Latin vulgaire — latin tardif VII Actes du VIII° colloque international sur le latin vulgaire et tardif Oxford, 6 - 9 septembre 2006 Edités par Roger Wright O = Olms-Weidmann Hildesheim - Ziirich - New York 2008VULGAR LATIN AND POMPEII Heikki SOLIN Asall of you know, the eruption of Mt Vesuvius on 24th August 79 caused sudden and painful death for some 20,000 people living in Campania Felix in the settlements of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Stabiae, Oplontis, and in many villas lying in the surroundings. Yet the immense tragedy for the contemporary inhabitants has turned into a unique opportunity for modern scholarship, since from the very beginning of the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum, extremely valuable documentation of civic life and material culture in all its aspects, ranging from architecture and art to the various facets of everyday life, has come to enhance our knowledge of the circumstances of living in this area of Campania. ‘One of the most striking phenomena arising from that human tragedy are the numerous wall-inscriptions which the lava coming from the eruption of Vesuvius has kept safe over the centuries until the beginning of the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum in the 18" century. Paradoxically enough, more of these inscriptions have vanished after their discovery, due to atmospheric conditions, human negligence or vandalism and other similar factors. These inscriptions form a unique corpus of some 9,000 inscriptions (a few years ago, I counted the total number of all Pompeian wall-inscriptions, and it came to 8,615; but this concems only Pompeii and published inscriptions). Most of them are graffiti scratched with a sharp writing instrument called a stilus into the surface of the walls or in other, sometimes surprising, places. A small proportion of them are dipinti, as we are used to calling them, inscriptions skilfully painted on the walls, mostly on the outside of those walls. In my talk, | will concentrate on the graffiti proper, leaving the dipinti aside. These painted inscriptions present, in the great majority of cases, a less vulgar form of language, as they are of'a more technical nature. Peter Kruschwit, in an excellent paper presented here at Oxford a few months ago in a conference on “Buried linguistic treasure”, showed how the dipinti represent various cases of technical text-types, especially the so-called electoral programmata, written for purposes of political canvassing, the advertisements for gladiatorial games, and a further type that Kruschwitz calls a technical language of consumption. But today we are dealing exclusively with the graffiti. Their value for the study of many aspects of civic life, education, literary culture, the psychology of the ordinary man, etc. is extremely high. Above all, these texts provide a unique corpus for the study of Latin palaeography and the Latin and, to a smaller degree, the Greek language, not to forget that there is also a certain number of Oscan texts. The contribution of the graffiti to the study of the history of Latin cannot be overestimated. On the other hand, I must at once state that there is also a danger of a certain abuse of these odd documents when scholars try to detect, phonetic and other laws behind what are simple misspellings. ‘These inscriptions were presented for the first time to the scholarly world in the excellent edition published by Karl Zangemeister in 1871 in the fourth volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. A first supplement of the wall inscriptions was published by August Mau in 1909, and after the war a third supplement was begun; it was first edited ina rather miserable manner by Matteo Della Corte between 1952 and 1970,! and contained almost exclusively new texts, not yet published by Zangemeister or Mau. For a few years * My thanks go to David Langslow who has checked my English expression. 1 CEH, Solin, Gnomon 45 (1973), 258-77. 