2. For an overview, see Corbier, M., ‘L'écriture dans l'espace public Romain’, in Donner à voir, donner à lire (Paris 2006), 53–75Google Scholar.

3. The term was coined by McMullen, R., in ‘The Epigraphic Habit in the Roman Empire’, AJP 103 (1982), 233–46Google Scholar.

4. Harris, W., Ancient Literacy (Cambridge MA 1989), 91Google Scholar.

5. Again, for an overview, see M. Corbier, ‘Le monument et la mémoire’, in Corbier (n.2 above), 9-50. For the ‘jeux de lettres’ more specifically, and their relationship to status and power in Roman society, see Purcell, N., ‘Literate Games: Roman Urban Society and the Game of Alea’, P&P 147 (1995), 3–37Google Scholar, and Habinek, T., ‘Situating Literacy at Rome’, in Johnson, W A. and Parker, H.N. (eds.), Ancient Literacies: The Culture of Reading in Greece and Rome (New York and Oxford 2009), 114–40Google Scholar.

6. It is also worth noting that different people could probably read different types of writing: Hermeros in the Satyricon famously remarks that he can read lapidarias litteras (‘stony letters’, Petr. Sat. 58.7), by which he seems to mean the block capitals commonly used for inscriptions, drawing a distinction between such lettering and (e.g.) the cursive found in hand written documents. For a discussion of the different types of lettering, see Corbier (n.2 above), 80-84.

7. Cunningham, C., ‘The Rise of Typography and the Decline of Epigraphy? Architectural Inscriptions in the Nineteenth Century’, in Cooley, A. (ed.), The Afterlife of Inscriptions (London 2000), 143–61Google Scholar.

8. It is worth noting that the best evidence which we have for street names in Pompeii are inscriptions in Osean, which the majority of the populace may well not have been able to read by the time of the city's destruction.

9. As in Terence's, Adelphoe, 572–84Google Scholar. Ling, R., ‘A Stranger in Town: Finding the Way in an Ancient City’, G&R 37 (1990), 204–14Google Scholar.

10. E.g. the Inn of the Cimbric Shield in the Forum Romanum (Cicero de Oratore 2.266; Quintilian 6.3.38).

11. The inscription—(H)ABEMVS IN CENA PVLLVM PISCEM PERNAM PAONEM (‘we have for dinner chicken, fish, ham, peacock’)—is in the form of a dicing board, with six words (or word groups) of six letters each. See Ferrua, A., ‘Nuove tabulae lusoriae iscritte’, Epigraphica 24 (1964), 3-4, at 34 n.178Google Scholar. Cf. Purcell (n.5 above), 24.

12. The temporal restrictions on vehicular traffic in Rome during the day are known from the Tabula Heracleensis, a bronze tablet from Heraclea in the Gulf of Tarentum. Although the law specifically refers to Rome, the fact that it was posted in an Italian municipality may indicate that the regulations also applied there. See Robinson, O.F., Ancient Rome: City Planning and Administration (London and New York 1992), 62–65Google Scholar. The spatial restrictions on traffic in Pompeii, mostly in terms of one- and two-way streets, have been studied through the patterns of wheel ruts: see (e.g.) Poehler, E.E., ‘The Circulation of Traffic in Pompeii's Regio VI’, JRA 19 (2006), 53–74Google Scholar. Poehler suggests the possibility that there was a handbook for drivers (74) which laid out the laws for driving in the city. This seems unlikely to me, given what we know about levels of education and literacy rates among the working classes, but does underscore the problem: we have evidence that people obeyed civic regulations but little information concerning how they knew about them.

