Graffiti
(plural of the Italian
graffito, “a scratching”).
A name used of the inscriptions, drawings, and scrawls found upon the walls, doorposts,
pillars, and tombs of Rome, Pompeii, and other ancient cities. They are the work of
idlers—schoolboys, slaves, loungers, etc.—and are valuable as giving an
insight into the daily life, habits, and thoughts of the common people, as well as furnishing,
at times, valuable hints as to the nature of the popular language. (See
Sermo Plebeius.) They are usually scratched
with some sharp instrument—for instance, a
stilus, or written
with charcoal or red chalk—and are of the most varied character, as might be
expected, comprising quotations from the poets, doggerel verses, insulting, coarse, and often
obscene words and figures, caricatures, popular catchwords, and amatory effusions, in each of
the three languages common in southern Italy—Greek, Latin, and Oscan. They are often
of a more serious character, intended as handbills. Of this class, we find advertisements of
plays, election notices, public announcements, and admonitions to servants. The following is
an example of the political
graffito: VETTIVM FIRMVM
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Graffito AED.from the Palatine, Rome.
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O.V.F.D.R.P.V.O.V. F. PILICREPI FACITE (
Aulum Vettium Firmum aedilem, oro vos
faciatis, dignum re publica virum oro vos. facite pilicrepi, facite!), an appeal to
the
pilicrepi or ball-players of the city to rally round a kindred spirit
and friend of sport. Many quotations from the poets appear, Ovid and Propertius being great
favourites, but only one complete line from Vergil is found among the
graffiti collected by Garrucci. Of the poetic quotations from the
Aeneid, the following (i. 1) is interesting as throwing light on the vulgar
pronunciation of the letter R: ALMA VILVMQVE CANO TLO—. Occasionally a line from
some poet is altered to suit the purposes of the writer, as the following: CANDIDA ME DOCVIT
NIGRAS ODISSE PUELLAS, evidently a variation of the Propertian line:
Cynthia me docuit
castas odisse puellas, and intended to flatter some blonde. A love-quarrel between
Virgula and her lover Tertius is indicated by the following: VIRGVLA TERTIO SVO: INDECENS ES.
There are many allusions to athletic and gladiatorial games. One Epaphras, whose name often
appears, is told that he “doesn't know how to play ball” (EPAPHRA
PILICREPVS NON ES), and some friend of Epaphras has drawn a line through the last three words.
School-boys have scratched their lessons by way of practice on
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Supposed Caricature of the Crucifixion.
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the walls, since there are long lists of nouns, verbs, etc., and alphabets repeated
again and again.
An interesting
graffito is that represented in the preceding
illustration. It was first published by Father Garrucci in 1857, and is now in the Kircherian
Museum of the Jesuit College at Rome. Apparently it belongs to the third century A.D., and is
in ridicule of a person, one Alexamenos, who is represented as worshipping a crucified figure
depicted with the head of an ass. Beneath is scrawled in Greek the sentence
ΑΛΕΞΑΜΕΝΟΣ ΣΕΒΕΤΕ [ΣΕΒΕΤΑΙ] ΘΕΟΝ,
“Alexamenos worships (his) God.” It was found in one of the subterranean
chambers of the Palatine in 1856. Scholars are not wholly agreed as to the subject of this
caricature, some believing it to be a blasphemous representation of Christ, while others think
it refers to Anubis, the jackal-headed god of Egypt. Prof. Lanciani in his
Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries (Boston, 1888)
mentions an interesting collection of
graffiti discovered in 1868 on
the walls of an
excubitorium, or station-house, and made by the Roman
policemen when off duty. These can be seen in the
Annali dell' Instituto for
1869, edited by Henzen.
Another well-executed drawing from the Palatine walls is that given above. It represents an
ass turning a mill with the inscription, LABORA ASELLE QVOMODO EGO LABORAVI ET PRODERIT TIBI
(“Toil on, little ass, as I have done, and much good may it do you!”),
possibly written by a slave who had been made to do a turn at the mill (
pistrinum) as a punishment (cf.
Ter. Andr. i.
2.28). The subjoined
graffito, which resembles the attempt of a
modern school-boy, is from the bar
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Graffito in Chalk from Pompeii.
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racks at Pompeii, and was executed on the barrack-wall with a piece of red chalk by
a Roman soldier. It caricatures one Nonius Maximus, whose name appears elsewhere on the same
walls coupled with insulting words, and who was probably a centurion whose strictness had made
him unpopular.
Another Pompeian wall-caricature refers to a fierce town-andcountry fight in the
amphitheatre between the Pompeians and Nucerians, as the result of which Nero forbade the
Pompeians to open the amphitheatre for a period of ten years. The
graffito represents an armed man descending into the arena bearing the palm of victory,
while on the other side a prisoner is being dragged away in bonds. The legend in the corner
gives a clue to the meaning of the caricature. It reads: CAMPANI VICTORIA VNA CVM NVCERINIS
PERISTIS
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Caricature from the Outer Wall of a Private House. (Pompeii.)
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(“Campanians, you suffered in the victory as well as the
Nucerians!”）
The first notice of this class of inscriptions appeared in the
Journal de
Fouilles for October 18th, 1765; and in 1792 the German archaeologist Murr published
at Nuremberg a collection of
graffiti that had been transcribed for him
by a friend. A supplement to this appeared in 1793.
The first good collection published was that of Bishop C. Wordsworth in 1837, consisting
wholly
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Graffito from Pompeii, representing the Labyrinth. ( Mus. Borb. xiv. tav. a, 1852.)
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of
graffiti from Pompeii, and reprinted in his
Miscellanies in 1879. A large number of them in Latin are given in the
Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. iv. (ed. Zangemeister), under the title
Inscriptiones Parietariae Pompeianae, Herculanenses, et Stabianae, and in the
supplementary volume. Inscriptions in Oscan will be found in
Fiorelli's
Inscriptionum Oscarum Apographa (1854). See, also, Garrucci,
Graffiti de Pompéi (Paris, 1856); Parton,
Caricature (N. Y. 1878); and the article
Pompeii.