60Heikki Solin now, the Arbeitsstelle C/Z. at the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften has been preparing a volume of Addenda et corrigenda to the texts so far included in the volumes by Zangemeister, Mau and Della Corte. The first fascicle, containing the addenda to the parts published by Zangemeister and Mau, is near completion and it is hoped that it will appear next year. In this project, the present speaker has also collaborated, and of the revision work made I would like now to present to you a few samples. I have succeeded, during fieldwork carried out between 2003 and 2007 in Pompeii and in the National Museum of Naples, in discovering a considerable number of new readings concerning linguistic phenomena. As they are unknown to the previous editors and also to other interpreters, and consequently missing in Veikko Vaantinen’s classic Le latin vulgaire des inscriptions pompéiennes (in the following referred to as Le Jatin vulgaire),” a book that has no need to be introduced to this leamed audience, | hope that, with the publication of the new addenda volume, the business of checking linguistic phenomena among Pompeian graffiti, for the moment laborious, and requiring skills rarely existing among normal classicists, will become easier. By the way, to avoid misunderstandings, I must stress the high quality of Zangemeister’s (and also, albeit with some qualifications, Mau’s) edition. If he makes a considerable number of mistakes when reading his graffiti, this is understandable considering the working conditions he had to face in transcribing his texts: he had no photographs at disposal, the light conditions were not always favourable (in reading graffiti illumination from the side is of utmost importance), he had no proper magnifying glass, etc. Most of the graffiti are written in Latin, but the number of Greek texts is not inconsiderable. In addition, there is a certain amount of Oscan material, and a few graffiti written in a Semitic language (or perhaps only one).’ But it is not always easy to distinguish between a Greek and a Latin text. Let me give you one example, CIL 1V 6730, which Mau in CIL thought to be a Greek graffito, giving it the following interpretation: éx(tov?) koAavbac “oxtoBp. In reality it is a Latin one written in Greek characters, with only one little misspelling: OxtoBp. with omikron instead of omega, a very understandable error in a Latin graffito written in Greek letters, more understandable than in a pure Greek text. It should be, Tthink, read as follows: [8]ex(iovp) Kadavbas 'Oxtoip(n¢). Note also Kaavéac instead of -lend-, a spelling due to Greek influence: in Greek documents, the word was normally written KaXavs-, which reflects the original Latin spelling Kaland-, preceding the change a> e in the middle syllable. I shall begin with a graffito published by August Mau in his supplement to the fundamental Zangemeister volume in this form: nuncquam milibus crura mea coni.... warcqdvons buts GyPgnd 6 py ny coy (CIL TV 6884). I must confess that I have meditated for hours in trying to decipher its contents in the deposito of the Direzione of the excavations in Pompeii and then at the desk 2. Referred to according to the 3" edition, Abhandlungen der Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, Klasse fur Sprachen, Literatur und Kunst 58.3 (Berlin 1966). 3 Imean CIL1V 8010, which seems to be written in Aramaic; cf. G. Lacerenza, AION Filol. 56 (1996), 166-88 (there also two other graffiti which escaped Della Corte). 61Heikki Solin in my study, and formed and rejected many successive hypotheses. But let us first state that Mau’s reading is essentially sound, save that in his second word, instead of milibus one has to read milebus: between L and B there are two vertical lines II, that is to say e: a cursive e written with two vertical lines was very common in Pompeii. As regards the end, I will come to it in a while. The first word muncquam is naturally numquam, a spelling attested also elsewhere at Pompeii,’ an attempt to bring the written form closer to the pronunciation. But what could mumquam milebus crura mea mean? First | tried to establish something using the ablative / dative of mille, written in an improper way as milebus: this would be to follow Mau, even though he made no attempt to explain the message of the writer - and I doubt whether he had an idea how to interpret the text. But no idea occurred to me more than to Mau, So I had to abandon this division of words. Then I thought of the word meles or melis which means an animal, badger or marten, which would have been written here in abl. plur. ‘milebus instead of melibus. In Roman popular medicine and superstition, the adeps of the badger, the soft animal fat, was used against various diseases. If it could be connected in some way to the crura, pethaps the writer wanted