13. Cf. Harris (n.4 above), 208: ‘It seldom if ever occurred to anyone to display official or honorific texts in the Subura…under the principate the choice [of where to display edicts' did not often express much governmental interest in communicating directly with ordinary citizens.’ Even C. Williamson, who in general sees the written publication of legal documents as an important part of the ‘public’ nature of Roman law, notes that ‘Despite the pervasiveness of writing, Rome remained a predominantly oral culture whose primary agents of publication were heralds and whose primary means of publicising information were proclamation and debate.’ Williamson, C., The Laws of the Roman People: Public Law in the Expansion and Decline of the Roman Republic (Ann Arbor 2005), 312CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. Bonner, S.F., Education in Ancient Rome (Berkeley 1977), 157–62Google Scholar. Note that candidates for these positions were expected to demonstrate their skills in a display speech, which indicates the scope of the position, and that upper-level teachers were exempted from taxes and various civic duties. The exemption, however, was specifically denied to primary school teachers: ‘The general principle underlying the granting of exemptions was that their recipients should already be performing a service valuable to their city; medicine and litterae humaniores were accepted as a valid qualification, whereas, illogical though it may seem, primary teaching was not’ (160).

15. Crawford, M.H., Roman Statutes (BICS suppl. 64: London 1996), 33Google Scholar; Bodel, J., ‘Epigraphy and the Ancient Historian’, in Epigraphic Evidence (London and New York 2001), 16Google Scholar.

16. Harris (n.4 above), 34.

17. Hinard, F., ‘Remarques sur les praecones e le praeconium dans la Rome de la fin de la république’, Latomus 35 (1976), 730–16Google Scholar; Harris (n.4 above), 208.

18. purum uisum tantorum dedecorum esse curiam testem: delectus est celeberrimus locus, in quo legenda praesentibus, legenda futuris proderentur. Plin. Ep. 8.6.14.

19. Corbier (n.2 above), 13-17; Wallace-Hadrill, A., ‘Roman Arches and Greek Honours: The Language of Power at Rome’, PCPS 36 (1990), 143–81Google Scholar.

20. Eck, W., ‘Senatorial Self-Representation: Developments in the Augustan Period’, in Millar, F. and Segal, E. (eds.), Caesar Augustus: Seven Aspects (Oxford 1984), 129–67Google Scholar; Corbier (n.2 above), 13-17 and 66-70.

21. Woolf, G., ‘Monumental Writing and the Expansion of Roman Society in the Early Empire’, JRS 86 (1996), 22–39Google Scholar. In a later work, Woolf makes the point that local populations may have adopted Roman social and cultural practices, including the creation of inscriptions, as simply a general language of power, meaning that they did not necessarily associate it with asserting a Roman identity: Woolf, G., Becoming Roman (Cambridge 1998), 78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22. Cf. Pobjoy's observation that magistrates in Pompeii and elsewhere would put up inscriptions naming and celebrating themselves, even when the act so commemorated was merely a standard aspect of their positions: Pobjoy, M., ‘Building Inscriptions in Republican Italy: Euergetism, Responsibility, and Civic Virtue’, in Cooley, A. (ed.), The Epigraphic Landscape of Roman Italy (BICS suppl. 73: London 2000), 77–92Google Scholar.

23. Stewart, S., ‘Ceci Tuera Cela: Graffiti as Crime and Art’, in Fekete, J. (ed.), Life After Postmodernism: Essays on Value and Culture (New York 1987), 161–80Google Scholar.

24. Rose, T., Black Noise (Middletown CT 1994), 34Google Scholar.

25. Quoted in Moufarrege, N., ‘Lightning Strikes (Not Once but Twice): An Interview with Graffiti Artists’, Arts Magazine (11. 1982), 87–93, at 89Google Scholar.

26. The full text runs, L. Sentius C. f. pr[aetor] de Sen[atus] sent[entia] loca terminanda coer[auit]. b[onum] f[actum], nei quis intra terminos proprius urbem ustrinam fecisse uelit niue stercus cadauer iniecisse uelit: CIL 6.31615. On this and the other copies of the decree, see Gordon, A.E., ‘Seven Latin Inscriptions in Rome’, G&R 20 (1951), 75–92Google Scholar.

