Thread by @joonas_vanhala

A wonderful new graffito insult found at Vindolanda! A few thoughts on the interpretation of the graffito.🧵

#ClassicsTwitter #Vindolanda #RomanGraffiti #AncientGraffiti #Epigraphy #RomanInsults

According to this report the graffito reads SECVNDINVS CACOR. The assumption is that the scribe meant to write CACATOR but made a mistake. So the graffito would mean 'Secundinus, the shitter'.
vindolanda.com/news/ancient-g…

I find it hard to believe that the writer would have made such a simple mistake while inscribing the stone. What if CACOR is in fact correct? I think it is the phallus talking in 1st person saying 'I'm getting excreted'. There are parallels for this expression.

A Pompeian graffito:
QVI VERPAM VISSIT, QVID CENASSE ILLVM PVTES, 'He who shits a cock, what do you think he had for dinner?'. Shitting a cock is used to refer to anal sex.
The graffito implies that anyone engaging in anal sex probably also offers oral sex.

In one of the poems in the Carmina Priapea the god Priapus threatens a thief with anal sex:
ad me respice, fur, et aestimato,
quot pondo est tibi mentulam cacandum, 'glance mindfully on me, O thief, and calculate what weight of mentule will be voided by thee'.

If we take the graffito at face value it can still be interpreted as an insult against Secundinus. Perhaps the phallus is saying 'I get excreted' (by Secundinus), which would mean that Secundinus is engaging in passive anal sex.

Also, it is not clear whether the graffito was written all at the same time. We could imagine one person carving the phallus, another one adding CACOR to turn it into a sexual joke, and finally a third writer adding the name to turn it into an insult against Secundinus.

And one more curious detail. The first C of CACOR has a vertical line which seems intentional. I think it makes the word CACOR look like a phallus as well.

Of course I meant a horizontal line in the C. 🙄

Ben suggested that the line in the first C makes it look like a butt, and I think that's even better than interpreting the whole word as a phallus.😄

https://twitter.com/UMeasures/status/1529856003784720385

Another plausible explanation for the extra line in the first C:

https://twitter.com/admiror_paries/status/1529911822236663808