queerasfact:Oh, would that it were permitted to grasp with my neck your little armsas they entwine
queerasfact: Oh, would that it were permitted to grasp with my neck your little armsas they entwine [it] and to give kisses to your delicate little lips.Come now, my little darling, entrust your pleasures to the winds.(En)trust me, the nature of men is insubstantial.Often as I have been awake, lovesick, at midnight,you think on these things with me: many are they whom Fortune lifted high;these, suddenly thrown down headlong, she now oppresses.Thus, just as Venus suddenly joined the bodies of lovers, daylight divides them…This piece of graffiti scratched into the wall of a hallway in Pompeii may be the only surviving piece of love poetry from ancient Roman society written by a woman, to a woman. It’s not so clear in the English, but it is more apparent in Latin, since it’s a gendered language, and both the author and subject are described with feminine words.Check out our podcast on sexuality in Pompeii if you want to learn more!(Note - this isn’t the translation I used in the podcast, but I found it afterwards and liked it better. It and both the pictures are from Kristina Milnor’s Graffiti and the Literary Landscape in Roman Pompeii)[Images: Latin writing scratched onto a cracked, brown plaster wall; hand-drawn transcription of the poem from the wall] -- source link