, _omni bono meritus_, and the like. Such
recommendations are sometimes subscribed by guilds or corporations, as
well as by private persons, and show that there were a great many such
trade unions at Pompeii. Thus we find mentioned the _offectores_
(dyers), _pistores_ (bakers), _aurifices_ (goldsmiths), _pomarii_
(fruiterers), _caeparii_ (green-grocers), _lignarii_ (wood merchants),
_plostrarii_ (cart-wrights), _piscicapi_ (fishermen), _agricolae_
(husbandmen), _muliones_ (muleteers), _culinarii_ (cooks), _fullones_
(fullers), and others. Advertisements of this sort appear to have been
laid hold of as a vehicle for street wit, just as electioneering
squibs are perpetrated among ourselves. Thus we find mentioned, as if
among the companies, the _pilicrepi_ (ball-players), the _seribibi_
(late topers), the _dormientes universi_ (all the worshipful company
of sleepers), and as a climax, _Pompeiani universi_ (all the
Pompeians, to a man, vote for so and so). One of these recommendations,
purporting to emanate from a "teacher" or "professor," runs, _Valentius
cum discentes suos_ (Valentius with his disciples); the bad grammar
being probably intended as a gibe upon one of the poor man's weak
points.

The inscriptions in chalk and coal, the _graffiti_, and occasionally
painted inscriptions, contain sometimes well-known verses from poets
still extant. Some of these exhibit variations from the modern text,
but being written by not very highly educated persons, they seldom or
never present any various readings that it would be desirable to
adopt, and indeed contain now and then prosodical errors. Other
verses, some of them by no means contemptible, are either taken from
pieces now lost, or are the invention of the writer himself. Many of
these inscriptions are of course of an amatory character; some convey
intelligence of not much importance to anybody but the writer--as,
that he is troubled with a cold--or was seventeen centuries ago--or
that he considers somebody who does not invite him to supper as no
better than a brute and barbarian, or invokes blessings on the man
that does. Some are capped by another hand with a biting sarcasm on
the first writer, and many, as might be expected, are scurrilous and
indecent. Some of the _graffiti_ on the interior walls and pillars of
houses are memoranda of domestic transactions; as, how much lard was
bought, how many tunics sent to the wash, when a child or a donkey was
born, and the like.