Urban and Suburban Attitudes to Writing on Walls? Pompeii and Environs: Presenting and Perceiving Monumental Inscriptions in Antiquity and the MiddleAges

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Rebecca R. Benefiel
Urban and Suburban Attitudes to Writing on
Walls? Pompeii and Environs
Inhabitants of the Roman Empire encountered text in a material way on a frequent
basis. Those who lived in Roman cities were surrounded by writing, from the formal
inscriptions on stone that spoke of euergetism or civic honors to public notices that
took a less costly form, such as the painted inscriptions that announced candidates
running for public office or the details of gladiatorial games. Stone inscriptions are
found in towns across the Empire, but since painted inscriptions were ephemeral,
sometimes whitewashed away and often fading from exposure, only in Pompeii can
we come to appreciate the ubiquity of these public notices.¹
I am interested in the people living among these monumental texts and the
decidedly non-monumental writings that they created. The site of Pompeii has pre-
served a city full of these non-official, spontaneous messages that were created by
the general population, often called graffiti.² These handwritten messages convey the
thoughts and interests of the city’s inhabitants and could be scratched into the wall-
plaster that covered buildings, inside and out, by anyone who had a sharp imple-
ment and a desire to express himself. The central question I would like to pose in this
chapter is: Was this phenomenon of writing on the walls primarily an urban practice
that occurred mostly in Roman cities? Or did it extend to other settings as well?
I begin by briefly discussing ancient graffiti in Pompeii, since that is where the
bulk of our evidence comes from, and then offer two useful contexts for comparison:
the villa San Marco in Stabiae and the so-called Villa of Poppaea, or Villa A, in nearby
Oplontis. Both are suburban villas that have been excavated nearly in their entirety
1For the vast range of epigraphic material on display in a Roman town, see Corbier 2006. See also
the chapters in the recent volume edited by Gareth Sears, Peter Keegan, and Ray Laurence (Sears/
Keegan/Laurence 2013), especially Corbier’s chapter, “Writing in Roman Public Space” (Corbier
2013). Cf. also Ma 2012 and Cooley 2012. Other information might be painted for public consumption
as well, e.g. notice of a lost horse (CIL IV 3864 and 9948). The Fasti Antiates and the Fasti Praenestini
furthermore present large painted inscriptions of the Roman calendar, with the days of each month
and festival days represented (cf. Degrassi 1963). These were likely displayed on the town forum. For
more on the painted political campaign posters of Pompeii, see Castrén 1975, Franklin 1980, Franklin
2001, Mouritsen 1988, Chiavia 2002, and Biundo 2003.
2The term “graffiti” is sometimes applied to any inscription on a wall, but for our purposes, it is
useful to employ it as it was initially coined more than a century ago: referring to texts that had
been scratched into a surface, as opposed to carved or painted inscriptions. Though the modern word
“graffiti” often carries negative connotations, implying defacement, a range of recent work argues
that incised inscriptions were not viewed this way in antiquity (e.g. Benefiel 2010a, Baird/Taylor 2011,
Keegan 2014, Swetnam-Burland 2015).
DOI 10.1515/9783111234567-014, © 2017 Rebecca R. Benefiel, published by De Gruyter. This work
is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License.
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354 Rebecca R. Benefiel
in recent decades, both were destroyed in the same eruption as Pompeii, and both
contain a significant quantity of incised wall-inscriptions. These villas therefore
provide valuable material for comparison by offering a view onto the presence of graf-
fiti in large residential, non-urban contexts.
1 Graffiti in Pompeian Residences
The site of Pompeii offers us the unparalleled opportunity to analyze the material
presence of wall-inscriptions through an entire ancient city. Thousands of wall-in-
scriptions occurred not only in Pompeii’s public spaces, such as on building facades
and on the funerary monuments bordering the roads leading into town, but also in
significant numbers within private homes. The fact that ancient wall-inscriptions
appear—and appear regularly—in domestic contexts, is completely alien to our own,
contemporary experience of what we call “graffiti”. Yet these numbers reveal that it
was clearly a component of the culture of writing in first century Pompeii.
One such handwritten inscription appears in the atrium of the House of the
Four Styles (I.8.17, 11). There, on the northern wall of the room, atop second-style
wall-painting, the following message greeted visitors who entered the house:³
Quos • L • V • P • amat • valeant
(“Welcome to those whom LVP loves.”
