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I mean to tell you, he knew how to blow that thing
I am not dead. I seem to have spent the last two weeks solid interacting with people and I am now in hibernation. I spent Saturday at a cherry blossom viewing party at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kenjari's, Sunday at eredien's fantastically vegan Alice-in-Lud dinner. Yesterday I watched Séraphine (2008) with Viking Zen and it reminded me that I still haven't written up The Horse's Mouth (1958), which I saw in January and also loved. Or any of the plays I've seen since the weekend before last. Or the ballet. I did read some awesome graffiti in Latin.
Technically I found it last week when I was checking attestations of irrumo for a conversation withgrimmwire; I should have posted it then, but I am engaged in losing a game of catch-up with my life. It was scratched on a wall of the basilica at Pompeii:
NARCISSUS
FELLATOR
MAXIMUS
(CIL IV 1825a)
Quite possibly this is the best thing I've read off a wall in my life. Because on the one hand it's your basic for-a-good-time-call graffito: Narcissus [is] the greatest at sucking cock. But on the other, it's completely a parody of Roman tria nomina—praenomen, nomen, cognomen ± agnomen, Quintus Fabius Maximus, Publius Clodius Pulcher, Gaius Fuficius Fango,1 etc. Thus proving that if you could go back in time and show Monty Python's Life of Brian to a Roman audience in first-century Judaea, they might be a little confused by the alien abduction,2 but they'd think Biggus Dickus was hilarious.
1. My favorite Roman name, belonging to one of the great sad gits of the ancient world: the Octavian-appointed governor of Africa in 41 BCE who famously mistook a passing herd of hartebeest for enemy cavalry (being engaged at the time in a territorial skirmish with Titus Sextius, Antony's preferred candidate for the job) and committed suicide. I have no reason to believe I would have approved of his politics or liked him in person, but if I ever start keeping more of a household shrine than three coins, a Yule goat, and a shipwrecked glass bottle, I may light candles for him or something, if only apotropaically. His cognomen is Oscan for "mud."
2. Of course, modern audiences are, too.
kenjari's, Sunday at eredien's fantastically vegan Alice-in-Lud dinner. Yesterday I watched Séraphine (2008) with Viking Zen and it reminded me that I still haven't written up The Horse's Mouth (1958), which I saw in January and also loved. Or any of the plays I've seen since the weekend before last. Or the ballet. I did read some awesome graffiti in Latin. Technically I found it last week when I was checking attestations of irrumo for a conversation with
grimmwire; I should have posted it then, but I am engaged in losing a game of catch-up with my life. It was scratched on a wall of the basilica at Pompeii:NARCISSUS
FELLATOR
MAXIMUS
(CIL IV 1825a)
Quite possibly this is the best thing I've read off a wall in my life. Because on the one hand it's your basic for-a-good-time-call graffito: Narcissus [is] the greatest at sucking cock. But on the other, it's completely a parody of Roman tria nomina—praenomen, nomen, cognomen ± agnomen, Quintus Fabius Maximus, Publius Clodius Pulcher, Gaius Fuficius Fango,1 etc. Thus proving that if you could go back in time and show Monty Python's Life of Brian to a Roman audience in first-century Judaea, they might be a little confused by the alien abduction,2 but they'd think Biggus Dickus was hilarious.
1. My favorite Roman name, belonging to one of the great sad gits of the ancient world: the Octavian-appointed governor of Africa in 41 BCE who famously mistook a passing herd of hartebeest for enemy cavalry (being engaged at the time in a territorial skirmish with Titus Sextius, Antony's preferred candidate for the job) and committed suicide. I have no reason to believe I would have approved of his politics or liked him in person, but if I ever start keeping more of a household shrine than three coins, a Yule goat, and a shipwrecked glass bottle, I may light candles for him or something, if only apotropaically. His cognomen is Oscan for "mud."
2. Of course, modern audiences are, too.
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Absolutely. Fellator is an insult as well as a trade description; graffiti of this type could be real advertisements or praise for the services of a prostitute (likelier for inscriptions found inside the lupanar or specifying a price, although the latter doesn't exclude the your-mom-does-it-for-five-dollars school of communication) or they could be exactly what you read in bus stations. I mean, I have no idea how to interpret this one:
Isidorum aedilum oro vos faciatis
optime cunnlincet
(CIL IV 1383)
Vote Isidorus for aedile
He licks cunt the best
But I think it's brilliant that it exists. It's like finding out that classical statues were painted.
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