vividly spoken moment in Vergil’s text, a point that is emphasized by the
fact that the line contains both a vocative and an imperative. Of course, a
line from theAeneidlearned in another context might be reused here for a
different, more local, purpose. Still, this quotation fits well with the
others in prioritizing a moment when the sober, factual, narrative voice
of Vergil’s text recedes and a character engages in direct discourse. In this
sense, Nisus’s prayer from Book 9 may have been less significant for an
ancient Pompeian as a prayer than as a moment of emotionally charged
communicative speech.
The idea that the fragments of theAeneidfound on Pompeian walls
may attest a particular interest in communication is borne out by one
further example. This is a line that was found scratched into the plaster of
a room off of the peristyle in the so-called House of Fabius Rufus. The
space itself is somewhat puzzling, the more so because (despite the fact
that the work on the site was done in the 1970s) the excavation report has
yet to be published; fortunately, Carlo Giordano and subsequently Heikki
Solin were independently able to work on and publish the substantial
graffiti remains from several walls within the house.
40
At any rate, it was
here in a small but finely decorated room off of the peristyle that
theAeneidquotation was found, Book 1, lines 242 and part of 243:
Antenor potuit mediis elapsus Achivis / Illiricos penetrare sinus(‘‘Antenor,
having escaped from among the Greeks, was able to make his way into
the Illyrian bays’’). As above, the line itself does not, on the surface,
seem spectacularly significant for understanding the Aeneid, nor do
its meter or grammar seem particularly worthy of note. This line, how-
ever, is one significant exception to the rule that the Pompeian quotations
are not those of particular interest to the late antique grammarians.
In fact, Book 1 line 242 shows up repeatedly, in Donatus, Diomedes,
Charisius, and others. There is, moreover, universal agreement about its
role as a paradigm: it represents an example ofadhortatioor encourage-
ment, so that Antenor’s unlikely escape from the Greeks and ultimate
success in Italy may be used to buck the spirits of someone else faced with
a difficult situation.
41
Indeed, Marius Plotius Sacerdos (Art. Gram.
- uses it as an example of something ‘‘not brought up except either
by people asking for something or (in response) to people asking for
something’’ (non inducitur nisi aut a petentibus aut ad petentes, ut ‘‘Antenor
potuit’’...).
In this sense, the quotation from the House of Fabius Rufus is an
exception that proves the rule: although it contains no second-person
- Giordano 1966 and Solin 1975.
- Charisius,Art. Gram. 4. 277; DiomedesArt. Gram. 2. 464; DonatusArs Gram.
- 402 andAen. 1. 245 50; Marius Plotius Sacerdos,Art. Gram. 1. 166 and 180; Iulianus
Toletanus,Art. Gram. 2. 19. 109; Marius Victorinus,Explanationes in Ciceronis rhetoricam
- 402 andAen. 1. 245 50; Marius Plotius Sacerdos,Art. Gram. 1. 166 and 180; Iulianus
306 Institutions and Communities