Occasionally we can find ancient graffiti carved into the walls of floors of ruins. For example, in the Coliseum in Rome oftentimes people would write their name as a method of reserving it. But a scholar must be really skilled to be able to read these; most of the ancient texts that survive and we study are of higher culture — The Iliad, The Aeneid, Cicero, Aristotle — so these are of the common folk, which often don't use such flowery vocabulary or syntax and employ slang.

Pompeii is a good place to study these because the city remains in pristine condition. For those of you who don't know, Pompeii was a relatively populous city that was completely buried under ash and mud after the nearby volcano Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD. For centuries it was forgotten until the 1600s and was not fully excavated until the 1700s. People discovered the bodies of the citizens trying to flee the fumes and ash but ultimately failing. The buildings still had their original mosaics and paintings, and for the purposes of this post, graffiti. Here are a selection of them for your pleasure:

• Secundus likes to screw boys.
• Virgula to her friend Tertius: you are disgusting!
• (On the side of a brothel) Weep, you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men’s behinds. Goodbye, wondrous femininity!
• Restitutus says: "Restituta, take off your tunic, please, and show us your hairy privates."
• On April 19th, I made bread.
• The man I am having dinner with is a barbarian.
• (Next to the door of a bar) I screwed the barmaid.
• My lusty son, with how many women have you had sexual relations?
• Two friends were here. While they were, they had bad service in every way from a guy named Epaphroditus. They threw him out and spent 105 and half sestertii most agreeably on whores.
• Chie, I hope your hemorrhoids rub together so much that they hurt worse than when they every have before!
• I screwed a lot of girls here.
• Defecator, may everything turn out okay so that you can leave this place.
• (On a inn wall) We have wet the bed, host. I confess we have done wrong. If you want to know why, there was no chamber pot.
• I have fucked men.
• Floronius, privileged soldier of the 7th legion, was here. The women did not know of his presence. Only six women came to know, too few for such a stallion.
• Theophilus, don’t perform oral sex on girls against the city wall like a dog.
• Phileros is a eunuch!
• On June 15th, Hermeros screwed here with Phileterus and Caphisus.
• Lucius Istacidius, I regard as a stranger anyone who doesn’t invite me to dinner.
• Apollinaris, the doctor of the emperor Titus, defecated well here.
• If anyone sits here, let him read this first of all: if anyone wants a screw, he should look for Attice; she costs 4 sestertii.
• O walls, you have held up so much tedious graffiti that I am amazed that you have not already collapsed in ruin.