recently discovered, it appears that these letters mean _orat_ (or
_orant_) _vos faciatis_: "beseech you to create" (aedile and so forth).
The letters in question were, before this discovery, very often
thought to stand for _orat ut faveat_, "begs him to favor;" and thus
the meaning of the inscription was entirely reversed, and the person
recommending converted into the person recommended. In the following
example for instance--_M. Holconium Priscum duumvirum juri dicundo O.
V. F. Philippus_; the meaning, according to the older interpretation,
will be: "Philippus beseeches M. Holconius Priscus, duumvir of
justice, to favor or patronize him;" whereas the true sense is:
"Philippus beseeches you to create M. Holconius Priscus a duumvir of
justice." From this misinterpretation wrong names have frequently been
given to houses; as is probably the case, for instance, with the house
of Pansa, which, from the tenor of the inscription, more probably
belonged to Paratus, who posted on his own walls a request to
passers-by to make his friend Pansa aedile. Had it been the house of
Pansa, when a candidate for the aedileship, and if it was the custom
for such candidates to post recommendatory notices on their doors, it
may be supposed that Pansa would have exhibited more than this single
one from a solitary friend. This is a more probable meaning than that
Paratus solicited in this way the patronage of Pansa; for it would
have been a bad method to gain it by disfiguring his walls in so
impertinent a manner. We do not indeed mean to deny that adulatory
inscriptions were sometimes written on the houses or doors of powerful
or popular men or pretty women. A verse of Plautus bears testimony to
such a custom (Impleantur meae foreis elogiorum carbonibus. _Mercator_,
act ii. sc. 3). But first, the inscription on the so-called house of
Pansa was evidently not of an adulatory, but of a recommendatory
character; and secondly, those of the former kind, as we learn from
this same verse, seem to have been written by passing admirers, with
some material ready to the hand, such as charcoal or the like, and not
painted on the walls with care, and time, and expense; a proceeding
which we can hardly think the owner of the house, if he was a modest
and sensible man, would have tolerated.

Recommendations of candidates were often accompanied with a word or
two in their praise; as _dignus_, or _dignissimus est_, _probissimus_,
_juvenis integer_, _frugi_