to express his wish to be never in need to resort to badger’s fat as curative power for some skeletal disease, But this explanation would be too ingenious - even fantastic —to be true. In explaining graffiti the simple explanations are normally the best. So here too. If we are entitled to consider /ebus an independent word and a secondary form of Jaevus, we could give the word the meaning referring to a person governed by an adverse fate, as in Horace’s Ars poetica 301 o ego laevus! “Ah, fool that I am!” If the following verb can be read as confringat, then we would have a good and meaningful sentence nuncquam mi lebus crura mea confringat. The dative mi, a dativus sympatheticus, would have been used pleonastically in addition to mea. As you know, the dativus sympatheticus was much used in the colloquial language, and not only in Greek or Latin, as Wilhelm Havers showed in his fundamental monograph Untersuchungen zur Kasussyntax der indogermanischen Sprachen (Strasbourg, 1911). By the way, the most famous exponent of the French palaeographical school during the immediate post-war period, the late Robert Marichal, who worked in Pompeii in the mid-fifties studying and Photographing inscriptions, both stone-inscriptions and wall-inscriptions, had no luck with the verb, as he read CONVNCERO, explaining it as coniunxero,’ which does not give any good sense. The second example shows still more clearly that graffiti completely misunderstood by previous editors can be explained without any intervention in the form of the text. This is the best sort of textual criticism.® The graffito in question was published by Della Corte in CIL IV 8898, to be honest, in an absurd way. His lemma given in CIL runs as follows: “TIOPILVS CANIS / CVNNV LINGII RIINO / TIVIIILIS IN MVRO. Popilus, (ut) canis cunnu(m) linge(s) (pro lingis) Reno (pro Rheno? An Renio), munlis (fortasse pro mingis?) in muro.” | saw the graffito for the first time in 1967, during my Lern- and Wanderjahre in Italy, and was able to read it without any difficulty within a few seconds. It simply says: 4 Cf. Vaunanen, Le latin vulgaire, 55 5. Among his worknotes preserved at the Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes at the Sorbonne. 6 CEH. Solin, Epigraphica 30 (1968), 115-18, 62Heikki Solin Tiopilus canis, cunnu(m) lingere noli puellis in muro. Tiopilus represents a secondary form of the popular Greek name Theophilus.’ The following word canis refers insultingly to Theophilus; canis was often applied to persons, not only to Cynic philosophers, but to ordinary men and women: of a woman Plautus, Menaechmi 936, sings uxorem suam esse aiebat rabiosam canem. Everything else should be clear. Unfortunately, the absurd interpretation by Della Corte has found followers; it has found its way even into J. N. ‘Adams's fundamental monograph on the Latin sexual vocabulary, with the fatal consequence that Adams saw here an example of the equation of cunnus and culus.' We shall come back to this equation in due course. ‘As is well-known, the Pompeian walls are full of erotic, not to say pornographic, linguistic dregs of all kind, In the following I present some further cases of this kind of writing, not because erotic literature and inscriptions are so fashionable today, but because they are indeed very rewarding from a linguistic point of view. I follow the order of the numbering of CIL. CILIV 1261 (cf. p.206). The inscription has been lost for a long time, but its textual form offers, with only one exception, no greater difficulties. The text runs as follows: _futebatur, inquam futuebatur, civium Romanorum atractis pedibus cunus, in qua nule aliae veces erant nisissei dulcisime et pissimae. As one can see at once, the writer had not mastered orthography very well, even though the irregularities in spelling can all be explained through sticking to the pronunciation. In only one passage does there seem to be a real error in writing: veces, written VIICIIS, if supposed to be vices, does not give any good sense, and this is why one is tempted to change veces into voces;? it would not be difficult to suppose an error either on the part of the writer or rather on that of the modem scholar, who easily could have committed the mistake of reading O as II, the more so if the two lines of O 7 Attested only in the city of Rome, 70 times: H. Solin, Die griechischen Personennamen in Rom. Ein Namenbuch (Berlin - New York, 2003"), 85f. 8 J.N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (London, 1982), 253. 9) This was first proposed by A. W. van Buren, Rend. Pontif. Acc. Arch. 19, 1942-43, 191-96; ef. id. in ‘Mélanges J. Carcopino (Paris, 1966), 958. 63Heikki Solin were only slightly crooked and separated from each other, as sometimes could happen. Supposing this, the graffito would run in regular orthography in the following way: futebatur, inquam futuebatur, civium Romanorum attractis pedibus cunnus, in qua nullae aliae voces erant nisi si dulcissimae et piissimae, “Fuked, | mean fucked, with fettered feet was the arse of Roman citizens, and no other moans were heard than those sweetest and most upright”. From the linguistic point of view, it is noteworthy to draw attention at least to the following peculiarities: 1 cun(n)us seems to be identical to culus;!"2 in qua is in qua re, as it seems, and nisi si is nisi.’ Note also the repetition, at the beginning of the text, of the verb Futuere, which gives more impetus to it and at the same time acts as a sort of self-correction futuebatur from futebatur (itis not ruled out that the author of the graffito began consciously with the erroneous form). For the rest, we can skip this inscription, which at the same time amusingly implies a strongly obscene tone and is written in a solemn style, as I cannot offer new views on its interpretation." CIL IV 1353a (seen 2005) was read by Zangemeister QVIBVS NOMINIPI. That does not fit, for the third letter of the second word is surely an N, not an M; what follows has to be read INITI, or rather INICI. The author probably wanted quibus non inici, the verb having perhaps an obscene meaning. “ But the exact sense of the graffito remains naturally hidden from us, in the absence of a broader context. CIL IV 1391 (cf. p.463) (lost). Zangemeister, who actually saw the graffito, gave it the following reading: VIINIIRIA / MAXIMO / MENTLA / ITXMVCCAVT / PIR VINDIIMIA+/ TOTA- / IITRILINQVII / PVTR-VIINTRII / MVCIII/ COS PLINV/CS. This text is highly interesting, both from the linguistic point of view and with regard to its content. But it isa difficult piece, and I do not know if anybody has succeeded in explaining it in a completely convincing way. Most editors and interpreters have misunderstood it in more than one point. But to me the main thread is more or less clear, and the text should be understood in this way: Veneria Maximo ment(u)la(m) exmuccaut per vindemiam tota(m) et relinque(t) (if not relinguit) putr(em) ventre(m), mucei os plenu(m).'* In English more or less '° The translation given in A, Varone, Erotica Pompeiana, Love Inscriptions on the Walls of Pompeit (Rome, 2002; translation of his Ialian version of 1994), 84, differs from ours in few places. 11 See eg. J. N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary, 116, 121. Other scholars refer it to women, e.g. A. Varone, Erotica Pompeiana (Roma, 1994), 82 or K.-W. Weber, Decius war hier. Das Beste aus der rémischen Graffti-Szene, (Zarich ~ Dusseldorf, 1996), 54 n.148, as emerges from their translations. 12 Onthis pleonastic form, see Vaaniinen, Le latin vulgaire, 127; G. Perl, Philologus 122 (1978), 114, 13 Generally, for its interpretation, see, in addition to Adams, van Buren, Varone and Weber, also J.-P. Cébe, La caricature et la parodie dans le monde romain antique des origins & Juvénal (Paris, 1966), 173; . Fehling, Ethologische Untersuchungen aufdem Gebiet der Altertumskunde (Munich, 1974), 22, 27; M. Gigante, Civiltd delle forme letterarie nell'antica Pompei (Naples, 1979), 158, 160; P. Cugusi, QUCC 48 ns. 19 (1985), 9203 ZPE 61 (1985), 276; M. L. Fele, Ann. Fac. Magistero Univ. Cagliari n.s, 10 (1986), 25; W. Krenkel, #Z Rostock 36, Heft 6 (1987), 51. 14 Cf.G, Piligersdorffer, TALL s.v. inicio, 1612,23-26. 15 A few observations on the textual form of the graffito: 5, on the ground of the apographon given by Zangemeister at tab, XXVIIL6 it seems possible to read VINDEMIAM. 7, RIILINQVII in the transcription by Zangemeister seems to be confirmed by the apographon ab. XXVIII 6, ifnot as a misreading for RIILINQVIT (on the assumption that across line of T had escaped him); however, as the writer omits often final consonants and gives other verbs too in an abridged form, perhaps RIILINQVII has to be preferred as a sort of lectio difficilior, 9, the apographon seems to admit also MVCCIII. 