in charcoal and other substances, or
scratched with a sharp point, such as a nail or knife, on the stucco
of walls and pillars. Such inscriptions afford us a peep both into the
public and the domestic life of the Pompeians. Advertisements of a
political character were commonly painted on the exterior walls in
large letters in black and red paint; poetical effusions or
pasquinades, etc., with coal or chalk (Martial, _Epig._ xii. 61, 9);
while notices of a domestic kind are more usually found in the
interior of the houses, scratched, as we have said, on the stucco,
whence they have been called _graffiti_.

The numerous political inscriptions bear testimony to the activity of
public life in Pompeii. These advertisements, which for the most part
turn on the election of aediles, duumvirs, and other magistrates, show
that the Pompeians, at the time when their city was destroyed, were in
all the excitement of the approaching comitia for the election of such
magistrates. We shall here select a few of the more interesting
inscriptions, both relating to public and domestic matters.

It seems to have been customary to paint over old advertisements with
a coat of white, and so to obtain a fresh surface for new ones, just
as the bill-sticker remorselessly pastes his bill over that of some
brother of the brush. In some cases this new coating has been
detached, or has fallen off, thus revealing an older notice, belonging
sometimes to a period antecedent to the Social War. Inscriptions of
this kind are found only on the solid stone pillars of the more
ancient buildings, and not on the stucco, with which at a later period
almost everything was plastered. Their antiquity is further certified
by some of them being in the Oscan dialect; while those in Latin are
distinguished from more recent ones in the same language by the forms
of the letters, by the names which appear in them, and by archaisms in
grammar and orthography. Inscriptions in the Greek tongue are rare,
though the letters of the Greek alphabet, scratched on walls at a
little height from the ground, and thus evidently the work of
school-boys, show that Greek must have been extensively taught at
Pompeii.

The normal form of electioneering advertisements contains the name of
the person recommended, the office for which he is a candidate, and
the name of the person, or persons, who recommended him, accompanied
in general with the formula O. V. F. From examples written in full,