From the very beginning, archaeologists noticed copious amounts of graffiti on the outsides of buildings. In the late 1800s, scholars began making careful copies of Latin inscriptions throughout the ancient Roman world, including Pompeii, and cataloging them. This effort is a boon to scholars like Benefiel, since more than 90 percent of Pompeii's recorded graffiti have since been erased by exposure to the elements...
In the ancient Roman world, graffiti was a respected form of writing -- often interactive - not the kind of defacement we now see on rocky cliffs and bathroom stalls. Inside elite dwellings like that of Maius Castricius -- a four-story home with panoramic windows overlooking the Bay of Naples that was excavated in the 1960s -- she's examined 85 graffito. Some were greetings from friends, carefully incised around the edges of frescoes in the home's finest room. In a stairwell, people took turns quoting popular poems and adding their own clever twists. In other places, the graffiti include drawings: a boat, a peacock, a leaping deer...
Benefiel's study of Pompeii's graffiti has revealed a number of surprises... She's found that declarations of love were every bit as common then as they are today and that it was acceptable for visitors to carve their opinions about the city into its walls. She's discovered that the people of Pompeii loved displaying their cleverness via graffiti, from poetry contests to playful recombinations of the letters that form Roman numerals.
And she's found that Pompeians expressed far more goodwill than ill will. "They were much nicer in their graffiti than we are," she says. "There are lots of pairings with the word 'felicter,' which means 'happily.' When you pair it with someone's name, it means you're hoping things go well for that person. There are lots of graffiti that say 'Felicter Pompeii,' wishing the whole town well."Reading the Writing on Pompeii's Walls | Smithsonian Magazine | Kristin Ohlson | July 26, 2010
Kind of a tossup on whether to excavate more before the next eruption or wait and let future archaeologists use (improved?) methods that better preserve the treasures.