CIL 4.5296

The meter is somewhat irregular: three verses are correct hexameters,[10] and the text may originally have been made up entirely of hexameters, or a mixture of hexameters and pentameters.[11]

The first verse of the poem scans correctly as a hexameter;[12] verses two and three can be easily emended to read as a pentameter and hexameter respectively.[13] 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.[14] 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. 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.[15]

The text of CIL 4.5296 is relatively clear, though there is some disagreement about the interpretation of the word meditas in verse six.[3] 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.[16][lower-alpha 1] 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.[17] Alternatively, August Mau's suggestion of meditans is widely accepted by scholars,[16] though this leaves the sentence without a main verb.[18]

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).[5][lower-alpha 2] As the poem is usually interpreted as a love poem,[20] many scholars have attempted to find a way of interpreting either the speaker or the beloved as a man rather than a woman.[5] Equally, many scholars have argued that the poem was neither composed by a female author, nor inscribed by a woman: Milnor cites G.P. 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".[21] Graverini, however, argues that the "most reasonable assumption" is that the poem's author was a woman.[22]

The first three verses of the poem focus on the beloved,[23] and comment on her individual body-parts: her "little arms" and "tender little lips" (braciola et teneris... labellis).[24] The use of diminutives in this section is reminiscent of Catullus,[25] and the only other literary source of the word braciolum is in Catullus 61.[26] The end of this sentence is marked by both the end of verse three, and the end of line two of the inscription.[23]

The next section of the poem is more sombre in tone and changes its focus to the lover lying awake,[27] a well-known trope of ancient love poetry, appearing in, for example, the midnight poem often attributed to Sappho, Ovid's Amores and Ars amatoria, and other Pompeian graffiti such as CIL IV, 2146.[28] The claim in verse 4 that "the nature of men is fickle" is an inversion of a common theme in love poetry: almost always it is women who are so condemned.[29] The poem then addresses the fickleness of fortune; another common trope.[30] This provides a link to the final lines of the poem, which address the instability of love.[28]

The poem has often been seen as a paraklausithyron – a form of love poem where the lover laments the door that separates them from their beloved.[31] Frank Olin Copley described the poem as "in the manner of a paraclausithyron"[32] in 1939, and many scholars have followed him in this identification.[31] Graverini disputes this, arguing that the content of the poem does not support this conclusion (since the poem mentions neither anything physically keeping the lovers apart, nor contains a plea to be let in to visit the beloved; the two "most distinctive features" of the paraklausithyron)[31] and the context of the inscription actively counts against it, because the earliest reports on the inscription describe it as being inside the door, while the paraklausithyron interpretation relies on it having been found outside.[33]