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posted by martyb on Saturday February 13 2016, @12:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the fnord dept.

Pompeii's graffiti is the world's most frustrating goldmine.

When it comes to ancient Rome, the vast majority of insights into their world we have are from one group: Wealthy (or patronized) free men. According to Charles Freeman[1], in all of the surviving works from Rome, only one author speaks of his life as a former slave—a philosopher named Epicetus. Meanwhile, every female Roman voice has been lost to time.

But there is one place on Earth that may yet hold their stories: The Bay of Naples, where in 79 CE, Mount Vesuvius buried the two seaside towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum under feet of lava and ash. These places weren't necessarily vast repositories of lost literature, but the eruption froze them nearly perfectly in time, preserving them for nearly 2,000 years—and preserving thousands of pieces of graffiti along with them.

Now, in modern times, graffiti bears the notions of vandalism and illegality, usually resulting in small, hasty scribbles of "Joanie loves Chachi" or some anatomically-puzzling genitalia (which was actually pretty true for Pompeii, too). But, unlike today, Roman graffiti was not forbidden—and it was practically everywhere, from the private dining rooms of wealthy homes (domi, where friends sometimes left messages for the hosts) to the public forum. In fact, according to Kristina Milnor[2], more 11,000 graffiti images have been found in Pompeii—which is just about the size of the population at the height of the town.

[...] Without this threat of punishment, it seems that graffiti was readily practiced by people at all strata of society, making it perhaps the most valuable text we have from the ancient world. Man, woman, child, slave, poor, rich, illiterate—it did not matter, so long as there was an empty spot on a wall. Which means that, through graffiti, we are able to hear the voices of those who have been traditionally voiceless, granting us the possibility of astounding insights into lives and minds we've never been able to access.

[...] Another long-held belief was that very few members of Roman society were literate, especially in the case of the lower classes. However, the graffiti found in the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum seem to tell otherwise.

[1] Freeman, Charles. Egypt, Greece and Rome: Civilizations of the Ancient Mediterranean. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004.

[2] Milnor, Kristina. Graffiti and the Literary Landscape in Roman Pompeii. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2014.

No matter the time, place, or culture, half of graffiti is about somebody's wang. The other half is an interesting window into the minds of the people.


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  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @12:34PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @12:34PM (#303651)

    snow cones for everyone!

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by zugedneb on Saturday February 13 2016, @12:38PM

    by zugedneb (4556) on Saturday February 13 2016, @12:38PM (#303653)

    http://www.corrosion-doctors.org/Elements-Toxic/Lead-history.htm [corrosion-doctors.org]

    and google for "lead poisoning fertility"

    They fucked day and night, they were partially infertile.

    There is also articles that connect heavy metal poisonong and agression.

    may google be with you...

    --
    old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
    • (Score: 2) by zugedneb on Saturday February 13 2016, @06:02PM

      by zugedneb (4556) on Saturday February 13 2016, @06:02PM (#303735)

      so, for them who voted this offtopic, and hoped that post gets buried in the depths of oblivion, here is the deal:
      the title of the linked article is "Why ancient Roman graffiti is so important to archaeologists" and the first link in that article is "Ancient Romans drew penises on everything, and here’s why"...

      Now, that second article seems to miss the point completely, as it rants on about being sexually liberal... The thruth is, that the romans seemed to have birth control implemented in the plumbing and dishes, literally.

      When the topic is (erotic) grafitti in past italy, I think it is good to know as much about the circumstances as possible...

      --
      old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
  • (Score: 5, Funny) by Bobs on Saturday February 13 2016, @12:46PM

    by Bobs (1462) on Saturday February 13 2016, @12:46PM (#303654)

    The correct(ed) latin graffiti.

    Makes me smile every time I think about it. I love that film.

    Via https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_ite_domum [wikipedia.org]

    Video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IIAdHEwiAy8 [youtube.com]

     

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @01:10PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @01:10PM (#303660)

    From the dept. of speculative speculation.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @05:35PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @05:35PM (#303719)

      Possibly.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @01:24PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @01:24PM (#303661)

    Meanwhile, every female Roman voice has been lost to time.

    There are two Sulpicias: one an elegiac poetess whose work is collected with Tibullus in the manuscript tradition, the other a satirist whose work is found among the Epigrammata Bobiensia. There have been arguments about whether these are actually women or men pretending to write as women but no evidence that they weren't women, just like there's no evidence that Corinna and Sappho (or the Sapphos, since ancient sources indicate several) were not women. Moreover, there are letters by Roman women among the Vindolanda tablets; they're just not very interesting letters.

    According to Charles Freeman[1], in all of the surviving works from Rome, only one author speaks of his life as a former slave—a philosopher named Epicetus.

    As for "Epicetus," someone apparently couldn't be bothered to write "Epictetus." As for him being Roman—he lived there for a while until he got banished, and then he started teaching Stoicism in Nicopolis off among the Epirots. And, guess what: his teaching doesn't survive in his own writing. We have writings from his student Arrian, much as we have Plato's writings for Socrates (who never wrote anything).

    Facts: British people hate them.

