purple motes

In a tavern in Ostia Antica, the seaport of ancient Rome, wall paintings from about the year 100 depict ordinary men sitting on the bench toilets of a public latrine.  Painted above them sit seven sages in scholarly dress and seated on thrones.  Associated with each sage is ironic text providing wisdom on shitting and farting:

• Solon of Athens: “To shit well, Solon rubbed his belly {Ut bene cacaret, ventrum palpavit Solon}.”
• Thales of Miletus: “Thales admonished those shitting to strain hard {Durum cacantes monuit ut nitant Thales}.”
• Chilon of Lacedaemon: “Cunning Chilon taught to fart silently {Vissire tacite Chilon docuit subdolus}.” [1]

The men shitting at the latrine are also associated with text.  Some fragments have survived:

• “shake yourself about so you’ll go faster {agita te celerivs pervenies}”
• “you’re sitting on a mule-driver; I’m hurrying up {mvlione sedes, propero}”
• “friend, the proverb escapes you: shit well and fuck the doctors {amice fvgit te proverbivm: bene caca et irrima medicos}”
• “no one talks to you much, Priscianus, until you use the sponge on a stick  {verbose tibi nemo dicit dvm priscianvs utaris xylosphongio}”[2]

The wall paintings and text are humorously incongruous and inappropriate.  In the ancient Roman world, public latrines were similar in their conviviality to taverns.[3]  The wall paintings brought public facilities for eliminating bodily wastes into a public place for ingesting food and drink.  The logic of that combination is humorously jarring.

The seven sages preside over ordinary men shitting.  The wall paintings represent the sages with sculptural conventions.  All of the seven sages are men.  Lists of the seven sages in various ancient references encompass at least twenty-three male sages.  The seven sages did not include Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, or other highly honored intellectual authorities of Roman times.  Unlike the seven sages, wisdom was commonly personified as a woman.[4]  The seven sages were myth.  The ordinary men seated below the seven sages and shitting represent the reality of most men’s lives.

The texts included in the wall paintings relate the seven sages and the ordinary persons.  The sages’ maxims are literally above the ordinary persons’ words.  The sages’ maxims also seem to be grammatically above ordinary persons’ words.  The sages’ maxims “use the authority of the third person, the past tense, and the meter of iambic senarii.”[5] The ordinary persons’ words use first and second person pronouns, present tense, and no meter.

The ordinary persons’ words seem to have literary subtlety in crudeness beyond that of everyday talk.  For example, the words “you are sitting on a mule-driver” seem to analogize the strain of buttocks on hard stools to the work of a mule-driver on intractable asses.  The words, “friend, the proverb escapes you; shit well and fuck the doctors” seems to figure a proverb as shit.  Moreover, the Latin for “fuck the doctors” literally means vigorously thrust your penis in the doctor’s mouth and ejaculate.  Ancient doctors provided to patients advice and medicine for defecation.  The text here seems to present natural defecation and male sexual function as dominating the wisdom of doctors.[6]

The wall paintings in the tavern at Ostia Antica maintained a formal hierarchy between the seven sages and ordinary men.  The wall paintings united the seven sages and ordinary men in concern about a universal human bodily function: shitting.  They are like Solomon and Marcolf in encompassing and subverting the socio-intellectual hierarchy.  But the main effect seems to be unity in natural substance, not intellectual and practical confrontation.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• interactive medieval parody of the seven sages
• Marcolf challenges Solomon in wisdom
• Benjamin Franklin on farting

Notes:

[1] Latin text and English translation from Ziolkowski (2008) p. 28.  Ziolkowski is a world-leading authority on Latin.  Others’ translations are similar.  The paintings of the other sages haven’t survived, except for a fragment and a label indicating Bias of Priene.  The names of the remaining sages cannot be known for sure, because lists of the seven sages varied.

[2] These translations aren’t given in id.  I’ve based them on Latin text and English translations from the relevant Ostia Antica website page, a post in a Google group for Latin, Clarke (2003) pp. 171-2, Fagin (2006) p. 203, inc. ft. 61, and Adams (1983) p. 315, ft. 14 cont’d.  The sponge on a stick translates xylosphongio.  It was probably a tool for cleaning one’s ass after defecation.  The spacing of the men and the dimensions of the room indicate that about twenty ordinary men were originally depicted.  Clarke (2003) p. 172. A further, illegible inscription refers to Virgil.

[3] Clarke (2003) pp. 175-6.  Roman elites, in contrast, did not defecate in each other’s presence. Id. pp. 177-8.  The function of the space for which the wall paintings were made isn’t known for sure.  Id. p. 170 states “the most likely hypothesis” is that it was “a caupona that served wine.”  I’ve referred to it as a tavern, rather than a caupona, for ease of understanding.

