Graverini, however, argues that the 'most reasonable assumption' is that the poem's author was a woman. Goold for what she identifies as the traditional view of the poem's authorship: 'with the realization that the graffito does not reflect a real-life situation disappears all likelihood that it was composed or inscribed by a girl'. Equally, many scholars have argued that the poem was neither composed by a female author, nor inscribed by a woman: Milnor cites G.P. As the poem is usually interpreted as a love poem, many scholars have attempted to find a way of interpreting either the speaker or the beloved as a man rather than a woman. The poem as it is preserved in the Pompeii inscription is written in the voice of a woman (identified by the feminine perdita in verse 5), addressed to another woman ( pupula, 'my little darling', in verse 3). Alternatively, August Mau's suggestion of meditans is widely accepted by scholars, though this leaves the sentence without a main verb. However, Luca Graverini argues that the word order suggests that the verb in the sentence should be in the first person, agreeing with ego ('I') in verse five, but meditas is in the second person additionally, vigilarem in verse five is in the past tense, and so the next verb probably would be also. In his initial publication of the poem, Sogliano emended the word to meditaris, and Kristina Milnor argues that meditas is correct as a non-deponent form of meditaris. The text of CIL 4.5296 is relatively clear, though there is some disagreement about the interpretation of the word meditas in verse six. This form of composition is known from other graffiti from Pompeii: for instance CIL 4.9847, a two line inscription made up of one hexameter verse from Ovid's Amores and one from Propertius I.1. Kristina Milnor suggests that the reason for the erratic pattern of what were apparently originally pentametrical and hexametrical lines is if CIL 4.5296 is made up of verses from two or more different poems stitched together to make a new composition. If the poem were composed in elegiac couplets, verse four should again be a pentameter it is easier, however, to emend it so it reads as a hexameter, suggesting the poem was not originally in regular elegiac couplets. The first verse of the poem scans correctly as a hexameter verses two and three can be easily emended to read as a pentameter and hexameter respectively. The meter is somewhat irregular: three verses are correct hexameters, and the text may originally have been made up entirely of hexameters, or a mixture of hexameters and pentameters. It is unknown why the poem ends mid-verse: perhaps the author was interrupted, or could not remember the end of the poem.

Though inscribed over seven lines of text, the poem is metrically nine verses long, with the final verse unfinished. The poem was probably not composed by the writer of the graffiti the graffiti writer instead seems to have copied out a poem which they imperfectly remembered. The text is one of the longest and most elaborate pieces of graffiti to survive from Pompeii. So too, after Venus has unexpectedly joined the bodies of lovers, Those, suddenly hurled away/abandoned and falling headlong, she then oppresses. Thinking to myself: many whom Fortune has lifted up high, Often I would lie awake, lost in the middle of the night,

Go then, little doll, trust your happiness to the winds.īelieve me, the nature of men is fickle.

Oh, if only I could hold your little arms wrapped around my neckĪnd press kisses to your tender little lips.

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