27. Daube, D., Forms of Roman Legislation (Oxford 1956), 39Google Scholar.

28. On the use of abstraction in the jurists and its influence, see Frier, B., Rise of the Roman Jurists (Princeton 1985), 163–71Google Scholar. Direct address is the standard mode for modern English signage, particularly of prohibition: ‘beware, shallow water’; ‘please pick up after your dog’; ‘stop’.

29. Bruns, C.G., in Mommsen, Th. and Gradenwitz, O. (eds.), Fontes Iuris Romani Antiqui, editio sexta (Freiburg 1893), 181Google Scholar.

30. John Bodel calls the graffito ‘a personal plea’ from ‘a concerned resident’: Bodel, J., ‘Graveyards and Groves: A Study of the Lex Lucerina’, AJAH 11 (1986), 1–133, at 32Google Scholar. On the general problem of hygiene in the ancient Roman city, see Scobie, A., ‘Slums, Sanitation and Morality in the Roman World’, Kilo 68 (1986), 399–433Google Scholar.

31. Note that caue malum might mean either ‘beware lest you do evil’ or ‘beware lest evil be done to you (as punishment for dumping)’: OLD caueo 2a,c; 4a.

32. It is worth comparing CIL 3.1966, a formal inscription from Dalmatia, which reads in part QUISQ IN EO VICO STERCVS NON POSVERIT AVT NON CACAVERIT AVT NON MIAVERIT HABEAT ILLAS PROPITIAS (‘whoever does not place shit in this alleyway or does not shit or piss, let him have those favorable [fortunes?]’). The language here, as well as the fact that the inscription appeared with an image of Hecate, is clearly religious in origin.

33. Cf. CIL 6.13740, an admonition on a tomb: qui hic mixerit aut cacarit, habeat deos superos et inferos iratos (‘whoever has pissed or shat here, may he have gods above and below angry with him’), and Trimalchio's concern to protect his monument from defecation (Petr. Sat. 71.8).

34. Boyce, G.K., ‘Significance of Serpents on Pompeian House Shrines’, AJA 46 (1942), 13–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Frölich, T., Lararien und Fassadenbilder in den Vesuvstädten (Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts, Roemische Abteilung. Ergänzungsheft 32: Mainz 1991)Google Scholar contains an exhaustive catalogue and illustrations of the many appearances of snakes in Pompeian art, particularly when associated with house-shrines.

35. CIL 6.29848b.

36. Ball, L., The Domus Aurea and the Roman Architectural Revolution (Cambridge 2003), 34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37. de Romanis, A., Le antiche camere Esquiline (Rome 1822), fig. on 7, discussion on 38fGoogle Scholar.

38. Bramble, J.C., Persius and the Programmatic Satire (Cambridge 1974), 134CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39. Although Pompeii does not contain any formal civic prohibitions against dumping, one was preserved at Herculaneum in which the Aedile M. Alficius Paulus sought to protect the water supply from being fouled (CIL 4.10488). The ‘official’ nature of the text is evident not just in the fact that Paulus asserts his authority as an aedile at the beginning—and outlines the punishments for offenders at the end—but in the fact that, like the praetor Sentius, he uses the si quis uelit formula.

40. It is also possible that stercorari is meant to be the infinitive: ‘Go to the city wall to defecate.’

41. This is the only sign of its kind in Pompeii—unlike the multiple cacator inscriptions—and it is difficult to say exactly why it appeared here, although, as James Franklin has noted, it is seems likely that this stretch of street between the entrance to Pompeii's main brothel and that of the Stabian Baths was a place where people congregated, mingled, and potentially engaged in socially unacceptable behaviour: Franklin, J.L. Jr., ‘Games and a Lupanar: Prosopography of a Neighborhood in Ancient Pompeii’, CJ 81 (1986), 319-28, at 321Google Scholar.

42. Indeed, the argument has been made that the term was not made genuinely ‘generic’ in Latin until Martial: Puelma, M., ‘Ἐπίγϱαμμα—epigramma: Aspekte einer Wortgeschichte’, MH 53 (1996), 123–39Google Scholar.

