Why are Pompeii graffiti letters so different?

Letters with difficult lines like R, S or Q are exaggerated: And Pompeii suffered several earthquakes, so the walls are cracked: Some of them were also written by foreigners whose native language wasn’t Latin. read more

Ancient graffiti in Pompeii, in the style typical for a political campaign. (Mirko Tobias Schäfer / Flickr) The fact that we can read the original inscriptions at all today is part-tragedy, part-miracle. Like most of what scholars know of Pompeii, the city’s extensive graffiti is so well preserved because it spent nearly 1,500 years entombed in ash after the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. read more

III.5.4 (exterior of a small house); 8903: Gaius Sabinus says a fond hello to Statius. Traveler, you eat bread in Pompeii but you go to Nuceria to drink. At Nuceria, the drinking is better. V.1.18 (House of Valerius Flaccus and Valerius Rufinus; right of the door); 4066: Daphnus was here with his Felicla. read more