11/30/2022 0 Comments Pompeii graffiti![]() From there it all goes amusingly downhill. “ If anyone does not believe in Venus, they should gaze at my girlfriend” is one of the few near-romantic statements to be found on Pompeii’s ancient walls. It seems that while the Romans weren’t as literate as the Egyptians, at least they out-eroticise the Amarna poems and maybe even the Turin papyrus. Let’s get one to the more interesting graffiti, shall we? The ‘romantic teenage love’ department doesn’t offer that much choice. More surprisingly is probably that the sneak thieves actually had something to say in this? Probably the merchant who wrote “ Lucrum gaudium” (Profit is happiness!) would not have protested the election of Vatia. The whole company of late risers favor Vatia.” It is thus not surprising that the the aediles were responsible for maintenance of public buildings and regulation of public festivals such as the Saturnalia. The whole company of late drinkers favor Vatia. “ The sneak thieves request the election of Vatia as Aedile. We’ll skip the boring politics, except maybe for this a person named ‘Vatia’ must have been incredibly popular with the Pompeii lowlifes. Some are thoughtful and offer valuable advise – “ the smallest evil if neglected, will reach the greatest proportions” – but more often, they are on the level of a teenage X Y or well… the more questionable – and often pornographic – works of toilet-door-scribbled-art. ![]() Because – guess what – apparently the Roman inscriptions did not differ that much from the graffiti, scribbling and tagging that you can find on a contemporary toilet wall (or for the web 2.0 generation: Facebook). This new graffito may not rewrite history, but I am more convinced than ever that an early fall date for the eruption is the one I should use when formulating hypotheses about and interpreting data from the human skeletal remains.When someone tweeted “Follow penis symbols to find ancient brothel!” in reply to the news of Pompeii being the next – after Stonehenge and parts of the Wall of China – world heritage site to be available for ‘armchair tourism’ on Google Earth, this reminded me of some of the ancient graffiti found at Pompeii. Since many diseases are seasonal, or at least peak in certain seasons (like the current flu season), a difference of two months - from late summer to early fall - is incredibly important to researchers like me who deal with the analysis of organic remains. My current work at Oplontis also involves pathogen DNA analysis of skeletons to find out the pathogen load of the population, in order to contribute to a discussion of disease ecology, pathogen evolution, and mortality. But my work at Oplontis over the last two years has shown that the age-at-death distribution is exactly like a living population and very different from the cemetery populations I've studied in Rome. Currently, those discussions are largely structured by historians using tombstone data. As such, they're incredibly important for understanding both demography and disease ecology in the early Roman Empire. Here's why: these Bay of Naples sites - Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis - are catastrophic mortality sites rather than true cemeteries. ![]() ![]() Many scholars don't see the two-month difference in dates as terribly important in the two millennia scheme of things, but as a bioarchaeologist, I do. #Pompeii graffiti update#Update (12:04 pm) - Since posting this, I have been asked about my professional opinion on the importance of the date debate. Vesuvius Eruption Exploded Skulls and Vaporized Bodies It also means that next Wednesday would be the 1,939th anniversary of the destruction of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and the outlying villas in the Bay of Naples. This new archaeological evidence of a piece of daily life much later than the canonical August 24 date may finally lead scholars of ancient Rome to change the history books. Il 17 ottobre lui indulse al cibo in modo smodato. #Pompeii graffiti pro#XVI (ante) K(alends) Nov(embres) inulsit pro masumis esurit. #Pompeii graffiti full#Massimo Osanna, director of the Parco Archeologico di Pompeii, posted the full inscription: ![]()
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