Or, more literally, “May those whom Mr. LVP loves fare well”).
It is clear that deliberate care went into the writing of this message (fig. 1). Inter-
puncts, a standard element of honorific inscriptions on stone, appear between every
word, and the carefully-spaced lettering includes serifs as well as the downward
flourishes of the Q and N at the beginning and end of the message which thereby
frame it. The content of the text also shows that effort that went into its composition.
This was a message of welcome but one which incorporated an allusion to a verse of
popular poetry that was found written throughout Pompeii. The opening words of the
poem (quisquis amat valeat) were inscribed frequently through the city, while the full
elegiac couplet was written out in a couple of locations: (quis)quis amat valeat, pereat
3CIL IV 8215. For more on this house, see Gallo 1989 and PPM (Pugliese Caratelli, Giovanni (ed.)
(1990–2003), Pompei: Pitture e Mosaici, 11 vols., Rome) 1990, vol. 1, 847–913. For the inscriptions in
this house, see CIL IV 8211–8255, and Benefiel 2011.
4The letters LVP present the initial letters of a Roman citizen’s tria nomina. These same letters were
incised onto an amphora found in this house (CIL IV 9469b: L V P), leading Matteo Della Corte to sug-
gest that LVP was the owner of this home. The “L” is the abbreviation for the praenomen Lucius; the
gentilicium and cognomen cannot be further identified. Della Corte offers several possibilities: Varius
Priscus, Vedius Primigenius, or Vettius Proculus (Della Corte 1965, 331).
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Urban and Suburban Attitudes to Writing on Walls? 355
qui nescit amare, pereat bis tanto qui amare vetat. In this case, the writer had modi-
fied the epigram to offer a personal welcome to the visitors received here.
Most houses at Pompeii contain at least a few writings on their walls, but the House
of the Four Styles is one of roughly thirty houses to contain somewhat more. A small
subgroup of six residences can be categorized as “highly inscribed”, since they each
contain more than fifty examples. These “highly inscribed” residences (The House
of Maius Castricius, the House of Paquius Proculus, the House of the Menander, the
House of the Silver Wedding, the House of Triptolemus, and the house at IX.2.26) were
excavated at different periods, from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth
century, and they are spread out across the city (fig. 2). One characteristic they have
5Written in full: CIL IV 4091, 1173 cf. Add. p. 204, 461 (a painted still-life with writing implements;
the poem is written on a scroll). Opening words inscribed: CIL IV 3199, 3200d, 5272, 6782, 9130. Cf.
CIL IV 4659, 4663, 5186.
6I will discuss these houses further in my current project on graffiti in private homes.
7Regio I holds the House of Paquius Proculus (I.7.1) and the House of the Menander (I.10.4, 14–17);
Regio V: the House of the Silver Wedding (V.2.i); Regio VII: the House of Triptolemus (VII.7.2, 5), and
The House of Maius Castricius (VII.16 Ins. Occ. 17); Regio IX: the house at IX.2.26, sometimes called
the House of M. Casellius Marcellus (Eschebach 1993, 411), but usually left unnamed.
Fig. 1: The graffito Quos LVP amat valeat in the House of the Four Styles (Su concessione del Mini-
stero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali. Reproduction prohibited).
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356 Rebecca R. Benefiel
in common is the size. These are all very large houses and they likely belonged to
leading citizens and socially active members of the community.
The House of Maius Castricius, for example, stood at the western edge of town (VII.16
Ins. Occ. 17) and occupied some of Pompeii’s best real estate, with spectacular views
out over the Bay of Naples. Built into the city’s fortification walls, it stood four stories
high, and featured a private bath complex, a double peristyle, and a number of recep-
tion rooms. This house was brought to light relatively recently, during excavations of
the insula occidentalis in the 1960s, and its wall and ceiling frescoes were painstak-
ingly pieced back together and restored in situ.
