He Licks the Dish but Does Not Taste the Ham: A Grouping of Pompeian Wall Writings and Its Engagement with Elegy and Roman Comedy

This article examines a sequence of four elegiac couplets and two iambic senarii that was etched into the northern wall of the basilica in Pompeii. I argue that this graffito was produced by multiple writers and that it alludes to characters familiar from elegy and Roman comedy. More specifically, the inscription’s different blocks of text are attributable to three separate stock types: a lena who recommends locking out the lover who comes without gifts; an exclusus amator who is determined to persevere; and a slave who mocks his owner with the sarcasm he characteristically displays in the fabula palliata.