10, C is very uncertain and does perhaps not belong to the inscription, 64Heikki Solin in the following way: “Veneria has sucked the cock of Maximus throughout the vintage, lvaving her rotten womb empty, but her mouth full of snot”.'® A woman called Veneria has in some way sex with Maximus; strangely enough, some historians of medicine, comparing, the word Veneria with ues veneria, have assumed that the inscription would be a proof of syphilis.” A few details: 2, Maximo is a dativus sympatheticus, quite common, as is to be expected, in Pompeii."® 4, highly peculiar is the verb exmuccare, a hapax; its meaning is more or less ‘to cause to discharge mucus, snot’, and would be almost synonymous with emungere. It can hardly refer to masturbation, as the promoter of the action contained in the verb exmuccare was Veneria.!? The form exmuccaut is possibly interesting as a predecessor of the perfect of some Romance languages. 5-6, per vindemiam totam: “for the whole vintage”, no doubt in an obscene sense; the words have been related to carmina vindemialia, which grape-pickers used to recite with obscene words.”° 8-9, both putr(em) ventre(m) and mucei (= muci) os plenu(m) seem to bear on Veneria. Noteworthy is still the form mucei = ‘muci written with only one c, whereas exmuccaut shows a geminate, but as stated above, it is also possible to read, on the basis of Zangemeister’s apographon, muccei. Mucc- represents an expressive gemination and survives in Romance languages (REW 5709), so that there is no difficulty in supposing this form here. CILIV 1425 (ef. p.207): CIINTIVS CVNNV /LINGIT ITONVSIA / LINGIIT. The tgraffito of a certain Gentius, now lost, was copied by Zangemeister, who confirms the reading ITONVSIA (“Dionusia admitti nequit”). The name of the woman was, however, no doubt Dionysia; ITONVSIA is a pure spelling mistake, the explanation of which remains unclear to me. Note also the variation between lingit and linget (both are present forms). CILIV 1827 (cf. p.212), SA / SALVE / PLANE SPADO S / VALE / MAGO. So Zangemeister, but his reading of the graffito turns out to be quite wrong, I saw the inscription in 2006, and it is to be read sa(lve), / Alce. / plane spado. / Alce; / Mago. Its text does not offer any difficulties of understanding. A/ce is a common female name.' The adverb plane (Zangemeister thought of a man’s name Planus, which is otherwise completely unknown) is here used to increase the strength of spado,” unless a verb has been left out. The spado, eunuch, could be the Phileros spado, addressee of 1826, written on the same section of the wall. CIL IV 1879. Published by Zangemeister in the following way: EA// XAMVS / AMAT//ONICVS / OPPRESSIT / NAM. Without further ado, I give my reading of 2004: ea[m] Mamus / amat; [Ionicus / oppressit / nam: Mamus loves a git! (who remains anonymous, but whose name could have stayed in a lost part above the first preserved line), 16 The translation given in A. Varone, Erotica Pompeiana. Love Inscriptions on the Walls of Pompeii (Rome, 2002; translation of his Italian version of 1994), 79, differs in its second part from ours, as Varone has ‘misunderstood lines 7-9, reading relingue/t utr(umque) ventre inane e[t]. "Ph, Hildebrand, Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrifi 1926, 520. But see P. Diepgen, Mitt. Gesch. Med. Nat. 2, 1926, 187; 0. Immisch, ibid, 26, 1927, 87f; A. von Notthaff, Dermatologische Wochenschrift 87, 1928, 946m. 18 See H, Solin, Epigraphica 30 (1968), 117. 19 This explanation of the meaning of the verb is given by G. Vorberg, Glossarium eroticum (Stuttgart, 1932), 366f,,and Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary, 209. 20 0. Immisch, Mitt. Gesch. Med. Nat. 26 (1927), 876. 21 Attested in Rome 18 times: Solin, Die griechischen Personennamen, in Rom 1281. 22 For this use see TALL s.v. plane, 2342.50-64. 65Heikki Solin in which matter Ionicus, perhaps a rival of Mamus, has overwhelmed the lovers in some way, or perhaps only the girl; opprimere might have had a meaning of debauching. How nam should be understood, is not clear; either it is postponed,” or the sentence has remained unfinished. But it is also possible that the writer wanted ILAM instead of NAM; and indeed eam would tally with the verb opprimere, if the latter refers only to the girl. CIL IV 2202 (cf. p.465): RESTITVTA-BELLIS HORIBVS. This is the reading of Zangemeister, who hesitantly explained horibus as abl. plur. of os oris. But Marichal, whom Imentioned above, succeeded in reading moribus,’’ which I confirmed by autopsy in 2004.2 These words were written by a prostitute as a sort of advertisement; the same combination appears in CIL IV 4024, 4592 and 5127. It is hardly possible to read here foribus, which appears, it is true, in an obscene context in Catull, 15.12 and Carm, Priap. 