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Inscriptions and Graffiti
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The walls of the houses in Pompeii are frequently covered with
inscriptions: these are electoral propaganda messages which urge the
citizens to vote for one or other of the candidates. At times an
entire category of workers (goldsmiths, marble-cutters, bakers,
blacksmiths) holds the candidacy. At other times an aspiring
magistrate puts himself forward to the people for a particular
office. They are written in red or in black and for the most part in
capital letters. They were executed by the professional scribes who
also dealt with official communications, the sentences of the
tribunal, the buying and selling of slaves and public decisions.
There are around three thousand electoral inscriptions in Pompeii
and most of them can be dated to the city's final year of existence,
given that it was customary to rub out the old inscriptions to make
way for new ones. The graffiti, on the other hand, are the messages
which were made by scratching on the walls of the houses: these
relate to the most disparate subjects and paint an extremely vivid
and frank picture of contemporary social life: they include risque
jokes, comments on a particular person or event, caricatures of
famous people, reflections on love, as well as appreciative remarks
about a beautiful woman or the pleasure experienced in the privacy
of one of the rooms in the brothel. In addition there are several
which are concerned with the buying and selling of materials or
livestock and the calculation of merchandise. Many refer to the
entertainments on offer in
the city or are in praise of the champions put to the test in the
gladiatorial games.
Electoral inscription
Now hosed in Archeological Museum of Naples
Originally part of a wall along "a street which led from the gate
towards the town", that is to say Via Consolare, the plasterwork
features an exhortation to vote for two candidates for aedile, M.
Cerrinius Vatia and A. Trebius Valente. We come across the latter,
who was elected in 71 A.D., again in 75 A.D. as candidate for the
duumvirate. Other similar electoral messages with the same two
candidates' names were found along Via del Foro.
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© 1995-2005 - Tiberio Gracco |
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