6th of the ides of August (ie., between August 6th and 8th), on a lease of five years, a bath, a venereum, and nine hundred shops, bowers, and upper apartments." The seven final initials, antiquaries, who profess to read what to others is unreadable, explain, "They are not to let to any person exercising an infamous profession." But as this seems a singular clause where there is a venereum to be let, other erudites have seen in it, "Si quis dominam loci eius non cognoverit," and fancy that they read underneath, "Adeat Suettum Verum," in which case the whole should mean, "If anybody should not know the lady of the house, let him go to Suettus Verus." The following is another example of the way in which Roman landlords advertised "desirable residences," and "commodious business premises" Said to mean, * Nine hundred shops in a town which would hardly contain more than about twelve hundred is rather incredible-perhaps it should be ninety. Pergula were either porticos shaded with verdure, lattices with creeping plants, or small rooms above the shops, bedrooms for the shopkeepers. Canacula were rooms under the terraces. When they were good enough to let to the higher classes they were called equestria (as in the following advertisement). Plutarch informs us that Sylla, in his younger days, lived in one of them, where he paid a rent of £8 a year. bowers, and gentlemen's apartments. The hirer must apply to the slave of Cn. Alifius Nigidius, senior." Both the Greeks and the Romans had on their houses a piece of the wall whitened to receive inscriptions relative to their affairs. The first called this Asúxwua, the latter album. Many examples of them are found in Pompeii, generally in very inferior writing and spelling. Even the schoolmaster Valentinus, who on his album, as was the constant practice, invoked the patronage of some high personages, was very loose in his grammar, and the untoward outbreak of Vesuvius has perpetuated his blundering use of an accusative instead of an ablative : "Cum discentes suos." All the Pompeian inscriptions mentioned above were painted, but a few instances also occur of notices being merely scratched on the wall. Thus we find in one place, "Damas audi," and on a pier at the angle of the house of the tragic poet is an Etruscan inscription scratched in the wall with a nail, which has been translated by a learned Neapolitan, "You shall hear a poem of Numerius." But these so-called Etruscan inscriptions are by no means so well understood as we could wish, and their interpretation is far from incontestable. There is another on a house of Pompeii, which has been Latinised into, "Ex hinc viatoriens ante turri xii inibi. Sarinus Publii cauponatur. Ut adires. Vale." That is, "Traveller, going from here to the twelfth tower, there Sarinus keeps a tavern. This is to request you to enter. Farewell." This inscription, however, is so obscure that another savant has read in it a notification that a certain magistrate, Adirens Caius, had brought the waters of the Sarno to Pompeiia most material difference certainly. We are made acquainted with other Roman bills and advertisements by the works of the poets and dramatists. Thus at Trimalchion's banquet, in the "Satyricon," Pliny mentions that a poet hired a house, built an oratory, hired forms, and dispersed prospectuses. They also read their works publicly,* an occupation in which they were much interrupted and annoyed by idlers and impertinent boys. Another mode of advertising new works more resembled that of our own country. The Roman booksellers used to placard their shops with the titles of the new books they had for sale. Such was the shop of Atrectus, described by Martial Contra Cæsaris est forum taberna Illinc me pete. * A. L. Millin, Description d'un Mosaique antique du Musée Pio. Clementin, à Rome, 1819, p. 9. |