 67–8Google Scholar. For other loose amatory readings, see Varone (n. 1), 109–10; Corte, M. Della, Amori e amanti di Pompei antica (Pompei, 1958), 32Google Scholar; Cartelle, E. Montero, Priapeos: grafitos amatorios Pompeyanos (Madrid, 1981), 127–8Google Scholar. It appears as one of the graffiti ‘colti’ in L. Canali and G. Cavallo, Graffiti Latini: scrivere sui muri a Roma antica (Milan, 1991), 32–3.

9 This erotic reading is compatible with either Housman or Della Corte's reading of the text (though I lean towards the former, since I am convinced by Housman's arguments about both metre and letter-form).

10 One parallel for such terms being used explicitly sexually at Pompeii is CIL 4.10085: phallus durus Cr(escentis) uastus, ‘the huge hard dick of Crescens (‘the Grower’)’; see Adams, J.N., The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (London, 1982), 64CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For literary examples of the verb durescere describing an erection, see Katz, J.T. and Volk, K., ‘Erotic hardening and softening in Vergil's eighth eclogue’, CQ 56 (2006), 169–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 173 on Ecl. 8.80 (limus ut hic durescit); they suggest parallels with Plaut. Truc. 914–16 and Verg. Ecl. 4.28–30; on the latter, see R.G.M. Nisbet, ‘Adulescens puer (Virgil, Eclogues 4.28–30)’, in H.D. Jocelyn (ed.), Tria Lustra: Essays and Notes presented to John Pinsent (Liverpool, 1993), 265–7, at 266. For crescere applied to the mentula (‘penis’) and meaning ‘swell’, see Priapea 81.2.

11 OLD s.v. plenus 7: ‘(of the body or its parts) filled out, plump, swollen’; for plenus applied to a penis, see Ov. Rem. 401 (pleno si corpore sumes), an explicitly sexual context (on corpus as ‘penis’, see Adams [n. 10], 46).

12 For an example of the imagery of waxing/waning moon and raging winds in close proximity to a discussion of erotic love, see Prop. 3.5.23–30; for the imagery of cold winds (frigorisaura) putting an end to sex, see Priapea 61.6–7. The imagery of a female goddess (Phoebe) is striking; for another feminization of a deflated penis, see Petron. Sat. 132.11, where illa describes both Dido and Encolpius' penis; on the common practice of referring to the penis elliptically, via feminine adjectives with mentula deleted, see Adams (n. 10), 62.

13 Impotence is, of course, a preoccupation of Roman poets: Latin literary references to impotence, both temporary and permanent and deploying a variety of imagery and vocabulary, include Mart. 11.46; Ov. Am. 3.7.66 (the ‘drooping rose’, hesternarosa); Petron. Sat. 132.

14 Note in plenum luna … redit, 3.5.28; cf. in our graffito redditur, 2; plena, 3.

15 Priapic poetry is often written in the present or future tense; for a brief comment, see Young, E.M., ‘The touch of the cinaedus’, ClAnt 34 (2015), 183208Google Scholar, at 192.

16 For play between ‘penis’ and ‘foot’, see, for example, Tib. 1.8.13–14, 1.9.13–16; Ov. Am. 1.1.4; Plaut. Cas. 465; Auson. Cent. Nupt. 104, 107. For the Greek background, see Buchan, M., ‘Penelope's foot’, Ramus 44 (2015), 141–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Hallett, J.P., ‘Authorial identity in Latin love elegy: literary fictions and erotic failings’, in B.K. Gold (ed.), A Companion to Roman Love Elegy (Oxford, 2012), 268–84Google Scholar, at 281. This is a widely accepted interpretation of these lines: cf. Kennedy, D.F., The Arts of Love: Five Studies in the Discourse of Roman Love Elegy (Cambridge, 1992), 59CrossRefGoogle Scholar (who further notes the polyvalence of opus: ‘literary work’, ‘penis’, ‘sexual intercourse’); R.L. Hunter, ‘Sweet nothings – Callimachus fr. 1.9–12 revisited’, in G. Bastianini and A. Casanova (edd.), Callimaco: cent'anni di papyri (Florence, 2006), 119–31, at 121; Keith, A., ‘Sexuality and gender’, in P.E. Knox (ed.), A Companion to Ovid (Chichester and Malden, MA, 2009), 355–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 358.

18 Ov. Am.: CIL 4.1520, 1595, 1893, 9847; Ars Am.: CIL 4.1895, 3149; Her.: CIL 4.1595, 4133; Prop.: CIL 4.1520, 1523, 1526, 1528, 1894, 1950, 3040, 4491, 9847; Tib.: CIL 4.1837. For full lists of literary quotations at Pompeii, see Gigante (n. 7), 253–63; Cooley, A. and Cooley, M.G.L., Pompeii and Herculaneum: A Sourcebook (London, 2014 2), 292–3Google Scholar; Milnor (n. 1), 263–72.

19 For the association of elegiac couplets and love, see Thorsen, T.S., ‘Introduction’, in T.S. Thorsen (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Love Elegy (Cambridge, 2013), 120CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 For a striking parallel case of an isolated line of pentameter in a graffito from an imperial villa at Boscotrecase, see Cugusi (n. 2), 25 and Morgan (n. 2), 363, who likewise argues that the ‘pregnant’ absence of the hexameter signals the verse's theme (in this case, a transgressive political commentary). Kruschwitz (n. 2) offers several examples of the meaningfulness and markedness of the pentameter in inscriptions.

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Fig. 1: Della Corte's line drawing of CIL 4.9123 (Vol. 4 Suppl. 3.2); reproduced with permission