Poet and Muse diptych of a wax tablet; the inscription has not survived, so there can be no way to identify the writer for whom it was made. In the literature that has accumulated about this diptych, various prominent figures have been offered as candidates: Ausonius, Boethius, and Claudian, and even earlier figures, like Ennius and Seneca, with whom the donor wished to be associated The muse represented is Erato, muse of lyric poetry, with her usual attribute, the cithara, which she rests upon an ornately fluted column. The poet on the facing panel is seated, roused from his contemplation by the inspiring presence
The Erotic that the two are opposites of each other. According to Lorde, "pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling". The erotic is defined by our deepest feelings within ourselves while the pornographic "emphasizes sensation" and completely dismisses feelings. Catharine MacKinnon takes Lorde’s concept of pornography being used as a form of oppression and adds to it by asserting that pornography not only works to oppress the erotic power of women, but that it also suppresses women’s freedom of speech. Pornography eroticizes “the unspeakable abuse: the rape, the battery, the