43. Gutzwiller, K.J., Poetic Garlands: Hellenistic Epigrams in Context (Berkeley 1998), 47–53Google Scholar.

44. Gutzwiller (n.43 above), 54-68.

45. Citroni, M., ‘L'epigramma’, in Montanari, F. (ed.), La poesia latina (Rome 1998), 171-89, at 174Google Scholar.

46. Cf. Homer's epitaph, in Latin (!), also quoted by Gellius from Varro's Imagines (NA 3.11.7).

47. Geiger, J., The First Hall of Fame: A Study of the Statues in the Forum Augustum (Leiden and Boston 2008), 34–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The elogia in the Forum Augustum were not, of course, poetic, and indeed it is not certain that all of Varro's Imagines were accompanied by verse (although some of them clearly were: see n.46 above). Cornelius Nepos' biography of Atticus, however, makes it clear that his book included ‘not more than four or five lines of poetry’ to go with each image (non amplius quaternis quinisque uersibus: Vit. Att. 18.6).

48. Ellis, R., A Commentary on Catullus (Oxford 1889), 480Google Scholar. More recently, see (e.g.), Gaisser, J.H., Catullus (Chichester 2009), 118CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘[Poem 101] is presented as something that might be inscribed on stone.’

49. Gelzer, T., ‘Bemerkungen zu Catull c. 101’, MH 49 (1992), 26–32Google Scholar.

50. Feldherr, A., ‘Non inter nota sepulcro: Catullus 101 and Roman Funerary Ritual’, ClAnt 19 (2000), 209–31Google Scholar.

51. On which in Poem 101, see Citroni, M., ‘Destinatario e pubblico nella poesia di Catullo: i motivi funerari (carmi 96, 101, 68, 65)’, MD 2 (1979), 43–100Google Scholar.

52. Copley, F. O., ‘Catullus c. 4: The World of the Poem’, TAPA 89 (1958), 9–13Google Scholar.

53. On which, Paratore, E., ‘Osservazioni sui rapporti fra Catullo e gli epigrammisti dell'Antologia’, in Miscellanea di Studi Alessandrini in memoria di Augusto Rostagni (Torino 1963), 562–87Google Scholar.

54. On those epigrams which perform themselves as sepulchral inscriptions, see Henriksén, C., ‘Martial's Modes of Mourning: Sepulchral Epitaphs in the Epigrams’, in Nauta, R.R.,, van Dam, H-J and Smolenaars, J.L. (eds.), Flavian Poetry (Mnemosyne Suppl. 270: Leiden 2006), 349–67Google Scholar. Cf. Fitzgerald, W., Martial: The World of Epigram (Chicago and London 2007), 26CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who notes Martial's exploitation of the ‘inscriptional associations’ of epigram.

55. Johnson, W.R., ‘Small Wonders: The Poetics of Martial, Book Fourteen’ in Batstone, W. and Tissol, G. (eds.), Defining Genre and Gender in Latin Literature (New York 2005), 139–50Google Scholar.

56. Ramsby, T.R., Textual Permanence: Roman Elegists and the Epigraphic Tradition (London 2007), 21Google Scholar. For a more deconstructive view of the investment of Ovid, in particular, in the language of funerary inscription, see Hardie, P.R., ‘Death, Desire and Monuments’, in Ovid's Poetics of Illusion (Cambridge 2002), 62–105Google Scholar. Hardie suggests that ‘the memorialisation of the dead through funerary inscription, and the attempt to abolish the boundary between the living and the dead, [may be seen] as a general paradigm for writing and reading’ (84).

57. Inscriptions in literature: Stein, A., Römische Inschriften in der antiken Literatur (Prague 1931)Google Scholar; Barchiesi, A., ‘Palinuro e Caieta: due “epigrammi” virgiliani (Aen. V. 870sg.; VII. 1-4)’ Maia 31 (1979), 3–11Google Scholar; Dinter, M., ‘Epic and Epigram—Minor Heroes in Virgil's Aeneid’, CQ 55 (2005), 153–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ramsby (n.56 above); Erasmo, M., Reading Death in Ancient Rome (Columbus OH 2008), esp. 181–204Google Scholar. Literature in inscriptions: Purdie, A. B., Latin Verse Inscriptions (London 1935)Google Scholar; Courtney, E., Musa Lapidaria: A Selection of Latin Verse Inscriptions (Atlanta 1995)Google Scholar; Lissberger, E., Das Fortleben der römischen Elegiker in den Carmina Epigraphica (Tübingen 1934)Google Scholar; Lattimore, R., Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs (Urbana-Champaign 1962)Google Scholar; Wolff, É., La poésie funéraire épigraphique à Rome (Rennes 2000)Google Scholar; Cugusi, P., Aspetti letterari dei Carmina Latina Epigraphica (Bologna 1996), esp. 165–98Google Scholar.

58. Yardley, J.C., ‘Roman Elegy and Funerary Epigram’, EMC n.s. 15 (1996), 267-73Google Scholar.

59. Morelli, A. M., ‘toto notus in orbe? The Epigrams of Martial and the Tradition of the Carmina Latina Epigraphica’, in Cairns, F. (ed.), Greek and Roman Poetry: Greek and Roman Historiography (Papers of the Langford Latin Seminar 12: Cambridge 2005), 151–75Google Scholar; quotation is at 167.

60. As was suggested in Della Corte's original publication of the text in CIL, elaborated in Lebek, W.D., ‘Romana Simplicitas in lateinischen Distichen aus Pompei’, ZPE 22 (1976), 287–92Google Scholar.

61. Koenen, L., ‘Urticae Monumenta’, ZPE 31 (1978), 85f.Google Scholar

62. Courtney (n.57 above), 368f.

63. Wiseman, T.P., ‘Monuments and the Roman Annalists’, in Moxon, I.S., Smart, J.D., and Woodman, A.J. (eds.), Past Perspectives: Studies in Greek and Roman Historical Writing (Cambridge 1986), 87–100Google Scholar; Cooley, A., ‘Inscribing History at Rome’, in Cooley, (n.7 above), 7–20Google Scholar.

64. For an excellent recent discussion, see Thomas, E., Monumentality and the Roman Empire (Oxford 2007), 168–70Google Scholar.

65. As argued in Newby, Z., ‘Introduction’, in Newby, Z. and Leader-Newby, R. (eds.), Art and Inscriptions in the Ancient World (Cambridge 2007), 1–16Google Scholar. Cf. Corbier (n.2 above), 13-17.

66. Kellum, B., ‘The Spectacle of the Street’, in Bergmann, B. and Kondoleon, C. (eds.), The Art of Ancient Spectacle (Studies in the History of Art 56: Washington DC 1999), 283–99Google Scholar.

67. Unfortunately, our ability to identify exactly what function was served by the spaces beyond any of these entrances is limited, since they have never been excavated. But the wide expanse of the doorway at 3.5.3, leading directly into an open space beyond, certainly suggests a place of business, and contrasts with the narrow opening and small section of fauces preserved at 3.5.4, characteristic of entryways to elite Pompeian homes.

68. Carroll, M., Spirits of the Dead: Roman Funerary Commemoration in Western Europe (Oxford 2006), 82f.Google Scholar

69. Varone, A., Erotica Pompeiana (Naples 2002), 21 and 151f.Google Scholar

70. Such as that of Koortbojian, M., ‘in commemorationem mortuorum: Text and Image along the “Streets of Tombs”’, in Elsner, J. (ed.), Art and Text in Roman Culture (Cambridge 1996), 210–34Google Scholar.

