n miles south of Reading, which has been
completely excavated with care and thoroughness. Here a few fairly
complete inscriptions on stone have been discovered, and many fragments
of others, which prove that the public language of the town was
Latin.[1] The speech of ordinary conversation is equally well
attested by smaller inscribed objects, and the evidence is remarkable,
since it plainly refers to the lower class of Callevans. When a weary
brick-maker scrawls SATIS with his finger on a tile, or some prouder
spirit writes CLEMENTINVS FECIT TVBVL(_um_) (Clementinus made this
box-tile), when a bit of Samian is marked FVR--presumably as a warning
from the servants of one house to those of the next--or a rude brick
shows the word PVELLAM--probably part of an amatory sentence otherwise
lost--or another brick gives a Roman date, the 'sixth day before the
Calends of October', we may be sure that the lower classes of Calleva
used Latin alike at their work and in their more frivolous moments
(Figs. 2, 3, 4). When we find a tile scratched over with cursive
lettering--possibly part of a writing lesson--which ends with a tag from
the _Aeneid_, we recognize that not even Vergil was out of place
here.[2] The Silchester examples are so numerous and remarkable that
they admit of no other interpretation.[3]

[Footnote 1: For these and for the following _graffiti_ see my account
in the _Victoria History of Hampshire_, i. 275, 282-4. For the
'Clementinus' tile (discovered since) see _Archaeologia_, lviii. 30.
Silchester lies in a stoneless country, so that stone inscriptions would
naturally be few and would easily be used up for later building.
Moreover, its cemeteries have not yet been explored, and only one
tombstone has come accidentally to light.]

[Footnote 2: Sir E.M. Thompson, _Greek and Latin Palaeography_ (1894),
p. 211, first suggested this explanation; _Eph._ ix. 1293.]

[Footnote 3: To call them--as did a kindly Belgian critic of this paper
in its first published form--'un nombre de faits trop peu considerable'
is really to misstate the case.]

[Illustration: FIG. 2. ... _puellam_.]

[Illustration: FIG. 3. _Fecit tubul(um) Clementinus_.]

[Illustration: FIG. 4. _vi K(alendas) Oct(obres)_....]

[Illustration: FIGS. 2, 3, 4. GRAFFITI ON TILES FROM SILCHESTER. (P.
25.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 5. GRAFFITO ON A TILE FOUND AT SILCHESTER (P. 25).
_Pertacus perfidus campester Lucilianus Campanus conticuere omnes._
(Probably