[4] Here’s some analysis of who were the seven sages.  Proverbs 1:20-21 personifies wisdom as female.  In the Greco-Roman world, wisdom (sophia) was commonly represented as a woman.

[5] Clarke (2003) p. 178.

[6] In Latin, irrima.  That word, like “fuck” in the English language today, was commonly used as a general term of disparagement.  Adams (1983) p. 315, ft. 14 cont’d.  At Herculaneum, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 GC preserved a toilet graffito in a room known as the Casa della Gemma.  The text:  “APOLLINARIS MEDICUS TITI IMP(ERATORIS) | HIC CACAVIT BENE”; in English translation, “Apollinaris, doctor of the emperor Titus, had a good shit here.”  Fagan (2006) p. 204, n. 61.  Id. observers:

I see no reason to think that Titus’ doctor actually scribbled this report on the toilet wall, as is often assumed

In my view, this graffito humorously subordinates the imperial doctor’s expertise in defecation to the merits of this particular toilet.  In that view, it is similar to the above text’s attitude toward doctors.  Clarke (2003) p. 179 describes the wall-painting texts associated with the ordinary men as representing “everyday talk.”  That seems to me to be an exaggeration tending to heighten the contrast between the sages and the ordinary men.

[image]  Public latrine from ancient Roman Ostia Antica.  Thanks to Fubar Obfusco and Wikipedia.  “Sunday on the Pot with George,” unknown artist and date, acrylic on canvas.  Thanks to Museum of Bad Art and Wikipedia.

References:

Adams, J. N. 1983. “Martial 2. 83.” Classical Philology. 78 (4).

Clarke, John R. 2003. Art in the lives of ordinary Romans: visual representation and non-elite viewers in Italy, 100 B.C.-A.D. 315. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Fagan, Garrett G. 2006. “Bathing for Health with Celsus and Pliny the Elder.” The Classical Quarterly. 56 (1): 190-207.

Ziolkowski, Jan M. 2008. Solomon and Marcolf. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University.

Within the learned culture of ancient India, tales recognizing men’s inferiority in guile and the risks of paternity deception weren’t socially suppressed.  Tales about cuckolded men served as practical instruction for men about paternity deception, warning to women that their superiority in guile was socially recognized, and entertainment for all.  Sukasaptati, written in Sanskrit no later than the second half of the twelfth century, provides tales of paternity deception within a framework that illustrates guile for men.[1]

In Sukasaptati, a merchant went on a business trip.  He left his wife Prabhavati alone at home.  At the urging of her women friends, Prabhavati prepared to have an adulterous affair.  A male parrot that her husband had received as a gift spoke to Prabhavati about her planned adulterous tryst:

This is fine and merits doing.  But it is not easy for women of good families.  Moreover, it is considered disreputable.  Go if you have the wits to handle any problems which may arise.  Otherwise you will be in for trouble. [2]

The parrot then quoted a verse:

The wicked merely watch the fun
when problems arise.
Like the starving lady did
as another pulled the merchant’s hair.

Prabhavati was confused and intrigued.  “What does this mean?” she asked.  The parrot, with the insouciance of an alpha male, brushed her off:

Go to your lover, my beauty.  Afterwards you can listen to this long story if your pretty eyes are still interested.

Filled with curiosity, Prabhavati stayed to listen to the story.  Every night for the next seventy days, the parrot similarly induced Prabhavati to change her plans for an adulterous tryst and instead stay home and listen to the parrot’s story.

The parrot’s stories, like Old French fabliaux, provide a view of ordinary persons’ lives.  Consider, for example, the story on the eleventh evening.  The parrot’s guile provides the frame for his telling of the story:

The charming Prabhavati continued to be distracted by thoughts of love.  “I will go {to a lover} if you agree,” she said to the parrot respectfully, the next evening.

“You should certainly go,” the parrot replied.  “That is my definite view, for who can prevent the mind from seeking what it wants and water from flowing downwards.  But if you go you must be prepared to do something out of the ordinary, as Rambhika did in times past for the sake of the Brahmin.” [3]

Prabhavati then remained at home to listen to the story about Rambhika.  Rambhika was the wife of a village headman.  She sought adulterous affairs, but no other men would have sex with her because they feared her husband. One day, she saw a handsome young Brahmin who was visiting the village.  She lovingly looked at the young Brahmin.  The text here provides relevant poetic commentary:

Rolling the pelvis, and looking at you
repeatedly with a lovelorn gaze:
you simple boy, what has she not
already told you thus?

The man who cannot comprehend
the heart’s desire long conveyed
through a women’s eyes: what can
explaining do for such a fool?

