genius...Mystiis communi suo salute(m) vidisti quo Turnum aequoribus
eibat in arm[is—that is, ‘‘Primegenius... [gives] salutation to his
comrade Mystii; ‘have you seen Turnus, where he goes on the seas
inarms....’’’^44
It may be argued that the connection in these cases between the graffi-
tiedAeneidquotations and letter fragments is merely coincidental, or at
least may simply be traced to the fact that these happened to be two of the
most important subjects learned in school: how to write a letter and how to
quote from Vergil. But I would suggest that we should also recognize a
connection with the preference seen in the Vergilian quotations for lines
that emphasize the act of communication—on a narrative level, by focus-
ing on lines that were originally delivered by characters in speeches, and
grammatically, through vocatives, imperatives, and second-person verbs.
That is, as Thomas Augst has noted of the nineteenth-century American
middle class, letter writing is significant because it puts the emphasis on
literacy as a social practice, a means of articulating and reinforcing rela-
tionships through the creation of a written document.
45
This is also, in a
slightly different way, what is being performed in the quotations from
Vergil’sAeneidin the Pompeian graffiti, as the great canonical text is
mined for fragments that mimic the forms of spoken communication.
Again, I will say that I am resistant to looking for a single, overarching
explanation for all Vergilian quotation in Pompeian graffiti, and the fact of
the matter is that there are numerous fragments that do not fit this pattern,
perhaps most notably the long quotation found in the palaestra (CIL
4.8630b) ofAeneid1. 192–3:nec prius absistit quam septem ingentia victor
/ corpora fundat humi(‘‘nor did he cease before he laid seven huge bodies
on the ground’’). The line is neither from a speech in the original text nor
does it contain any of the grammatical forms that signal communication
that I noted above; it is, however, particularly appropriate to its material
- The quotation isAeneid9. 269, although the writer’s memory and/or grammar are
faulty. Vergil’s original isvidisti quo Turnus equo, quibus ibat in armis; the writer has
transformedequo quibusintoaequoribusandTurnusintoTurnum. Cipriotti 1975, 273, sees
these errors as reflecting the fact that the writer originally heard the line, probably in school.
There is another word below the name Primegenius (SOES[?]), which may be intended to be
read before Mystiis or may be the beginning of the second line of the inscription: see appendix
for the full text. - Augst 2003, 71 9. Augst emphasizes the ways in which personal letters in the
nineteenth century functioned as a literate performance of personal emotion, that is, young
men and women learned to express their love for their families by writing to them. The
situation is very different in Rome, at least partially because the Romans were operating with
different models of ‘‘private’’ intimacy and its expression. On the other hand, it seems
significant to my mind that Roman letters generally, and many of the practice or mock
fragments from them on Pompeian walls, open with a salutation that explicitly describes the
relationship between the writer and supposed reader: ‘‘to his brother,’’ ‘‘to his associate,’’ ‘‘to
his comrade,’’ and so on.
308 Institutions and Communities