User:Jahsonic/AHE/Greco-Roman/Fututa sum hic: I got laid here
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Next to Ovid we find a whole series of writings that deal with "the beast with two backs" as the act of love is sometimes colourfully called. These writings range from obscene graffiti on the walls of Rome to the satirical poems of Juvenal, Martial, Catullus and Propertius, from the bedroom farces of Plautus and Terence to the picaresque novels Satyricon and The Golden Ass, from the Priapea (odes to the penis) and gossip to the whore dialogues of Lucian. In Greece the comedies of Aristophanes and Menander find favour with the public and there is the curious case of the Milesian tale.
A foretaste, Catullus, Carmen 16:
- I'll fuck you up your ass and down your throat,
- you cock-sucker Aurelius and fudge-packed Furius!
- Just because my verses are tender doesn't mean
- that I've gone all soft. Sure, a poet should focus
- on writing poetry and not on sex; but does that
- mean they can't write about sex? If a poem is
- in good taste, well-written and sexy,
- it can tingle and stiffen even hairy old men,
- not just horny teenagers. You think I'm a wuss
- because I write about thousands of kisses?
- I'll fuck you up your ass and down your throat! --tr. Wikipedia
When man invented writing, he immediately used it for the loftiest as well as the basest purposes. The obscene graffiti, that can be found abundantly on the walls of Ancient Rome, falls in the latter category. If, as the early 20th century Austrian architect Adolf Loos argues, the degree of civilization of a country can be measured by the extent to which its toilets are smeared with obscene graffiti, Ancient Rome was not exactly the most civilized place on earth. Thus we read on the walls of Pompeii "fututa sum hic (I got laid here) and the walls of the gladiator academy carry inscriptions such as "Celadus makes the girls sigh." But that it does not always have to be of such a prosaic nature is proven by an inconsolable soul who leaves the following on a Roman wall:
- Now lovers come. For I am bound
- To crush Dame Venus' frame.
- With cudgel stout and right arm sound,
- A smacking blow I'll aim
- If she can break my tender heart.
- Why, Lovers, tell me pray,
- With cudgel cannot I make smart The goddess' head today ?
--tr. Elizabeth Hazelton Haight from Essays on Ancient Fiction