    There is a good point in that mush, though: literacy was much more widespread than people wanted to believe in the 60's through 90's. When I was in school, they told us that only the top 1% or so could read, and their evidence for this was satire (really? that's evidence of real life?) and papyrus dumps in Egypt (really? that has anything to do with social conditions in Italy?) and a belief that the world had been a bad place where the rich oppressed the masses until Marx discovered Freedom and gave us all fire. So, it's good to see that bit of nonsense being rolled back; on the other hand, remember that Pompeii and Herculaneum were fairly well-off, and Herculaneum in particular was a resort town, so they probably had more literacy per capita than usual.

    • (Score: 2) by wisnoskij on Saturday February 13 2016, @02:45PM

      by wisnoskij (5149) <{jonathonwisnoski} {at} {gmail.com}> on Saturday February 13 2016, @02:45PM (#303677)

      For the ex-slave part. My understanding was the Rome was filled with ex slaves. I have no idea if any books remain from them, but we have mansions and monuments of ex-slaves. And considering a large part of the skilled trades was made up of current slaves, I would of imagined most of the books written were written by slaves. If the best doctors in the land, for example, were slaves, you would imagine that many of the medical books would be written by these slaves.

      • (Score: 2) by legont on Saturday February 13 2016, @05:59PM

        by legont (4179) on Saturday February 13 2016, @05:59PM (#303732)

        There were Greeks and Jews who would sell themselves to slavery and then buy out. Such former slaves become citizens. Not too different from the modern H1 way if you ask me.

        --
        "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
      • (Score: 2) by mendax on Saturday February 13 2016, @07:56PM

        by mendax (2840) on Saturday February 13 2016, @07:56PM (#303759)

        Josephus [wikipedia.org], who wrote in Greek about the Jews and who was one, was captured by the Roman army in what is now Israel as a prisoner of war. He would have been a slave for a period of time as a result. A lot of his work has survived the millennia. His work is notable for many things, one of which being one of the few extant historical references to the existence of Jesus.

        In any case, there is a lot of evidence that basic literacy among the common folk was the norm in the Roman world, hence the graffiti that got left everywhere.

        --
        It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday February 16 2016, @01:54AM

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday February 16 2016, @01:54AM (#304999) Journal

          The Testimonium is probably an entire forgery and is certainly interpolated. It breaks the narrative flow (Antiquities 19:2 flows much better into :4 than :3), it contains essentially a full confession of Christianity from a devout Jew, and most damningly, Origen never, ever mentions it, despite quoting Josephus at length when it suits his apologetic many other times. Personally I suspect Eusebius was responsible for this little scribal impropriety.

          ...man, talk about inside baseball.

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @03:21PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @03:21PM (#303684)

    I do not think it means what you think it means.
    In particular, it does not mean copying and pasting 4 paragraphs of TFA.

    • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday February 13 2016, @10:45PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Saturday February 13 2016, @10:45PM (#303812) Journal

      We wait with expectation for AC to submit articles with beautiful summaries.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @03:21PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @03:21PM (#303685)

    They pretty much moved anything mobile from Pompeii and Herculaneum to the archeological museum in Naples, which is very much worth a visit. You can see medical hand tools from 2000 years ago that don't look different from what we have now.

    The museum has a "secret cabinet" full of the more base and sexual aspects of those cities, including some graffiti. HANC EGO CACAVI is the one I remember right now.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @03:41PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @03:41PM (#303691)

      That is where they keep the goat fucker and other beastiality statues as I recall it.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @03:54PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @03:54PM (#303694)

        Yes, the satyr and the goat, and the swan sitting on someone's penis.

        Here's a lot of Roman graffiti:
        http://latindiscussion.com/forum/latin/graffiti-from-pompeii-for-benjamin.18436/ [latindiscussion.com]

        • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday February 13 2016, @05:15PM

          by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday February 13 2016, @05:15PM (#303715) Journal

          Reading through those, I notice that quite a few seem to come from toilets. Apparently another thing that didn't change over the millennia. ;-)

          --
          The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
          • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @08:56PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @08:56PM (#303776)

            "For a good time, call IIV-LXIII-XCIV"

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @03:38PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @03:38PM (#303690)

    I'm going with the Chasing Amy explanation; Everyone needs dick!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @03:51PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @03:51PM (#303692)
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday February 13 2016, @04:55PM

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Saturday February 13 2016, @04:55PM (#303707) Homepage Journal

    You might be able to fossilize a kindle, but that won't preserve its contents.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    • (Score: 3, Funny) by Bot on Saturday February 13 2016, @05:38PM

      by Bot (3902) on Saturday February 13 2016, @05:38PM (#303722) Journal

      You say that as if it were a bad thing. Statistically speaking, it ain't.

      PS my wang is dual voltage.

      --
      Account abandoned.
  • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Saturday February 13 2016, @05:00PM

    by LoRdTAW (3755) on Saturday February 13 2016, @05:00PM (#303708) Journal

    ...or some anatomically-puzzling genitalia (which was actually pretty true for Pompeii, too).

    Men. Drawing dicks on shit since forever.

  • (Score: 2) by srobert on Saturday February 13 2016, @08:02PM

    by srobert (4803) on Saturday February 13 2016, @08:02PM (#303763)

    Is sound advice for any century.

  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @09:28PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @09:28PM (#303788)

    Missing the point:

    half of graffiti is about somebody's wang. The other half is an interesting window into the minds of the people.

    The one half of the graffiti is no less an interesting window into the minds of people than the other.

    Censorship is obscene.