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It is interesting that the three distichs constitute a poetic unity: Vogliano, the first

scholar to discuss them in literary terms, correctly recognized that the guests would read

the epigrams in this order—from right to left—and that they expressed typically Roman,

not Greek, notions of behavior.41 Still, scholars have insisted on characterizing the pa-

tron who paid an artist to insert the maxims as a stiª-necked moralist, someone who knewwhat went on at Greek-style banquets and didn’t want anything like that happening in

his triclinium.

If the house was—as seems likely—a multifamily structure, the triclinium was an im-

portant, shared space: there is no other dining installation like it in the house. This fact

complicates the notion that there was one individual—and a moralist at that—responsible

for the distichs, and it casts doubt upon the modern constructions of his personality: fussy

and cheap (don’t dirty our upholstery); prudish and pure (don’t make eyes at anybody’s—

especially my—wife); a milquetoast when drinkers got rowdy (don’t swear or you can go

home). If we have several people commissioning the room’s decoration with the distichs,we have to rethink their motives. Were they all fussy, prudish, and proper? What is more,

how did they expect their guests to react to the maxims? Finally, like the sayings in the

Caupona of the Seven Sages, the distichs themselves demonstrate that at least some of 

the guests had to be literate.

One thing is clear: this is an unusual way of decorating a triclinium. If the triclinium

in the House of the Chaste Lovers represents the norm, it is because both the decorative

system—focused on three center pictures—and the subject matter of the paintings fits

a pattern seen in many houses of the first century a.d. Substituting little poems about

proper behavior at the banquet puts unusual focus on the guest: each distich addressesthe reader in the imperative. This substitution also gives the guest less to look at: she sees

no visual representation of the banquet at all.

Economics also shape this commission. We know that in any campaign of wall deco-

ration, ordinary painters carried out most of the work, including decorative backgrounds

and simple figures. These pictores parietarii (wall-painters) left spaces of unfinished plas-

ter where the fancy center pictures were to go. The patron then employed a specialist, the

 pictor imaginarius, to do the center pictures, usually (as we saw in the House of the Chaste

Lovers) copying them from a pattern-book. The imaginarius received at least twice as much

pay as the parietarius.42

The patrons who decided to substitute writing for the expensivecenter pictures were saving money as well as being nonconformists. Anyone who could

write in a straight line and handle fresco paint—even someone who painted the notices

of gladiatorial games and electoral slogans on the facades of Pompeii’s houses (by night,

it seems)43—could have painted the maxims.

In addition to economic considerations, we need to think about how a diner would

have read the distichs. The masonry couches fill the room, with little space between them

and the masonry table. Upon arrival in the room, each guest’s immediate concern was

to find his place on one of the couches, and arrange himself on his left elbow. Everyone

could have read the distich on the right wall even before settling onto a couch, since the

M I N D I N G Y O U R M A N N E R S • 237