![]() Even the "deadbeats" and "late drinkers" had their own candidates, perhaps an early example of those who wish to elect "outsider" politicians who make a point of having a beer among their constituents. An inscription shared at the World History Encyclopedia declared that one candidate had the support of all the worshippers of the Egyptian deity Isis. Some of the graffitied ads targeted special interest groups, too. Given that politicians likely didn't go so far as to tag villas without the owners' permission, these are probably endorsements of a sort. Instead, researchers have found political ads on the walls of private homes in luxe neighborhoods. The vast majority were placed in major thoroughfares, but not on public buildings. ![]() ![]() Others seem to have been put up by professional artists with more skill than your standard graffiti enthusiast. Some were relatively simple affairs, stating that the candidate was a good person or could bake a really excellent loaf of bread. Apollinaris further wrote on the side of a latrine that he had a particularly satisfying bowel movement in that very spot (via Ancient Graffiti Project).Īccording to Scientific American, Pompeii was awash in political ads. One man even proclaimed via graffiti in neighboring Herculaneum that he was none other than Apollinaris, physician to the emperor. Only, further excavation revealed graffiti everywhere, from sketchy alleys to richly appointed villas. ![]() Her inscription, scratched outside a theater in Pompeii, ends with "May Pompeian Venus be propitious in her heart to both and may these two always live harmoniously."īenefiel also notes that previous archaeologists concluded that only the rabble was producing graffiti. One, a woman named Methe, used graffiti to proclaim her love for Chrestus. According to professor Rebecca Benefiel, who spoke to National Geographic, there are even examples of graffiti from female slaves. Yet, graffiti from a wide variety of people proves that quite a few Pompeians were literate. What archaeologists have found scratched onto the walls of Pompeii will surely surprise you.įor instance, many previous historians and archaeologists assumed that neither slaves nor women in Rome were able to write. Ash and other debris from the eruption also preserved the city's graffiti, which ranges from angry, to lewd, to downright touching and everything in between. The humanity of Pompeii's citizens is on display everywhere, from the bread left in an oven by bakers as the ashes fell to the people whose remains were found by excavators more than a thousand years later. 79 volcanic eruption, make that achingly clear. Excavations in the city of Pompeii, buried beneath the debris from an A.D. We may think of the ancient Romans as a bunch of noble, boring classicists, but the truth is that they were messy and complicated people, just like we are today. (In fact, the gross stuff would probably get the most attention.) Don't believe us? Then look to Pompeii. If our civilization were frozen in time and then uncovered centuries in the future, it's all but certain there would be at least a few graduate theses written about our graffiti, no matter how embarrassing the content. It can all seem pretty inconsequential, but it's the little things that matter - to archaeologists, anyway.
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