83.30. CIL IV 2203 (cf. p.215): futui Mula(m) hic Zangemeister. He thus took Mula as a proper name, and in this he has found a great number of keen followers.” However, if we compare the general context of the other Pompeian attestations of mula (CIL 1V 2204, 8185[2]), and in particular CIL IV 2016 mulus hic muscellas docuit, it becomes clear that mula is here a derisive appellation of a prostitute." To conclude this section, one more graffito from the sphere of eroticism, although not of an obscene nature: CIL IV 2414 propero, vale mea sava, fac me ames. Noteworthy is the word sava (its reading is certain, seen 2006), nowhere else attested, best explained as a term of endearment,’” a back-formation from the verb saviari and the noun savium; compare o Thais mea, meum savium in Terence (Eun. 456).°° If our interpretation is correct, this case should be added to Vauintinen.** We proceed now to a few cases where a new reading can cast fresh light on language use and lexicography. First, CIL IV 1343a (cf. p.206), read by Zangemeister as OTIICVM. I myself saw the inscription in 2004, and after having long tried to decipher the difficult text, I came to propose, even if with some hesitation, the reading Opice (or opice), vocative of Opicus, an ancient name of the Oscans (cf. ‘Omxoi), which often has the meaning ‘ignorant, 23. So Adams, Sexual Vocabulary, 182. 24 Oral information from Peter Kruschwitz 25 R-Marichal, in Studi di paleografia, diplomatica, storia e araldica in onore di C. Manaresi (Milan, 1953), 352 with photo 0.9. 26 To be sure, this reading was for the first time proposed by A. Mat Zangemeister’s edition, p.465, 27 E.g. Mau, CIL IV ind,, 751; 1. Kajanto, NPhM 66 (1965), 455; Adams, Sexual Vocabulary, 122; A. Varone, in Donna ¢ lavoro nella documentazione epigrafica. Atti del I seminario sulla condizione femminile nella documentazione epigrafica, Bologna, 21 novembre 2002, a cura di A. Buonopane e Fr. Cenerini (Faenza, 2003), 200, 210; RSP 16 (2005), 107. 8 So J-P. Cebe, La caricature, 339; L. Lifstedt, TALL, s.v. mulus (mula), 1621.166. 29 Hardly a personal name, as many scholars are inclined to think, e.g. H. Geist, Pompeianische Wandinschriften (Munich 1960”, 54f, n.22; 1. Kajanto, NPhM 66 (1965), 459; Weber, Decius war hier, 20 18.10; F. Knoke, Altsprachlicher Unterricht 20, 3, Beilage (1977), 14 n.10; Varone, Erotica Pompeiana, 38 30 Further Pl. Cist. 248; Poen. 3676, Sava can hardly be taken as a proper name, as I. Kajanto, NPhM 66 (1965), 459 does, 31 Forhis lexicographical observations, 89fT Iti true that Vanden does not know any other example of such 1 back-formation. is addenda et corrigenda to 66Heikki Solin uncultured, barbarian’ and is used also as a substantive. Compare Secundus Opscus in CIL IV 1713, where Opscus can have a similar meaning. CIL IV 1998, OLVS AVGVS (lost). A. Baldi, “Iscrizioni pompeiane”, Cava de’ Tirreni (1982), 47 n.68 translates “La minestra di Augusto”. Amusing. Olus is a vulgar spelling of the praenomen Aulus, but if we are entitled to understand Olus Augus(ti servus), then the praenomen is used in the function of a slave name, that is to say, of a cognomen,® CIL IV 2178a, NICA CRETEISSIANE. So Zangemeister. That should be Crete Issiane (vocative). But /ssianus does not mean anything. I saw the inscription in 2004 and read, even if with some hesitation, C(hjre(s)te, issime, “you, Chrestus yourself”. Issime represents the vocative of the superlative ipsimus, attested in Petronius; cf. French méme, It, medesimo, Sp. mismo, which derive from *semet-ipsimum of the vulgar language. CIL IV 4206 was read by previous editors as CINAVETVS, and considered as a corrupt form of cinaedus (Mommsen, however, in a note in CIL, was on the right track in proposing cina(ede) vetus). In reality the wall presents CINA VETVSC = cina(edus) vetuse(ulus). Vetusculus is a hapax,” known from the correspondence of Fronto (145.2) in the sense of old-fashioned, and still in Sidon. Epist. 