IN ANCIENT POMPEII

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11652, 17 October 1923, Page 11

IN ANCIENT POMPEII

CIRCULATING THE NEWS WALLS OF THE CITY ACT AS NEWSPAPERS. AN INGENIOUS SUBSTITUTE. Pompeii, that wicked and lovely city which came to suoh a woeful end in '79 A.D., when th# crater of Vesuvius suddenly belched forth a deadly flood of dust and lava, had nothing quite the. same as our modern newspapers. But it had. as recent excavations in the ruins are revealing, a very ingenious and iatisfnctory substitute. In old Pompeii the outer wall of etery store, house and building of every sort served as a newspaper! There were hoardings everywhere. On these surfaces the citizens themselves—in the preprinting age—scrawled the news of the day, the advertisements of things they wanted to buy or sell, and any messages they happened to want to pass on to their ftiends.

Apueals for the support of different candidates who were running for office, were given publicity in this way, and so wore many of the gushy notes which men intended for the eves of their lady loves.

Every citixon who could write thus helped to edit the city's newspapers from day to day, and the walls lining the miles of streets gave him space enough so that he could display his particular announcement in as large type and under as flaming headlines gs he pleased. The writing was cut into tne stucco or other material forming the walls with a writing instrument known as the stylus, which almost every Pompeiian seems to have carried and known how to use. It was cut deeply enough, so that it has survived the flood that covered it. and the hundreds of these wall inscriptions that are being uncovered throw most interesting light on the life that was lived in Pompeii nineteen centuries ago. PUBLICITY PARAMOUNT.

The method of building construction nr ad? the streets ideal places for ;' scanning at one's leisure the announcements that were spread on . the wall©. As in Naples, most of the 'houses had little balconies, little covered terraces and roofs overhanging the narrow so far that the pavements were completely protected, and no one ever needed to carry an umbrella when walking out to rend the latest news.

This sort of construction made Pumpeii not only a city where, newe of ewfy kind spread quickly, bur also one that was unusually neighbourly. The houses were brought so close together by the overhanging balconies that people could converse with* families across the street well as with those on either side, l>t Vittorio Spinazsola, foremost of archaeologists, has many remarkable tV.tnsre to say in a recent pronouncement about the city's wall newspaper*. *'Bv going beyond the flaming political notices and deciphering the general adrortisements nttd *ntimate and inniiTr.erable personal' notes. We realise," be "that to the'people of PomoeiS pubUcftr waft paramount, and its place •vfi; in the street. ADVERTISER'S PARADISE.

! "Pompeii was tho advertiser's paradise. •[ The spirit of it was'fostered in the pebv ; pte from childhood. We see a most Vtil- , gar survival of this tendency in the pic--■nicking habits of tourists and , r Arvo nunes and dates on long-sufiering■ : trees. But with th 3 people di Pompeii i ih© passion for publicity had as ita bnlv’ • ouriet an** pillars of the city, and : what they had they utilised to the full. , “Education was far more popular 1 arid enjoyed than latter .ages can possibly' ‘ci Pccive, so that mmgied with the multi- : ; tude of advertisements there was a per- * : feet deluge of personal scribbling. ; ‘‘That theso wails attracted the popu-. j lace daily both to read and to write is ;tt.ade clear by the almost infinite variety |in tho inscriptions. They weTe not f aiwaye serious, arid in ally of the mes- \ sajjres were obviously designed to serve jonjy the purpose of the moment, the J publicity media thus- serving the facili?ties of a post office ae well as a hoardi in ?‘ 'Artists end artisans left on the walls I and pillars greetings for friends Who [should come that way. We come across for example the inscription: 'Prisous.coelator Catnpano gemmari© feliciter/ Iwhich, instead of being a solemn memor- [ ial, is simply a message from Prisons, the engraver, wishing all happiness fo the jeweller Cam pan us • “In addition to such expressions of sentiment, which ..are many, there are legends on the walls which had to do'. with more .practical matters. "For ©cample, a > poster painter for a theatre who did hig work at night, and depended on a man below with, a lantern to hold the ladder on which the painter stood, had scribbled along the wall juat" where the rays of the lantern would reveal the words, 'Lanternari, tone sealant/ v;hich far from having a. symbolic significance—a poetic 'Watchman, tell ..ye of t the Night/ interpretation—was a master-/ oi-foct instruction to the man below with, the lantern to 'Hold the ladder fast/ . PERSONALS. “One of the inscriptions found here reads:—‘Svedio Clementi,s anoto judici, feliciter'— r to Svedius Clemens, saintly Hudge, all happinees'—possibly written on ns way home the day “before by some [successful ligitant or gome hard pressed | defendant, who had escaped condemnation and * sentence. “An artist, signing “his work 'Occellus/ had painted here a beautiful and spectacular advertisement of gladiatorial combats, and had dedicated this enviable piece of publicity to bis sweetheart: 'O tu Nigra, vale' 'Oh, thou Nigra, farewell/ “Nor was the humorous side of some of this raging itch for publicity ignored. One inscription, for example, addressed to the wall -itself, wondered why it had not fallen in ruins, forced as it was to bear the burdens placed there by so many hands; and it is on record, too, that one Sam ins instructed his friend Cornelius to 'go hang himself/ putting it. thus publicly in Latin: 'Samius, Corned io: suspend©/ Clearly the people of Pompeii were light-heoTted, and very human, but they were diligent in business, too/’ '