Rambhika told the young Brahmin to come home with her, salute her husband, and affirm everything that she says.  She presented to her husband the young Brahmin and described him as her long-lost cousin.  The young Brahmin affirmed that he was her cousin.  The husband instructed his wife to care well for her cousin.  He then left them alone at night.  Rambhika sought sex with the young Brahmin.  He refused.  He explained that he had accepted her as his cousin, and cousins shouldn’t have sex together so as not to tarnish the family reputation.  Rambhika urged him with poetry:

For it is very hard to find
a girl devoted to one’s parents;
and men who have the same devotion
should take pleasure in that girl.

As if that claim wasn’t convincing enough, Rambhika then declared that if a woman solicits a man for sex and he refuses her, “stricken by her sighs, he will / for certain be consigned to hell.”  The young Brahmin refused to violate his moral code.  Rambhika then cried out with a false accusation of rape: “Help! Help! I am being raped!”  Her husband and his relatives came running to attack violently the accused man.  The Brahmin recognized his dire predicament:

The terrified Brahmin bowed down and fell at Rambhika’s feet.  “Mistress!” he cried, “save my life! I will do whatever you wish.”

Rambhika ingeniously redirected her alarm:

She slopped some milk and rice under the bed and quickly lit a fire nearby. “He has cholera!” she told her husband who had just come in, “that is why I screamed.” She pointed out the mess of milk and rice to her foolish spouse, who looked at it and went out again.

Rambhika then had sex with the young Brahmin.  They continued their affair throughout the month that he remained at her home on the pretext of his convalescence.

The parrot told such stories for seventy nights and kept Prabhavati at home while her merchant husband was away.  When her husband returned, Prabhavati lovingly welcomed him.  The parrot recited softly:

Attachment to women is futile,
and futile too is the conceit
that “she will always love me,
and will be my beloved for ever.” [4]

The husband ignored the parrot’s words. Academic inquisitors time-traveling back from 21st-century America to ancient India declared that the parrot is misogynist, insisted that he be silenced, or preferably, killed, and deplored any discussion of paternity deception.  The parrot laughed and said:

One who heeds the words said for his benefit, and acts upon them, earns merit both in this and the next world.

The parrot repeated this again and again until finally the husband asked the parrot for an explanation. Then Prabhavati confessed:

when you went away, for some time I could bear being separated from you.  But then I fell into bad company, and wanted to take a lover.  I nearly killed the mynah {a type of bird} which tried to stop me, but then this parrot held me back for seventy days with his flow of words.  Thus I sinned only in thought, but never by deed.  Now my life and death are in your hands.

The parrot declared that situation arose naturally from a wife being left alone.  The parrot urged the husband to forgive his wife.  The husband did.  They all lived happily ever after.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• married men legally responsible for children from wives’ extra-marital affairs
• wiles of women impossible to compile
• Archpriest of Talavera instructs men in guile

Notes:

[1] Sukasaptati (Shuka Saptati) is constructed from the Sanskrit words shuka (parrot) and saptati (seventy).  The earliest surviving Sukasaptati manuscript is from the fifteenth century.  A reference to Sukasaptati exists in late-twelfth-century literature.  It may go back to the sixth century.  Haksar (2009) intro. pp. xv, xvii-xviii.  With its episodic tales united by common characters and interspersed verse, Sukasaptati is formally similar to Arabic/Hebrew maqama.  A Persian adaptation of Sukasaptati, called Tutinama, was made in the fourteenth century.  A lavishly illustrated version of Tutinama was made for Mughal Emperor Akbar in the later half of the sixteenth century.

[2] Sukasaptati, from Sanskrit trans. Haksar (2009) p. 5.  Subsequent quotes in the above paragraph are from id., p. 6.  Prabhavati figured the parrot as male, addressing it as “king of parrots.”  Id. p. 5.  She also said:

This bird gives good advice to everyone, and to me especially, has been like a father or brother.

Id. p. 205.

[3] Id. p. 49.  All subsequent quotes in the above paragraph are from id. pp. 49-53.  Wortham (1911), pp. 46-48, provides a more streamlined, less provocative translation.

[4] Sukasaptati, from Sanskrit trans. Haksar (2009) p. 204.  Subsequent quotes in the above paragraph are from id., pp. 204, 207.

[image] The Parrot Addresses Khojasta, from the Tutinama, c. 1565-1570, Mughal Dynasty, reign of Akbar, India.  Freer Gallery, F1991.8.

References:

Haksar, A. N. D. 2009. Shuka Saptati: seventy tales of the parrot. New Delhi: Rupa Co.

Wortham, B. Hale. 1911. The enchanted parrot; being a selection from the “Suka Saptati,” or, The seventy tales of a parrot. London: Luzac & Co.