The House of Paquius Proculus (I.7.1), further to the east, opens off the Via dell’Ab-
bondanza, an important artery of the town. A significant investment was clearly
8The House of Paquius Proculus and the House of the Silver Wedding have both been meticulously
studied and published within the esteemed series Häuser in Pompeji (Ehrhardt 1998 and Ehrhardt
2004, respectively). The House of Menander, famous for its silver treasure, was given a lavish publi-
cation by Amedeo Maiuri in the first half of the twentieth century (Maiuri 1933) and is currently the
subject of a comprehensive five-part study, The Insula of the Menander at Pompeii (Oxford University
Press) with four volumes in print so far, Vol. 1: The Structures (Ling 1997); Vol. 2: The Decorations
(Ling/Ling 2005); Vol. 3: The Finds, a Contextual Study (Allison 2007); and Vol. 4: The Silver Treasure
(Painter 2001). Volume 5: The Inscriptions is currently in progress (Mouritsen/Varone, forthcoming).
Cf. also Varriale 2012.
9On this residence, see PPM vol. VII (1997), 887–946, Varriale 2006, Varriale 2009, Benefiel 2010a.
Fig. 2: Map showing the locations of “heavily inscribed” residences at Pompeii (based on Map 2, in:
The World of Pompeii, edited by P. Foss and J. Dobbins, 2007).
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Urban and Suburban Attitudes to Writing on Walls? 357
outlaid for the elaborate mosaic decoration that ran throughout its atrium.¹ The
careful attention paid to building facades during the excavations of this area during
the early twentieth century has left us with one of the most politically and epigraph-
ically active hotspots in the city, with more than thirty political programmata advert-
ising local candidates for political office in all shapes, sizes, and appearances.¹¹
The graffiti within these houses illuminate the interests of residents and visitors
and speak to the activities that took place here. Each home features graffiti of a dif-
ferent character. The House of Paquius Proculus, for example, contains a number of
graffiti concerning the emperor Nero, his attendants, and the city of Rome:
CIL IV 8064: Ner / Neroni / Ne
CIL IV 8066, 8075: Cucuta ab rationibus Neronis Augusti
CIL IV 8067, 8078: Rom / Roma / Romanus
CIL IV 8092: Ol(ympica) III K(alendas) Ner(onias)
CIL IV 8095: Neronis
CIL IV 8114: Cupidi multo magis cupimus (ut liceat nostros visere Roma
Lares)¹²
CIL IV 8119: Roma felix
Graffiti in the House of Triptolemus, by contrast, point to renovations that were taking
place. An inscribed message gives instructions for the measurements of a window
(CIL IV 4713a, b) and an architect leaves his mark, signing his name by incorporating
it into in the shape of a boat (CIL IV 4716, 4755). Both houses also contain a number
of greetings issued to friends. The House of Maius Castricius, meanwhile, reveals an
interest in poetry, with a concentration of messages involving quotations from literat-
ure, popular epigrams, and original compositions (fig. 3), including:¹³
Venimus h[uc c]upidi, multo magis ire cupimus /
set (sic) retinet nostros illa puella pedes.
Suabe (sic) mari magno
Vell’essem gemma hora non amplius una /
ut tivi (sic) signanti oscula pressa dare(m).
10PPM vol. I (1990), 483–552. This house also appears in the Häuser in Pompeji series: Ehrhardt 1998.
11CIL IV 7196–7216, Spinazzola 1953, 297–314. See Varone/Stefani 2009, 69–76, for excavation pho-
tos of this heavily postered façade.
12This graffito in the House of Paquius Proculus only contains part of this popular couplet (Cupidi
multo magis cupimus), but the remainder of the poem is known from its appearance elsewhere in
Pompeii (cf. CIL IV 1227). Other examples include: CIL IV 2995, 6697, 8114, 8231a, 8891, 9849, 10065a;
Solin 1975, no. 17. For more on this poem, see also Magaldi 1936, Gigante 1979, 223–236, Kruschwitz
2006, Benefiel 2010b, 51–56.
13The cluster of graffiti has been discussed by Giordano 1966 (nos. 38–47); Solin 1975 (nos. 57–67);
Varone 1990 (a–m); and Benefiel 2010a (nos. 34–44).
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358 Rebecca R. Benefiel
Felicem somnum qui tecum nocte quiescet? /
Hoc ego si facere, multo felicior esse.
Vasia (sic) quae rapui, quaeris formosa puella. /
Accipe quae rapui non ego solus; ama. /
Quisquis amat valeat.
Yet while the content of the messages may vary, the locations where they are posted
adhere to a similar pattern. Graffiti tend to appear in clusters in central spaces, with
few, if any, instances found in the smaller rooms of the residence. The House of Maius
Castricius, for example, features concentrations of graffiti in three main locations: the
vestibule of the house, the central peristyle, and the staircase leading to the fourth
floor, where the cluster of poetry was found.¹ The Casa di Trittolemo reveals a dis-
tribution even more striking, with more than seventy instances, nearly all the graffiti
recorded, inscribed on the walls and columns of the peristyle.¹
The clustering and the nature of the texts in these houses point to ongoing con-
versations. These writings may have developed out of spoken conversation but once
committed to the wall, their messages continue to resonate. In the House of Paquius
Proculus, for example, Alogiosus applauds Carus not just once in person but in
echoes that can be heard (or read) by those who come across the inscription later
(CIL IV 8098: Alogiosus fecit / Caro feliciter).¹ The poetry inscribed in the House of
Maius Castricius inspires others to add their own contributions and ends up a cluster
14Benefiel 2010a, 69–74.
15CIL IV 4706–4785.
16The message is accompanied by a drawing of hands, presumably clapping as accompaniment to
the acclamation, cf. Langner 2001, no. 2489.
Fig. 3: Enhanced photograph of wall-plaster from the House of Maius Castricius featuring a
concentration of poetry (reproduced from R. Benefiel 2010a, 68 fig. 9).
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Urban and Suburban Attitudes to Writing on Walls? 359
of quotation and original composition. Together these messages offer a dialogue that
might be encountered by later observers. We are left with a picture of an active mode
of communication, with inscribed messages inspiring other messages and multiple
individuals taking part.
What, then, does the picture look like when we move outside of the city? It is
difficult to get as full a picture when we move beyond Pompeii: tantalizing glimpses
of graffiti surface here and there, for example, two epigrams inscribed in the Domus
delle Fontane at Brescia¹ or a palindrome inscribed in Greek, a single graffito dis-
covered within the remains a Roman villa near Lausanne.¹ The recent catalogue
edited by Alix Barbet and Michel Fuchs offers an excellent resource, a fascinating col-
lection of graffiti discovered at sites in France and Switzerland.¹ Pompeii was clearly
not the only place where people were writing on the walls. But often we are left with
glimpses. Excavations are limited, evidence is fragmentary, and it is difficult to get a
sense of the whole.
2 Suburban Villas
Fortunately, two villas in the Vesuvian countryside have been excavated and suffi-
ciently well studied to provide full contextual material for comparison (fig. 4).²
The Villa San Marco at Stabiae was initially explored by the Bourbons in the
eighteenth century but was reinterred soon after, according to the practice of the time.
It was reexcavated during the 1950s, and its graffiti were studied and published by
Antonio Varone in Alix Barbet and Paola Miniero’s multi-volume publication of the
villa.²¹ Recent excavations have uncovered another section of the Villa San Marco and
revealed a few more graffiti.²²
17AE 2005, 632–633, Gregori/Massaro 2005.
18SEG XLVII 1545, Fuchs/Dubois 1997.
19Barbet/Fuchs 2008, catalogue of an exhibit held at the Musée romain de Lausanne-Vidy. Martin
Langner’s collection of figural graffiti (Langner 2001) draws from sites from the entirety of the ancient
world as well.
20On the luxury villas of this region, see Zarmakoupi 2014.
21Barbet/Miniero 1999.
22Varone 2016, Terpstra 2013, Terpstra 2012, Terpstra et al. 2011. Varone is planning a new edition
of the graffiti from the Villa San Marco, which will include the graffiti from the nearby Villa Arianna
as well.
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360 Rebecca R. Benefiel
The so-called Villa of Poppaea, or Villa A, in Oplontis was likewise excavated in recent
years, beginning in 1964. It is currently the subject of a large, comprehensive study,
whose aim is the first systematic publication of the villa.²³ As a contributor to that
project, I have documented and studied more than eighty graffiti, only a handful of
which have been published previously.
Altogether these two suburban villas feature roughly the same number of graffiti
as the highly inscribed Pompeian residences, and one might imagine that the mes-
sages would be similar, containing perhaps a different subject matter but neverthe-
less comprising a number of texts shining a light on the interests of those who inhab-
ited and visited these residences. Yet close inspection reveals some surprising results,
including:
1. in the case of Oplontis, a significant number of Greek-language inscriptions,
2. a difference in the spatial distribution of Greek and Latin within the villas, and
3. the considerable presence of non-textual wall-inscriptions, including numbers
and drawings.
23 Villa A (“of Poppaea”) at Oplontis, edited by John Clarke, Stefano De Caro, and Michael Thomas,
3 vols., American Council of Learned Societies (in progress).
Fig. 4: Google map showing location of Pompeii and villas.
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Urban and Suburban Attitudes to Writing on Walls? 361
3 Textual Graffiti
One striking aspect about graffiti in the villa at Oplontis is the amount of Greek
present. Messages written in Greek appear at Pompeii, but in relatively small quantit-
ies. The Villa San Marco at Stabiae has just one graffito written in the Greek alphabet.
That text gives the name of Paris, the famous actor of the Neronian period; his name
is written in that villa in Latin too.² In the villa at Oplontis, by contrast, as many as
50% of the textual graffiti are written in Greek.
The longest message in the villa is the inscription found in room 25. The wall-
plaster is well preserved, the text is located just above eye level, and the letters are
sufficiently large to read, but the meaning of the text is not so straightforward, and
three different readings have been offered so far.
Giordano and Casale 1990 ΓΑΕΙϹ ΚΑΜΕΡΕΙϹ ΑΓ(ι?)ΕΛΙϹ
De Caro 1988 ΓΑ(ι)ΕΙϹ ΚΑΛΙΕΡΕΙϹ ΑΓΙΕ ΛΙϹ
Fergola 2001 ΓΑΕΙϹ ΚΑMΙΕΡΕΙϹ ΑΓΕΛΙϹ
I have written about this inscription at greater length elsewhere and so here simply
summarize the key points about this intriguing text.² In their catalogue of the epi-
graphic material recovered following the publication of CIL vol. IV Supp. 3, Carlo
Giordano and Angelandrea Casale presented this text as it was recorded when dis-
covered in 1967 during excavations. They did not attempt to explain its meaning.²
Stefano De Caro presented an improved reading of the text, and suggested that a
combination of the verb καλ(λ)ιερέω and the end of the message, which he read as
the phrase, ἅγιε λίς, pointed to a connection with the cult of Magna Mater.² Lorenzo
Fergola suggested that the text instead recorded a name. He proposed reading it as a
message written in Greek that had been contaminated by Oscan and interpreted the
message as providing the name Agelis, slave of a Gaius Camerius.²
The key to unlocking this message is recognition that the writer does not always
fully complete his letters, particularly toward the end of the line when his arm may
have been tired. We are faced with personal handwriting that is not gliding over a
smooth page but that is formed by scratching into a vertical plaster surface. Incised
24Varone 1999, no. 50 (Greek), 6 and 16 (Latin).
25SEG XXXVIII 1001, Petrain/Benefiel 2016.
26Giordano/Casale 1990, no. 127.
27De Caro 1988.
28Fergola 2004, 85.
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362 Rebecca R. Benefiel
wall-inscriptions will always include personal idiosyncrasies and should not be
expected to have the standardized forms or appearance that we find in carved inscrip-
tions. The letter A, or alpha, for example, is sometimes written without a third stroke.
I follow De Caro in reading the middle of the text as καλ(λ)ιερες (“you sacrifice
favorably”), but I propose that the poorly understood end of the line gives us instead
the word: γαθας, where the middle combination of letters, alpha-theta-alpha, have
been quickly sketched rather than fully completed. References to γαθ τύχη (“good
fortune”) are frequent in stone inscriptions, and mention of part of this common
phrase might allow the other half (τύχαις) to be understood. The tendency to rush
one’s writing rather than carefully crafting each letter was likely more pronounced
toward the end of a long message like this one, due to the effort it took to keep one’s
arm elevated and to incise strokes into the plaster. The difference in the depth of
writing for the final three letters suggests that the writer took a break at that point,
perhaps to lower or shake out his arm, before then finishing the message.
That then brings us to the beginning of the inscription and Γάθις, perhaps an
address to an Agathis, with the first syllable omitted: (A)gathis, or possibly a Greek
transliteration for the name Gaius, Γαεις, although in that case one would wish for
the vocative form rather than the nominative.² The entire inscription would thus read
()γάθις (or Γαεις), καλ(λ)ιερες γαθας, or “Agathis/Gaius, you sacrifice favorably
with good (fortunes).” The inscription thus appears to address an individual who is
complimented for activity related to making a sacrifice.
Others were named among the graffiti at Oplontis too. Just around the corner,
in another reception room, a graffito names two females: Prokope and Anatole. In
the next room over, yet another message may have been intended to present a Greek
name. It appears to be unfinished, however, since it only gives the letters PUME. An
interesting group of graffiti appears on a column in the partially excavated peristyle at
the southwestern corner of the villa. There, someone inscribed a series of Greek letters
that a reader can follow only if he walks around the column (Ξ, Φ, Ξ, Ζ).³
The large amount of Greek in the villa at Oplontis is even more interesting for its
distribution through the residence. These graffiti in Greek just mentioned all appear in
the southwestern section of the villa and in several highly decorated reception spaces
(rooms 5, 23, 25, and 65), locations that contrast with those of the messages written in
Latin (fig. 5). The Latin graffiti instead cluster on the columns at the entrance to the
villa (room 34) and in the service areas at the center of the residence (rooms 32, 43,
52). The Latin examples also tend to appear in groups, unlike the Greek graffiti that
29The issue of nicknames or shortened forms of address in the Roman world requires further at-
tention, but note the repeated appearances of the text “Amianth”, for the name Amianthus, in the
basilica of Pompeii. Cf. Benefiel 2008.
30 These graffiti are cat. #25, 3, and 15–18, respectively, in the publication of the graffiti from Villa A
in Oplontis (Benefiel forthcoming).
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Urban and Suburban Attitudes to Writing on Walls? 363
appear individually. No space in the villa presents more than one graffito in Greek.
This may suggest a difference in the culture of inscribing graffiti, particularly in the
sociability of such activity.
These examples, however, are just a small portion of the graffiti in this location, and
that is what these two villas demonstrate most forcefully: writing on the wall was not
limited to text. This is the major difference between the graffiti in highly inscribed
houses at Pompeii and the suburban villas outside the town. These non-textual
wall-inscriptions fall into two categories: numerical graffiti and incised drawings.³¹
31Varone had earlier identified these three categories of graffiti (graffiti alfabetici, numerici, and
raffigurazioni) in his study of the graffiti in the Villa San Marco at Stabiae (Varone 1999).
Fig. 5: Distribution of Greek (in green) and Latin (in red) graffiti in Villa A at Oplontis (Plan supplied
by The Oplontis Project, Director: John Clarke).
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364 Rebecca R. Benefiel
4 Numerical Graffiti
Roughly a third of the graffiti in the Villa San Marco consist of series of Roman
numerals. These appear in a few different rooms, with a massive concentration in the
kitchen (room 26), which has as many as seventeen distinct series of numbers. Here,
it seems clear that scratching on the wall served a practical purpose: keeping track of
quantities of items. The bulk of examples contain simply a series of Roman numer-
als. Most of those on the southwest wall contain moderate quantities, ranging from
five to fourteen.³² A cluster on the southeast wall includes larger numbers, with one
example adding all the way up to the number 48.³³ In fact, that total is written twice:
once as XXXXIIIIIIII, then again, just below, as XXIIIIXXIIII. The writing is similar and
suggests the writer may have been working out a division. One other example in the
kitchen includes the abbreviation A for a(sses) and seems to have been jotted down to
note the cost of something.³
The villa at Oplontis displays a similar pattern in regards to numerical graffiti. It
contains virtually the same total number (29 examples in the Villa S. Marco, 30 in the
villa at Oplontis) and here again the distribution of numerical graffiti is limited to a
certain type of space. Numerical graffiti do not appear in the kitchen here. That room
features a large, detailed drawing of boat, but otherwise no additional markings on
the walls.³ At Oplontis numerical graffiti are again found clustered, but this time at
the core of the villa, where roughly twenty examples occur in the central, “rustic”
peristyle (room 32) and two rooms that open off it, room 37, a short corridor that links
the service area with the highly decorated reception rooms to the south, and room 43
(fig. 5). At Oplontis, room 43 appears to have seen the same type of writing activity as
that which occurred in the kitchen of the Villa San Marco (fig. 6).
Some of the plaster is missing in room 43, but where the plaster remains intact
seven graffiti list numerical series, several of which are concentrated near the door
of the room. The layout and decoration of the room suggests that it was used for
storage, as it continues to be used even today. The walls did not have any decorative
wall-painting but were instead covered with simple white plaster. Regularly-spaced
square holes in the east wall point to the presence of shelving. And room 43 has only
one entrance, so all movement into and out of it came from the central courtyard.
32Varone 1999, nos. 31–37. One additional example reads: XXXX (Varone 1999, no. 38).
33Varone 1999, nos. 25–30, with no. 29 documenting the number 48 written out in two different
ways. Varone 1999, nos. 39–41 document numerical graffiti found elsewhere in the kitchen.
34Varone 1999, no. 41: A(sses) III.
35Boat drawing: cat. #4 (Benefiel forthcoming).
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Urban and Suburban Attitudes to Writing on Walls? 365
In both cases, these numerical graffiti were largely out of view of the public. They
were concentrated in service quarters—the kitchen, a storage room. These were not
about self-representation or dialogue. The writers who scratched these numbers on
the walls of the kitchen had a different motivation than those who wrote greetings
and poetry in the houses within the city of Pompeii. Here, writing fulfilled a different
purpose—a practical and a functional one.
5 Figural Graffiti
Finally, there is the issue of drawings. Both the highly inscribed houses in Pompeii
and the Villa San Marco and the villa at Oplontis include a handful of drawings. The
House of Maius Castricius in Pompeii, for example, featured several representational
or figural drawings, including a boat, a palm frond, a bird, and a deer. The House of
Paquius Proculus also features drawings of birds, along with boats, a gladiator, and
a face in profile. These boats, faces, and animals are common motifs that are found
drawn throughout the ancient world.³
36Maius Castricius: Benefiel 2010a, nos. 49, 20, 60, and 73, respectively. Paquius Proculus: Langner
2001, nos. 1666–1667, 1852 and 2102, 1048, and 413, respectively. The House of Paquius Proculus also
Fig. 6: Numerical graffiti in the kitchen of the Villa San Marco at Stabiae (Su concessione del
Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali. Reproduction prohibited).
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366 Rebecca R. Benefiel
The two villas are similar, to a certain point. The villa at Oplontis contained a
number of representational drawings, including: a boat, a pair of figures, and heads
drawn in profile. It also featured more than twenty geometric drawings.³ The Villa
San Marco features a handful of these same motifs: a bird, two drawings of gladiators
and gladiatorial helmets, possibly one figure in profile.³ But, more than anything, the
figural graffiti of this villa communicated an overwhelming interest in boats. Boats
were a popular image to draw on walls and are found in locations across the ancient
world.³ The houses of Maius Castricius and Paquius Proculus each contain one or
two examples, as does the villa at Oplontis, but the Villa San Marco holds a particu-
larly large concentration of boat drawings, with more than fifteen examples. Boats
were drawn here individually and in pairs. Some have oars, some are fishing vessels,
some are simple skiffs (fig. 7).
These boat drawings are simple in design and they are small. They were sketched
mostly in narrow corridors and passageways. This is in strong contrast to the loca-
tions for drawings of gladiators and their equipment, which were found in the more
public areas of the villa (and indeed the locations where one might expect to find
graffiti in the elite houses of Pompeii), namely, the large open peristyle, which was
the centerpiece of the villa, and at the entrance to the property, just above a bench
that could accommodate visitors who were waiting to be received (fig. 8).
The Villa San Marco was perched atop a bluff and, with its large windows and
open plan, its design was calculated to highlight its setting and its expansive view
over the Bay of Naples. That view would have certainly encompassed any number of
boats on a daily basis, as the bay was traversed by numerous vessels being used to
fish the day’s catch, as well as for transport around the region. What is interesting is
that several of the boats drawn in the Villa San Marco are sketched with people on
board. At Pompeii, scores of boats are drawn too, but usually the artist’s interest is
squarely on the vessel. The boat is hardly ever populated.
contained the drawing of hands clapping, discussed above (Langner no. 2489). See Langner 2001, 84
Abb. 40 for a table detailing the relative popularity of figural graffiti motifs across sites.
37These will be discussed at greater length in the publication of The Oplontis Project (Benefiel,
forthcoming).
38Varone 1999, nos. 61, 1 and 83–84, 67, respectively.
39Delos in particular has yielded significant boat graffiti (Langner 2001, 84 Abb. 40). Langner col-
lects more than 400 examples of boat drawings on walls across the ancient world (Langner 2001, cat.
nos. 1844–2265).
40Boats: Varone 1999, nos. 9, 13, 19, 21, 23, 44, 47, 56–59. Several of the boats are drawn in pairs,
thus eleven sets of drawings present a total of fifteen boats.