8.16.2 (supposed to have been influenced by the reading of Fronto’s letters"), Here the reference is to an old debauchee. CILIV 4422. In this list of household utensils, line 6, the editor Mau read oleum(?).1 saw the inscription in 2005. Oleum is completely ruled out, and we must read olicula = ollicula, a hapax (Antidot. Brux. 31). CIL IV 4874. The reading of the graffito causes no difficulties, but its right interpretation is not immediately obvious.*® Mau gave the text this form: Vit. Vitalio baliat (valeaf?), Car est. Musicus. He held Car as an ethnicon; if so, there would be two men, a Vitalio from Caria, and a Musicus. Why not? Both Vitalio and Musicus are wide-spread names. Another possibility would be to see in car the coniunction quare, used here as a predecessor of French ‘car’. If the word is written car, that is no obstacle, the more if we assume a haplography for car(e) est. Vatindnen cites from Pompeii another example of quare in the sense of French ‘car’,.” and this could be added to his list. So the text should be printed in the following manner: Vit(alio), Vitalio baliat (certainly = valeat), car est musicus: “good health to Vitalio, as he is a musician”, As an entertainer of people he might be an acceptable ‘guest in the eyes of the author of the graffito, And finally, a syntactical trifle: CIL IV 5065, HIC DOMOS PAPIRIV SABINIVM, ‘The explication of this graffito is controversial. Mau took Papiriu as a Greek genitive. Others have seen here the so-called nominativus fixus, nominative instead of genitive,” 32 CEP. Flury, TALL sv. opicus, 702F. 33. Praenomina were not unknown as slave names, cf. H. Solin, Die stadirdmischen Sklavennamen. Ein ‘Namenbuch (Stuttgart, 1966), 3-11. 34 Cf. also AE (1979), 144 Romana Vetusculanorum amor from Fabrateria Vetus. 35 Butef. M. P. J. van den Hout, A Commentary on the Letters of M. Cornelius Fronto (Leiden, 1999), 618, 36 See also R. Egger, Oh 45 (1960), 24. 37 CIL TV 2421. Viininen, Latin vulgaire, 126. 38 Inthe same way Vasinfinen, Latin vulgaire, 84. 39 J, Svennung, Eranos 62 (1964), 175. 67Heikki Solin present also in other Pompeian inscriptions,"° but in that case Sabinium would remain obscure, Svennung thought of accusative for nominative, but one would expect the ‘cognomen Sabinus, not the gentile name Sabinius. So, after all, one could understand Papiriu (Greek genitive) Sabini VM or Sabinium with a parasitic -m."" Let us finish by suppressing a ghost-word which has found its way even into the Munich Thesaurus: CIL IV 4161. Mau read MVSSICVS / LYLYRIA, followed by the first half of the letter V. On the ground of this reading, Véintinen tried, admittedly with hesitation, to explain LYLYRIAI as a spelling mistake for /uluriat, which would be anew onomatopoetic verb, but admitted that there could be hiding also the word Jyra, with an erroneous reiteration of the first syllable.’ I saw the graffito in 2003 and succeeded in reading Licisca (Mau was misled by lines in the final part of the graffito which belong to the following graffito, 4162). Licisca is a secondary spelling of Lycisca, a well-known Greek female name.” Ithas become clear how rewarding a new stocktake of the Pompeian graffiti through autopsy can be for the study of various branches of Latin linguistics, ranging from orthography through morphological, lexicographical and syntactic problems to those of bilingualism, Not even the most recent editions and analyses of Pompeian epigraphy are devoid of insufficiencies of various kinds.“ A ter the publication of the new supplement of CIL IV, | hope that students of Latin will have a more secure foundation on which to approach this difficult field of documentation. 40 CIL IV 4853, perhaps also 1569. But AOYMMOC ITEPTOYCA 231 1, explained by Svennung as domus Pertunsae, has probably to be understood as domus pertunsa, a house damaged during the earthquake of AD 62. 41 In the latter sense Visandinen, Latin vulgaire, 84. 42 Vaininen, Latin vulgaire, 109, followed by TALL, s.v. Ira, 1805.24-28. 43. Solin, Die griechischen Personennamen in Rom 1138. 44 The recent book by R. E. Wallace, An Introduction to Wall Inscriptions from Pompeii and Herculaneum (Wauconda, Il, 2005), which contains an edition of selected Pompeian dipinti and graffi, and an introduction where linguistic phenomena are analysed, suffers from weaknesses, evident both in epigraphic and linguistic analysis. Cf. e.g, P. Kruschwitz, BMCR (2005.04.58); A. Varone, Aretos 39 (2005), 263-66; H. Solin, Gnomon, forthcoming. 68