“Deceived Emosido” or “vampire exists” are not just two examples of graffiti culture, but also a constant manifestation of an individual’s thoughts at a given moment. In any city in the world, we find graffiti on a wall ranging from the most incredible piece of art we’ve ever seen to a short phrase that has the potential for the internet to discover it and turn it into a meme.

Sure, the person who wrote “please don’t laugh at things that aren’t normal” thought it was cool, but neither he nor Banski invented anything: for thousands of years, humanity has been projecting its own art and thoughts onto other people’s walls. The first graphic representation of Jesus Christ was graffiti, and even the Mayans did graffiti, to name two examples that date back several thousand years.

But the ones from Pompeii are intended to be the subject of a full-fledged Art History degree, as they tell us about a society and its vital issues. And above all, sex and eroticism were so important that they prompted the Pompeians to hastily express their thoughts on the first wall they found. As research has shown, we haven’t changed anything in 2,000 years.

Hatred, love or various mediocrities

August Mau was a German art historian and archaeologist who became obsessed with Pompeii. If there’s one good thing about Vesuvius (which is fair to say, because 2,000-year-old Pompeians might take offense) it’s that many of the structures, murals, and other features have been left in excellent condition, so that centuries later we can discover what life was like in both Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Thanks to the latest technologies, we occasionally discover rooms full of paintings, period pieces and even burnt papyrus that we have ‘opened’. Mau became obsessed with Pompeii and dedicated himself above all to studying both the inscriptions and the wall paintings. Thus, he produced the book ‘Pompeii: Life and Art’, in which he conveys his research and which still has academic validity.

But among the murals and others, Mau came across something he didn’t like and could do with it. Break your Pompeii idealization bubble as a model, cultured and immaculate user. We talked about graffiti, which Mau rejects and defines as follows:

“Taken as a whole, graffiti are less productive for our knowledge of life in Pompeii than we might have expected. The people with whom we most desired direct contact, the cultured men and women of the ancient city, were not accustomed to this kind of thing: to carve their names into plaster or to entrust their reflections and experiences to a wall surface… we may assume that the writers did not represent the best elements of society any more than the tourists who carve or etch their names into ancient monuments today.”

I won’t be the one to argue against Mau, but the 11,000-plus graffiti are the closest we can get to Pompeii 2,000 years ago because they allow us to know the concerns of ordinary men and women. Different studies of different houses in both Pompeii and Herculaneum have found a large number of graffiti that reflect the concerns of the average Pompeian.

Any wall was a billboard that allowed any individual to talk about their interests, but it also served as a canvas for marketing. And thankfully, there are many examples:

• “The gladiator troop of Aulus Suecio Certo will fight in Pompeii on May 31. There will be hunting and tents.”
• “Caius Pumidios Diphilus was here.”
• “From Pyrrhus to his friend Chias: I am sorry to hear of your death, so farewell!”
• “Secundus greets his fellow slaves warmly as he leaves.”

So it was a mix between a billboard and a WhatsApp status, and interestingly enough, it was supposedly a food or accommodation establishment with reviews on its walls. In the absence of Google Maps, it’s a wall:

• “Landlord, we wet the bed. I confess. If you want to know the reason: there was no chamber pot.”
• “Emperor Nero’s financial officer declares that the food here is poisoned!”
• “We came here with nostalgia. Now we want to leave as soon as possible!”
• “Gaius Sabinus greets Statius affectionately. Traveler, you eat bread in Pompeii, but you go to Nuceria to drink. You drink better in Nuceria.”
• “I hope you pay for all your tricks, innkeeper. You sell us water and keep the good wine.”
• “Adifidius was here. Goodbye.”

There were also funny people who said, “Whoever reads this is crazy!” knowing that there were writings on the walls meant to be read aloud and there were many graffiti dedicated to supporting Nero. He is not the Roman emperor who has gone down in history as one of the greatest, but more than half of the 100 graffiti aimed at praising different emperors were of Nero.

And for some strange reason they were also very concerned about not getting caught in Pompeii. Or rather, what a mess. There were a lot of demonstrations of people using concrete expressions like “There’s shit here” or “Girl, we’re going to have a lot of fun shitting here” as well as warnings like “You’re shitting here, be careful not to have an accident.”

And there are other romantic poems, like the one in the engraving above:

Oh if I could put your little arms around my neck

and kiss your tender lips!

Go away little baby, entrust your happiness to the winds.

Believe me, it’s men’s nature [ c ] Indecisive.

I lay awake most of the time, lost in the middle of the night,

I think to myself: Many people whom fate has raised,

He then wrongs those who are thrown away suddenly and fall headlong.

Likewise, after Venus unexpectedly merged bodies,

lovers,

sunlight divides them and…

Lots of sex, eroticism and bragging

The fascinating thing is that when we learned to draw thousands of years ago, one of the first things we drew on walls was… a penis. Pornography and eroticism are as old as humanity itself, and although people now want to shut the door on porn, in Pompeii it would have been completely impossible.

We focus on Pompeii when we say that erotic art was extremely popular in the city. Nude statues were found frescoes of copulating couples and mosaics depicting exactly the same thing… There were also household items decorated with sexual themes, and the erotic art at Pompeii and Herculaneum was… well, it was pure art.

But going back to graffiti, we also have many examples of erotic or directly sexual expression. But many… many. What is extremely interesting is that there is a context such as the façade of the place that is used to release the poetry that we all carry inside:

• Innulus and Papilio Brothel: “Cry, girls. My penis is leaving you. It now penetrates men’s asses. Farewell, wonderful femininity!”
• Gladiator barracks: “Antiochus used to hang out here with his girlfriend Cytherea” (even that was pleasing). Another on the same front: “Floronius, a privileged soldier of the Seventh Legion, was here. The women were not aware of his existence, only six of them found out. Very few for a stud like him.”
• A wall: “Theophilus, do not perform fellatio on girls as if they were dogs in front of the city wall.”
• House Orpheus: “I have raped men.”
• Atrium of House Pinarius: “If anyone does not believe in Venus, let him look at my girlfriend.”
• House of Merchants Vibii: “Atimetus impregnated me.”
• El Lupinare: “I have slept with many girls here.” He was not the only one who said, “Sollemnes, you are doing very well!” or “On June 15, Hermeros was sleeping here with Phileterus and Caphisus.”

And there was also a lot of boasting and bragging. On many walls you can read boasts about how many times someone has had sex, how many women they have seduced, someone bragging about their oral sex skills, and there are a few sentences addressed to Rómula and Rufa, also about their performance in the oral arts.

In this link we leave you a great page, since it has compiled many of these graffiti where we can see the neighborhood, the building, the translation and the original text.

street art

But the Pompeians didn’t just send text messages to brag, scold, or express their feelings: They also drew almost everything. Here they have been found to contain little more than messages and graffiti of gladiators, caricatures of people, battle scenes or drawings of ships. And there is value in recording this on a wall.

The interesting thing about all this is that history has been bad to graffiti. Something that’s 2,000 years old should have been studied in detail, but there are researchers who follow Mau’s belief that the graffiti were not written by the kind of people we’d be most interested in knowing, so they were ignored for decades.

What’s interesting about the ones from Pompeii is that they haven’t evolved: all these texts show society up to 79 AD. haters A graffiti: “Oh wall, you’re so covered in messages, I’m surprised you didn’t come down a long time ago.”

Of course, it doesn’t rain to everyone’s liking.

Pictures | Rabax63, Jebulon, sebastien amiet;l, Tracey Hind de Aups, Mentnafunangann

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