Wednesday, November 23, 2022
A Crude Latin Inscription
An inscription from Sardinia (Meana Sardo, 2nd century AD, Iscrizioni latine della Sardegna I 183), in Italia Epigrafica Digitale, XV: Sardinia (Rome: Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Antichità,
Sapienza Università di Roma, 2017), p. 178, number 188 (click once or twice to enlarge):
Simplified Latin text, followed by my translation:
There is a similar inscription from Pompeii — Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum IV 2360 = Carmina Latina Epigraphica 45. See Attilio Mastino and Raimondo Zucca, "Verpa qui lego," Sicilia Antiqua 13 (2016) 125-131.
The stone:
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[vides d]uas berpasberpas = verpas. On verpa see J.N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982; rpt. 1993), pp. 12-14.
[ego sum] tertius qui
lego
You see two pricks.
I, the one reading this, am the third.
There is a similar inscription from Pompeii — Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum IV 2360 = Carmina Latina Epigraphica 45. See Attilio Mastino and Raimondo Zucca, "Verpa qui lego," Sicilia Antiqua 13 (2016) 125-131.
The stone:
