writing—and one that is not, it should be added, ever found in the
elite Latin poets.^35
The appearance ofquisquis amat valeaton the wall here in company
withfullones ululamque canosuggests a further dimension of ‘‘literary
literacy’’ in Pompeian wall writing. That is, the latter text indicates a
fairly high level of knowledge about Vergil’s text, especially if we connect
it with the painting of Aeneas and see it as a ‘‘reading’’ of the decorative
elements on the wall. As a parody, moreover, it is effective, particularly
because the author possessed enough knowledge to compose his or her
own hexameter.Quisquis amat, however, is quoted directly, not appar-
ently in jest but simply as a quotation, not unlike the use of the first line of
theAeneidwe saw in the earlier advertisement for Cuspius Pansa. And as
I remarked of that instance, the quoted words here are significant pre-
cisely because they do not mean what they say; their function is to
look and sound like something important rather than to convey informa-
tion or meaning. In fact,quisquis amatappeared elsewhere in Pompeii in
a context that underscores this function of the (pseudo-)literary quota-
tion. Early in the excavation history of the site, when it was still called
Civita`and considered an annex of Herculaneum, a panel painting was
found which depicted various objects associated with writing: a wax
tablet, an inkwell, a stylus, and a scroll (see figure 12.3). On the scroll
is written a poem, whose later lines are difficult to decipher but which
clearly beginsquisquis / ama(t) valia(t) / peria(t) qui n/oscit ama[re].^36
Here, then, we have the tag otherwise only known to us from
graffiti represented as ‘‘literature,’’ or, at any rate, as something that
might legitimately be found written on a bookroll.Quisquis amatin
this context is not simply words, or simply poetry, but rather is given
weight by the artist as ‘‘poetry’’—a couplet familiar from a more popular
context re-presented here in the place of a canonical text.^37 Quisquis
amatmay have sometimes just been a convenient tag, therefore, but the
painting indicates the ways in which it might be imagined as part of a
larger literary tradition.
- Although it is true that similar phrases (quisquis amas, si quis amat) are found in
Ovid and Propertius, they are never followed by the jussive verb as in the graffiti. For a list of
parallels, see Wachter 1998. - See the entry inCIL4.1173, with pp. 204 and 461, for a discussion of the text and
interpretations of the later lines. - Note that the poem in the painting appears on the scroll, a reasonably permanent
medium, rather than on the wax tablet where one would expect lower level exercises or
drafts to be completed. It is, of course, perfectly possible thatquisquis amatis a quotation
from some famous poem by a canonical author that is lost to us. This would in no way vitiate
anything I say here: indeed, if this were true it would make the association with the Vergilian
parody more meaningful. We cannot be sure one way or the other the words’ appearance
on the bookroll certainly makes them look ‘‘canonical,’’ but their absence from the surviving
canonical poetry does not but my point here is simply to emphasize the way that, likearma
virumque cano,quisquis amatis able to move between graffiti and a more overtly ‘‘literary’’
context.
302 Institutions and Communities