Walls That Talk: Decoding Ancient Graffiti

When we think of ancient writing, we often picture majestic columns etched with the decrees of emperors or sacred texts carefully penned on papyrus by priestly scribes. This is history from the top down—official, polished, and political. But what about history from the bottom up? What about the voices of the soldiers, the tavern keepers, the lovers, and the jokers? For that, we have to look closer, at the whispers left on the walls: ancient graffiti.

Far from being mere vandalism, these “unofficial” inscriptions are a priceless linguistic and social treasure. They are the candid thoughts of real people, preserved by chance and revealing a side of antiquity that monuments never could. This is epigraphy of the everyday, and it gives us an unfiltered look into the minds—and mouths—of the ancient world.

More Than Just “Secundus Was Here”

The word graffiti itself comes from Italian, but its root is the Latin sgraffiare, “to scratch.” And scratch they did. On the walls of taverns, bathhouses, barracks, and private homes, from the heart of Rome to the farthest-flung frontiers of the empire, people left their mark.

These weren’t just ancient tags. The sheer variety is stunning. You’ll find:

• Declarations of love: “Serena hates you, Severus. I’m going to hang myself.”
• Bar reviews: “We had a drink here. The drink was water, the host a cheat.”
• Political endorsements: “Vote for Gaius Julius Polybius, he bakes good bread.”
• Crude boasts and insults: “Floronius, privileged soldier of the 7th legion, was here. The women did not know of his presence, except for a few, who are worn out.”
• Simple observations: “On April 19th, I made bread.”

These messages are raw, human, and often hilarious. They close the two-thousand-year gap between our world and theirs, showing us that people have always complained about bad service, obsessed over unrequited love, and wanted to tell the world they exist.

The Language of the Streets: Vulgar Latin in Pompeii

For linguists, the motherlode of ancient graffiti is Pompeii. Buried under volcanic ash in 79 CE, the city became a perfect time capsule, preserving not just buildings but the very language scrawled upon their walls. This is where we get our best look at Vulgar Latin.

Forget the pristine prose of Cicero or Caesar. That was Classical Latin, a highly stylized literary register. Vulgar Latin (from vulgus, meaning “the common people”) was the spoken language of the masses. It was messier, more dynamic, and constantly evolving. Graffiti is one of our only direct windows into how people actually spoke, and the clues are often in the “mistakes.”

Consider this Pompeian gem:

Quisquis amat valeat, pereat qui nescit amare.
(Whoever loves, may they be well. May they perish who don’t know how to love.)

A beautiful sentiment, but elsewhere in the city, the second half appears as PERIA QUI NOSCI AMARE. The spelling gives the game away. In Classical Latin, it would be pereeat qui nescit. The spelling peria shows us that the final ‘t’ sound was becoming silent, a change that would echo down the centuries. The form nosci for nescit shows a confusion between different verb forms, a simplification of the complex Latin system.

Other common “errors” in Pompeian graffiti that are pure linguistic gold include:

• Dropping the final ‘m’: The accusative ending ‘-m’ was crucial for Classical Latin grammar, but in speech, it was weakening. We see ‘puella’ written where ‘puellam’ would be correct, showing that word order and prepositions were starting to do the heavy lifting—just as they do in modern Romance languages.
• The silent ‘h’: The letter ‘h’ was often dropped in writing, reflecting its disappearance in speech. ‘Habeo’ (I have) might be written as ‘abeo’. Sound familiar? Italian (‘ho’), French (‘ai’), and Spanish (‘he’) all inherited a silent ‘h’.
• Changes in vocabulary: Graffiti often uses words that were common in speech but rare in literature. For instance, the word for “beautiful” in Classical Latin is pulcher, but graffiti often uses bellus—the ancestor of Italian and Spanish bello and French beau.

One of the most famous examples combines humor with linguistic evidence:

Apollinaris, medicus Titi imperatoris, hic cacavit bene.
(Apollinaris, doctor to the emperor Titus, shat well here.)

Aside from the sheer audacity, the grammar is simple and direct. It’s a perfect snapshot of a real person’s voice, not an orator’s.

Voices from the Nile to Hadrian’s Wall

While Pompeii is the star, graffiti was a pan-Mediterranean phenomenon. In Egypt, on the leg of a colossal statue of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel, Greek mercenaries in the service of Pharaoh Psammetichus II carved their names and a message around 593 BCE. “King Psammetichus came to Elephantine”, one inscription begins, before naming the soldiers and their commanders. It’s one of the oldest and most famous examples, a record of foreign soldiers wanting to immortalize their far-flung journey.

Back in Rome, on the Palatine Hill, a crude carving from the 2nd century CE offers a darker story. Known as the Alexamenos graffito, it depicts a figure worshipping a crucified man with the head of a donkey. The text reads, “ΑΛΕΞΑΜΕΝΟC СEBETE ΘΕΟΝ” (Alexamenos sebete theon), meaning “Alexamenos worships [his] god.” This is likely an act of mockery aimed at an early Christian named Alexamenos. It’s one of the earliest known pictorial representations of the crucifixion and a stark reminder of the religious tensions of the time, all captured in a quick, spiteful scratch on a wall.

Why It Matters Today

Ancient graffiti does more than just tell us that gladiators were heartthrobs or that one soldier really hated his centurion. For linguists, it’s a living laboratory of language change.

These scrawled messages provide a diachronic snapshot, allowing us to see language evolving in real time. We can trace the slow decay of the Latin case system and the rise of prepositions that would define the Romance languages. We can hear the pronunciation shifts that would eventually turn one imperial language into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian.

It also provides a lesson in sociolinguistics, showing us that literacy wasn’t an all-or-nothing affair. Many ordinary people had at least a basic ability to read and write—enough to carve an insult, declare their love, or simply say, “I was here.”

Ultimately, these ancient voices on the wall are a profound connection to our shared human experience. The technology has changed from charcoal on plaster to spray paint on brick, but the impulse remains the same. Every time you see a message scribbled in a public space, remember Apollinaris, Alexamenos, and Successus the weaver. You’re witnessing a tradition thousands of years old: the irrepressible human need to leave a mark and tell a story.