Tag Archives: Graffiti

Craving facts: the new graffito from Pompeii

Yesterday news broke about the discovery of a graffito from Pompeii that was, in the usual sensationalist way, hailed as a text that would require us to rewrite our history books: View this post on Instagram A post shared by … Continue reading

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People of Changing Colour

In a vitriolic letter to Marcella about one Onasus, dated to A. D. 385, St. Jerome, one of the Christian fathers, makes a remarkable, commonly overlooked statement (Letters 42.2): non et lucus ideo dicatur, quod minime luceat, et Parcae ab … Continue reading

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No graffiti please!

Yesterday news broke about houses that were defaced with graffiti (or, strictly speaking, dipinti – after all, the text was painted onto, not scratched into, the surface) in Cambridge – in Latin: Locus in domos … loci populum is a … Continue reading

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Lesser Known Ballads (and Other Art Work) of Reading Gaol

Built in 1844, HM Prison Reading (also known as Reading Gaol and famous through Oscar Wilde‘s poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol) was decommissioned in 2013. Since September 2016 the prison has opened its doors to the public for the … Continue reading

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Reading’s Latin Inscriptions

May I be forgiven some shameless self-advertising? My latest book has just been published by Reading’s wonderful Two Rivers Press! The book contains an anthology of 48 Latin inscriptions that are on display in Berkshire’s county town of Reading (as … Continue reading

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Undying Voices: The Poetry of Roman Britain

Britain has produced some of the world’s most highly renowned, influential, and beautiful poetry – Geoffrey Chaucer, Sir Walter Raleigh, William Shakespeare,  John Milton, Robert Burns, the Brontë sisters, Lewis Carroll, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, to name but a select few! … Continue reading

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Poetic Dreams of Flight

The crash of Germanwings flight 9525 has been on my mind quite a lot recently. Previously, on occasion of a similar incident (namely that of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370), I have published blog posts about the horrors that relatives of … Continue reading

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Spread the Wealth

Have I ever told you the one about politicians and fiscal responsibility? The joke that is so old it was first recorded in a Pompeian wall inscription? It goes like this (CIL IV 3702 cf. p. 1383 = ILS 6405): … Continue reading

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Hadrian’s Wall Rocks!

Last weekend I was hunting inscriptions near Hadrian’s Wall. In particular, I was keen to see a number of Carmina Latina Epigraphica in Carlisle’s magnificent Tullie House Museum & Art Gallery – if you have never been, do go and … Continue reading

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The Power of Song and Music at Pompeii

Clearly some houses at Pompeii are more prone to disaster than others. Not only was dwelling III 5.1, the shop and house of Pascius Hermes, destroyed and covered by volcanic matter just like everything else at Pompeii: it was damaged … Continue reading

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