hexameter is as a response to both paintings, one that expresses a prefer-
ence for Ululitremulus and his profession over Aeneas and his story:
‘‘I sing the fullers and their screech owl, NOT arms and the man.’’ On
one level, then, the graffito may be understood as engaging the visual
competition between the programma and the painting—between, that
is, the formal decorative element represented by the Trojan group and
the much more informal and ‘‘popular’’ advertisement embodied in the
election notice.^32
In addition, however, I would argue that there is also a sense of poetic
competition embedded in the graffito. Like the line from theAeneidthat
it parodies, the graffito has the form of a hexameter. That is, it gives its
song of ‘‘the fullers and their owl’’ the same poetic form that Vergil
had given his ‘‘arms and the man,’’ so that the graffito has a kind of
tongue-in-cheek grandiosity that serves as part of its humor. But equally
significant is the fact that thefullones ululamquegraffito appears immedi-
ately below another fragment of a hexameter line written in what della
Corte, at any rate, thought was the same hand. This graffito readsquisquis
amat valeat pereator ‘‘whoever loves let him be well; let him perish.. .. ’’
Although the four words are, at first glance, somewhat enigmatic in
meaning, it is still possible to see in them the beginning of a hexameter
(the first three and a half feet); this is confirmed, and their meaning
clarified, when we recognize them, like the fullones parody written
below, as a quotation—not necessarily, this time, of a canonical author,
but of a poetic line that we know only from Pompeian graffiti.
More extensive forms of the verse are found several other places in the
city, such asCIL4.3199, inscribed on a wall near the doorway of house
- 17:cuscus amat valeat pereat qui noscit amare(‘‘whoever loves,
let him be well; let him perish who does not know how to love’’).^33
In fact, the wordsquisquis amatare found numerous other places in
Pompeii, more than twelve times in various material contexts and at-
tached to various subsequent words and lines: it is occasionally rendered
asquisquis amat veniat(‘‘whoever loves let him come’’), or even (prob-
ably a joke)quisquis amat pereat(‘‘whoever loves, let him die’’).
34
In sum,
however, it is clear that the phrase is a stock one in Pompeian graffiti
- It is perhaps also worth noting that theprogrammahere is again supporting C.
Cuspius Pansa for aedile, as was the notice above, which employed the quotation from
Vergil. Especially taken along with the notice that supports him with an attempted elegiac
couplet (see above, note 23) it seems that his supporters were a rather ‘‘literary’’ crowd.
33.Noscitseems to be written here as a variant ofnescit. The error also appears inCIL
4.1173 (on which see below). - Other instances ofquisquis amatgenerally but not always followed by a jussive verb:
CIL4.1824, 3200d, 4091, 4659, 4663, 5186, 5272, 6782, 9202, and several times in the
House of Fabius Rufus (Giordano 1966, nn. 24, 40, 46 Solin 1975, nn. 18, 65, 66). See
Varone 2002, 62 3 n. 83.
Literary Literacy in Roman Pompeii 301