A SERVILE RIDDLE FROM POMPEII? (CIL 4.1877)

Abstract

This article reconsiders a graffitied riddle from Pompeii (CIL 4.1877). It argues that slavery is one possible dimension of the puzzle, and that acknowledging the existence of slavery in this text testifies to the potential of Pompeian graffiti as a source for overlooked social histories.

This article concerns a Pompeian graffito (CIL 4.1877) that has long presented a puzzle, both to its ancient audience and to modern scholars.¹ Acknowledging the possible dimension of enslavement in this text helps to unlock some of its mysteries and testifies to the potential of Pompeian graffiti as a source for hidden or overlooked social histories.

The graffito was inscribed in Pompeii's basilica. Plausibly composed in verse,² it describes itself explicitly as a riddle:

Zetema

mulier ferebat filium similem sui

nec meus est nec mi similat sed

uellem esset meus

et ^e[g]o uoleba(m) ut meus esset. 5

A riddle:

A woman bore a son like herself

He is not mine nor is he like me but

I wish that he were mine.

And I have been wishing that he were mine.

Although all five lines are given as part of a single inscription in the CIL, and physically follow on from one another in their placement on the wall (see fig. 1), Peter Kruschwitz has shown convincingly that the final line (et ego uoleba(m) ut meus esset, 5) is written in a second, different, hand.³ This line may, therefore, be the first of several responses that the graffito invited in antiquity. Three further responses appear just above the riddle, in the same panel on the wall (CIL 4.1878).⁴ The topmost of these is somewhat smug and enigmatic: zetema dissoluit (‘[s]he solved the riddle’).⁵ The Latin of the second is almost impossibly scrambled, but Danielewicz's ingenious reading is one plausible attempt to make sense of the muddle: Lacris a mala pateto bis arabis a.II (‘Lacris, may you be open from the mouth; you will plough [‘fuck’] twice for 2 asses’); that is, this is a reference to payment in return for sexual acts.⁶ The third response is straightforwardly base: linge mentula(m) est (‘[the answer] is suck the dick’). This comment might simply be an expression of defiance at a riddle that evades comprehension or it might be another genuine attempt at a solution, again pointing to the riddle's potential sexual allusions.

Fig. 1: Zangemeister's line drawing of CIL 4.1877 (Tab. XXIV 3); reproduced with permission

These responses offer beguiling evidence for the attention and engagement that such graffitied puzzles attracted in their original contexts.⁷ Yet modern scholars have not been satisfied with these ancient solutions and have made their own attempts to unlock the riddle's mystery. Two main interpretations have been offered. The first is to see this as a riddle of family relationships, perhaps centred around the double meaning of sui as both the genitive of the reflexive pronoun suus and the dative of sus, ‘pig’; beyond pointing out this pun, however, subscribers to this view have not unpacked its significance.⁸ Benefiel suggests that ‘the key lies in the word meus, which might be understood as indicating a father–son relationship (‘I wish he were my [son]’) but could be taken in an erotic sense (‘I wish he were mine’); she does not pursue this explanation further.⁹ The second interpretation is to understand this riddle as a coded and Greek-inflected reference to money-lending, since the Greek word τόκος can mean either ‘child’ or ‘interest’ and the phrase τόκον φέρειν can mean either ‘bear a child’ or ‘produce interest’; the mulier would then be the original sum of money.¹⁰ On this interpretation, it is attractive to take the Greek heading zetema as a nudge to think bilingually in order to solve the riddle. However, although this reading makes sense of the title and the first line, it makes less sense of the rest (nec meus … esset meus). It is especially unclear why the debt should be desired; indeed, most commentators adopting this explanation concentrate on the first verse alone.¹¹

But there is another possible solution, one that draws both on the evidence of the ancient solutions on the basilica wall and on elements of existing modern readings. I suggest that this is a puzzle of parentage that depends upon the hierarchy of freedom and enslavement inherent in Roman society.

