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

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.

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.¹

The poem is unusual in being composed entirely of pentameter lines; in mainstream literary texts, pentameter lines almost never appear alone.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).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.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’.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].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.⁷ Existing erotic interpretations are also strikingly non-physical, focussing on the loss and transience of love.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.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.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.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.¹²

One possibility is to take this poem as a reflection on impotence.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).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.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’;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’.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.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.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.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.