and the man’’). Matteo della Corte, among others, suggested that the
screech owl was a bird sacred to the fullers and associated with them,
probably because of the connection between the bird and their patron
goddess Minerva.
29
On the other hand, a fragment of Varro’sMenippean
Satiresoffers the proverbial phrasehomines eum peius formidant quam
fullo ululam(‘‘men fear him worse than the fuller fears the screech owl’’:
Sat. Men. 86.4 [539 Astbury]), which suggests a particular aversion
between the bird and the woolworker—although it has been suggested
that the ‘‘fear’’ here is more of a sense of religious awe.
30
The name of the
building on whose face the graffito was found, moreover, arises from a
programma found written below the image of Romulus and above the
fullones ululamquegraffito; it announces that Fabius Ululitremulus (‘‘owl
fearer’’) recommends Gaius Cuspius Pansa and Popidius Secundus for the
position of aediles. It seems legitimate that we should take this Ululitre-
mulus as a fuller, on the basis both of his cognomen (which seems to
allude to the proverbial phrase above) and the fact that the word ‘‘full-
ones’’ was scratched several times on both sides of the programma. The
fullers and their screech owl, therefore, seem to have a popular, proverb-
ial connection, expressed in both Ululitremulus’s name and in the graffito
cited above.
It should be noted here that the traditional assumption, originated by
Matteo della Corte, that the programmata provide us with the names of a
house’s inhabitants has been largely discredited, especially in cases such as
this one in which excavation was halted before the interior of the
building could provide any more information. We do not know whose
house this was—or, indeed, that it was a house at all
31
—so that the
presence of the programma by Fabius Ululitremulus in this particular
place could be due to a number of different factors. What is curious,
however, and (I would argue) significant for the question of ‘‘literary
literacy’’ in Pompeii is the way that the fullones ululamque graffito
may be seen as responding to and connecting the painting of the Trojan
group and the programma. That is, one way of understanding the ‘‘witty’’
- Della Corte 1965, 336.
- Moeller 1976, 89 90, but cf. Courtney 1995, 281.
- Moeller 1976, 51, assumes that it was a fullery.
Figure 12.2Line drawing of hexameter outside House of Fabius
Ululitremulus (CIL 4. 9131).300 Institutions and Communities