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Urban and Suburban Attitudes to Writing on Walls? 367
Fig. 7: Examples of boat drawings in the Villa San Marco at Stabiae (from Varone 1999).
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368 Rebecca R. Benefiel
The figures in these drawings nudge us toward thinking about the individuals who
may have drawn them. The location of these many boat drawings in the service quar-
ters suggests that these were not the work of visitors or clients, but perhaps the work
of the villa staff, whose duties may have included fishing to stock the villa with provi-
sions. These examples thereby suggest that one additional motivation for writing on
the wall may have been the influence of one’s surroundings.¹
6 Conclusion
Two main distinctions arise, therefore, between graffiti in the highly inscribed resid-
ences of Pompeii and in these grand, suburban villas. Firstly, in Pompeii, graffiti are
generally clustered, often at the entrances of houses and in the peristyle. In any given
41At Oplontis, the influence of one’s surroundings was even more immediate, as a handful of
sketches replicate the patterns of the zebra-stripe design found throughout the core spaces of the
villa, or play with the boundaries of its stripes.
Fig. 8: The distribution of boat drawings and gladiatorial graffiti in the Villa San Marco at Stabiae
(adapted from Barbet/Forte 1999, fig. 53).
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Urban and Suburban Attitudes to Writing on Walls? 369
cluster, an inscription may have inspired others to add their own contribution or
response. Secondly, Pompeian graffiti are overwhelmingly textual. They take a wide
range of forms: from signatures to greetings to friends to short verses and epigrams.
In the suburban villas of Stabiae and Oplontis, graffiti do not follow the same
patterns. To begin with, there is a broader distribution of graffiti through the building.
Within these expansive, highly articulated suburban villas, graffiti can be scattered
across as many as twenty-five different rooms, rather than appearing in two or three
central spaces, as at Pompeii. In the villa at Oplontis, it is also clear that graffiti do
not cluster. Of the twenty-five rooms holding graffiti, only two rooms contain anything
like a cluster (more than six graffiti), while fourteen rooms have only one or two graf-
fiti present (fig. 9). Whereas at Pompeii the act of writing a graffito generates other
responses, in these villas that is not happening.
Fig. 9: Density of graffiti in Villa A at Oplontis (Plan supplied by The Oplontis Project, Director: John
Clarke).
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370 Rebecca R. Benefiel
That leads us to the second difference between graffiti in these suburban villas and
the graffiti in highly inscribed residences at Pompeii, namely, the amount of text
written on the walls. In Pompeii, the graffiti habit is highly textual. There might be
a few drawings in a house, but these account for generally less than 10% of the total
number of graffiti. In the villas at Oplontis and Stabiae, however, written messages
are only a fraction of what was scratched onto the walls. While all the residences
considered here contain roughly the same total number of graffiti, the ratio of text to
non-textual wall-inscription diverges markedly (fig. 10).
These differences may reflect the fact that villas in the countryside did not witness the
same frequency of social activity as occurred in elite houses in town. There were not
the same daily interactions with people coming and going, and perhaps not the same
number of opportunities for graffiti to arise organically from conversations or from
clients waiting to be addressed or received by a patron. Nevertheless, in the absence
of such textual conversations we find the traces of a different social group exhibiting
similar behavior. The non-textual graffiti from these villas suggest that even those
with less leisure and possibly less freedom might write, too: as part of their work or as
a means of reflecting upon the world around them.
Fig. 10: Table illustrating textual and non-textual graffiti in Pompeian residences and suburban
villas.
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Urban and Suburban Attitudes to Writing on Walls? 371
What does this suggest about the habit of writing on the walls in general? We can
see that people are doing something different in the city than they are in the coun-
tryside. The numerical graffiti reveal that people are writing, but in certain cases they
are doing so for a practical—rather than social—purpose. The drawings demonstrate
that one’s surroundings and one’s environment might provide inspiration.² Still, it is
important to recognize that although there was a different means of expression, the
same activity is taking place. In both locations, inside the city and beyond, people are
interested and are active in writing on the walls.
It is only through the extraordinary preservation of the area around Mt. Vesuvius
that we can reconstruct the writings created by the general population in this level of
detail at all. What then were urban or suburban attitudes about writing on walls? In
Italy in the early Roman Empire, it seems that is something people did. To them, as to
us, Writing Matters.
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Abbreviations
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