2004
Volume 58, Issue 4
  • ISSN: 0165-8204
  • E-ISSN: 2667-1573

Abstract

Abstract

This article discusses IV 9123 = 2292, a poetic Pompeian graffito on the truism that nothing lasts forever. It suggests the possibility that the original (as conjectured by Housman and Todd) in line 4 may have been deliberately altered into in order to produce an erotic signification, an intervention in the text that we might call ‘creative deletion’. It also raises the question to what extent the graffito, consisting of four stichic pentameters, may be regarded as a poem: originally a ‘theme with variations’ without closure, the altered text – however metrically incorrect – produces an epigrammatic poem with a playful punchline, which we might even read as a sophisticated allusion to Virgil’s , hinting at the idea that may lead to pregnancy.

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