A Slice of Life In Ancient Rome

[J.A.]

I'm not a Rome specialist, but I just found an article and some links I had to share.

I was just reading about the graffiti at Pompeii. The famous eruption of Vesivius was in 79 AD.

The graffiti is interesting combination of lame stuff (Saturna was here), sweet love declarations, rental advertisements, political ranting, jokes, and bawdy bathroom-stall style humor. It's a complete slice-of-life from an ancient Roman city.

Here's an article about it to place it context:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history...

The article discusses how graffiti in ancient Rome wasn't like it is today in say, New York or London. It was not something just delinquent kids do to deface things. It was something everything did both inside and outside of buildings for a variety of purposes.

The following is a link to some translations. Please be warned that many of these are extremely bawdy and/or sexual in nature.

http://www.pompeiana.org/Resources/An...

This one just made me laugh because it was sublimely mundane:

"On April 19th, I made bread."

[Andre Jute]

Sounds like Twitter and Facebook, only more interesting.

Of course, when a Roman tweeted you, your dinner accompanied the message. You just had to be careful not to let the pigeon go again.

Imagine Jesus on Twitter... I mean, that cuddly-cute Roman Catholic image of Jesus is clearly bullshit. Any even moderately close reading of the gospels will persuade anyone with an open mind that Jesus was a reactionary old-school rabbi, a sort of Hebrew mullah.

A N Wilson wrote a really good book about the historical as distinct from the mythical Jesus: Jesus: A Life

[J.A.]

I'll have to check that book out.