ople
of this class, and to merchants advertising their wares, we owe the three
thousand or more graffiti found at Pompeii. The ephemeral inscriptions
which were intended for practical purposes, such as the election notices,
the announcements of gladiatorial contests, of houses to rent, of articles
lost and for sale, are in prose, but the lovelorn lounger inscribed his
sentiments frequently in verse, and these verses deserve a passing notice
here. One man of this class in his erotic ecstasy writes on the wall of a
Pompeian basilica:[66] "May I perish if I'd wish to be a god without
thee." That hope sprang eternal in the breast of the Pompeian lover is
illustrated by the last two lines of this tragic declaration:[67]

"If you can and won't,
Give me hope no more.
Hope you foster and you ever
Bid me come again to-morrow.
Force me then to die
Whom you force to live
A life apart from you.
Death will be a boon,
Not to be tormented.
Yet what hope has snatched away
To the lover hope gives back."

This effusion has led another passer-by to write beneath it the Delphic
sentiment: "May the man who shall read this never read anything else." The
symptoms of the ailment in its most acute form are described by some Roman
lover in the verses which he has left us on the wall of Caligula's palace,
on the Palatine:[68]

"No courage in my heart,
No sleep to close my eyes,
A tide of surging love
Throughout the day and night."

This seems to come from one who looks upon the lover with a sympathetic
eye, but who is himself fancy free:

"Whoever loves, good health to him,
And perish he who knows not how,
But doubly ruined may he be
Who will not yield to love's appeal."[69]

The first verse of this little poem,

"Quisquis amat valeat, pereat qui nescit amare,"

represented by the first couplet of the English rendering, calls to mind
the swinging refrain which we find a century or two later in the
_Pervigilium Veneris_, that last lyrical outburst of the pagan world,
written for the eve of the spring festival of Venus:

"Cras amet qui nunquam amavit quique amavit eras amet."

(To-morrow he shall love who ne'er has loved
And who has loved, to-morrow he shall love.)

An interesting study might be made of the favorite types of feminine
beauty in the Roman poets. Horace sings of the "golden-haired" Pyrrhas,
and Phyllises, and Chloes, and s