The frequent and complex puzzles of parentage in literature, especially comedy, offer parallels for the puzzle our riddle poses.¹² Sexual relations involving enslaved individuals raised especially acute questions about children's legitimacy and resemblance to their parents, with which ancient texts engaged. There are several reasons to suspect a reference to enslavement in this graffito. First is the term mulier: this can be a neutral term to describe a woman, but it frequently carries pejorative connotations and is often applied specifically to enslaved women.¹³ Second is the possible pun between suus and sus. There are linguistic and conceptual associations between pigs, sex and slavery, especially if we follow the header's prompt to think in Greek: the term σῦς (or ὗς) could denote female genitalia,¹⁴ and it is striking that the most famous and extended example of the wordplay between ‘pig’ and ‘vulva’ involves girls being sold into sexual slavery (Ar. Ach. 739–819).¹⁵ As we have seen, two of the ancient responses themselves perceived a sexual tinge to the riddle, including one response that may refer to payment in return for sex.¹⁶ Third, understanding this as a reference to sex between some combination of enslaved and free individuals makes sense of the content of the entire original graffito. We can imagine various possible scenarios underlying its verses. One possibility (a) is that the mulier refers to an enslaved woman who has borne a child by her enslaver; this child would indeed share his mother's enslaved status (‘be like her’ rather than like his father) and would not be recognized as his father's son, though his father might wish that he were. Alternatively (b), this could be a reference to an enslaved woman who bore a child by someone other than her enslaver, whether free or unfree; in this case her enslaver might resent the fact that the child was not ‘his’, since it was his prerogative to have sex with all those whom he kept enslaved.¹⁷ A third possibility (c) is that the woman herself is not enslaved but free, and has had a child with an enslaved man. This scenario might well provoke public (though anonymous) complaint from her husband; in the riddle, the associations of enslavement colouring mulier and sus are transferred from her enslaved sexual partner to the woman and her child to underline her contravention of social hierarchies.¹⁸ A fourth possibility (d) is that the mulier is a freedwoman who has been freed by her enslaver for the purpose of marriage and subsequently had a freeborn child with him.¹⁹ On this reading, the voice behind the riddle can be imagined as that of her enslaved partner, lamenting that the child is not his son. It might then be significant that the final line of the original graffito expresses a desire for parentage but makes no corresponding wish about the child's legal status: the child is not like the riddle's enslaved author, and there is no expressed wish for him to be so.

To summarize, a translation of each of these different possibilities––spelling out the status differences in each––might run:

1. a) An (enslaved) woman gave birth to an (enslaved) child. He is not my legitimate son nor is he like me (his free father) but I wish he were my legitimate son.

2. b) An (enslaved) woman gave birth to an (enslaved) child. He is not mine nor is he like me (her enslaver) but I wish he were mine.

3. c) A (free) woman bore a child (with an enslaved man). He is not mine nor is he like me (her free husband) but I wish he were mine.

4. d) A (freed) woman gave birth to a (free) child. He is not mine nor is he like me (her enslaved partner) but I wish he were my son.

To differing degrees, these scenarios involve transgression of social norms, either in the scenario described or in the scenario desired.²⁰ Recognizing these transgressions strengthens Kruschwitz's argument about the relationship between the form and the content of the verses. He argues that the unusual spacing of the second verse across two lines ‘delayed the punchline’ (uellem esset meus) which comes as a ‘surprising twist after everything that proceeded it’.²¹ However, he does not elucidate what this twist actually is, since he does not try to solve the riddle. Understanding the twist as a desire for paternity in defiance of normative social and sexual expectations explains its surprisingness and makes the line break more pointed.

All these possible scenarios also make sense of the responses that follow our graffito as further derogatory commentary on a woman perceived as (too) sexually available: the first response, immediately following the riddle, wishes that the child was the product of a sexual encounter with him (uoleba(m) ut meus esset); the other two are more explicitly vulgar (see above). The feelings and agency of the woman herself are of no concern to these respondents. On reading (d), these responses are especially poignant: consciously or not and whether themselves free, freed or enslaved, ancient respondents to the riddle overlook the heartbreak of the enslaved narrator and reply with sexual jokes and interpretations––just like most modern commentators.

This interpretation of the text opens our minds to the participation of enslaved people in Pompeii's inscriptional landscape. It is notoriously difficult to be certain about who writers of graffiti were: they are frequently anonymous and even when names are given they may not be real ones.²² However, there is no reason not to assume that at least some writers and readers of Pompeian graffiti were enslaved.²³ This is especially so in light of recent work on the integral role that enslaved people played in literary culture and production.²⁴ Our graffito offers one concrete––if necessarily speculative––case-study of how we might use these texts as micro-histories of lives and experiences that are overlooked in the mainstream historical record.²⁵

A reading of these verses as a riddle of sex, status and parentage makes it a puzzle of real-world relevance. These themes were all prominent elsewhere in the social commentary of Pompeii's graffiti. Another nearby graffito from the basilica (CIL 4.1860) likewise references prostitution and ownership (quoi scripsi semel et legit mea iure puellast. quae pretium dixit non mea sed populi est, ‘The girl to whom I once wrote and who read my message is justly mine. The girl who named her price is not mine but is common property’).²⁶ The acuteness of questions about the status of the (formerly) enslaved and their children is also apparent in local documentary evidence: the case of Petronia Iusta, a long-running legal dispute over whether she was born free or enslaved, is recorded in several tablets from the Casa del Bicentario in Herculaneum.²⁷ Our graffito plays right into these concerns.

Admittedly, this is not necessarily the decisive solution to the riddle. Indeed, part of the riddle's allure may be that it evades a single answer; its playfulness lies in keeping people guessing. But enslavement should be considered as one plausible dimension of the riddle's mystery, not least because it is a theme to which it is easy to be oblivious.²⁸