71. Ramsby (n.56 above), 28f.

72. Magaldi, E., Pompei e il suo dolore (Naples 1930), 17fGoogle Scholar.

73. First published in Case ed abitanti a Pompei (Pompei 1924), 41Google Scholar.

74. Funari, P.P.A., La cultura popular en la antigüedad clásica (Ecija 1991), 67fGoogle Scholar; Varone (n.69 above), 109f., implies an erotic reading by appending the poem to his discussion of Tiburtinus; Corte, M. Della, Amori e amanti di Pompei antica (Cava dei Tirreni 1958), 32Google Scholar.

75. Housman, A.E., ‘An African Inscription’, CR 41 (1927), 60fGoogle Scholar. Todd, F.A., ‘Two Pompeian Metrical Inscriptions’, CR 53 (1939), 168–70Google Scholar, adds that Della Corte's own line drawing indicates that uentorum rather than Venerum is the correct reading, as the writer used an upper case ‘e’ throughout the text. Thus, the double line which Della Corte read as a lower case ‘e’ is more likely to be the damaged bottom of a ‘t’ and left side of an ‘o’.

76. Todd (n.75 above), 169.

77. On the motif of death as the passage from light into darkness, see R. Lattimore (n.57 above), 161-64; on the use of manuals in composing epitaphs, see Carroll (n.68 above), 106-08.

78. Varone (n.69 above), 109.

79. Cf. Ov. Tr. 3.1.11; Plin. Ep. 5.17.2 may express the same idea.

80. The point is made by Goold, J.P., ‘A Paraclausithyron from Pompeii’, in Knox, P. and Foss, C. (eds.), Style and Tradition: Studies in Honor of Wendell Clausen (Stuttgart and Leipzig 1998), 16-29, at 25Google Scholar.

81. As Jasper Svenbro writes, ‘at the moment of reading, the reading voice does not belong to the reader…. If he lends his voice to these mute signs, the text appropriates it’ (Phrasikleia: An Anthropology of Reading in Ancient Greece, tr. Lloyd, J. [Ithaca NY 1993], 46Google Scholar). Cf. Day, J., ‘Rituals in Stone: Early Greek Grave Inscriptions and Monuments’, JHS 109 (1989), 16-28, esp. 26–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on the trope in Roman epitaphs, see Feldherr (n.50 above), 218f.

82. Cf. CE 1453-57; 1463.

83. Feldherr (n.50 above), 218 n.34, also cites CIL 11.627 (= CE 513) and CIL 14.356 (= CE 1450), which may be a genuine version of the inscription cited in Possidius' Life of St Augustine 31. If so, it expresses a similar idea.

84. Feldherr (n.50 above), 220. Cf. Häusle, H., Das Denkmal als Garant des Nachruhms: Beiträge zur Geschichte und Thematik eines Motivs in lateinischen Inschriften (Zetemata 75: Munich 1980), 61–63Google Scholar.

85. It is worth noting that although CIL identifies the findspot simply as ‘near the door to the house of Balbus’, the excavation daybooks from 1866 indicate clearly that the door in question was 9.2.15, a rear entrance which led to the service rooms (kitchen, latrine, pantry) and a stair to the second floor. Although the ‘House of Balbus’, whose front entrance was 9.2.16, had a portico which originally opened toward doorway 15, by the time of the eruption this had been enclosed and reoriented towards the more ornate parts of the house so that only a narrow door connected the service areas and the rest of the living space. It seems possible that this was done in order to make the upper floors of the house into separate dwellings, meaning that we should connect CIL 4.2360 with these apartments rather than the doorway to the floridly-decorated ‘House of Balbus’.

86. CIL 4.2360.

87. M. Erasmo (n.57 above), 162.

88. Williams, C., Roman Homosexuality (Oxford and New York 2010), 294Google Scholar.

89. Svenbro (n.81 above), 189f.

90. Thus Svenbro (n.81 above) argues that Plato himself does not experience the same crisis around writing that his Socrates does, since Plato had taken steps (namely, the founding of the Academy) to ‘defend and control his writings’ (215f.).