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Pompeii's Safaitic Graffiti

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2021

Kyle Helms
Kyle Helms*
Affiliation:
St. Olaf College
*
helms1@stolaf.edu
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Abstract

In 1987, nine groups of graffiti written in Safaitic were published from Pompeii's theatre corridor (VIII.7.20). Safaitic, a south Semitic script used to record a dialect of Old Arabic, had never previously been documented in the West, and the appearance of these inscriptions at Pompeii since their publication has largely remained a mystery. I argue that Pompeii's Safaitic graffiti were inscribed by nomads from the Ḥarrah who had been incorporated into the Roman army, and who marched into Italy with Legio III Gallica during its campaign to install Vespasian as emperor.

Keywords

Latin graffitiSafaiticepigraphyPompeiithe ḤarrahRoman army
Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 111 , November 2021 , pp. 203 - 214
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

In 1987, Calzini Gysens published nine graffiti from the north wall of Pompeii's theatre corridor. These inscriptions, among the best kept secrets of Pompeian epigraphy, were written in Safaitic, a south Semitic script that records a dialect of Old Arabic. The script was used by pastoralist nomads in the Ḥarrah, a basalt desert in what is today southern Syria, northeastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia.Footnote 1 While over 34,000 Safaitic inscriptions, usually dated between the first century b.c.e. and the fourth century c.e., have now been documented in and around the Ḥarrah, the script is only very rarely found beyond the desert's black rocks.Footnote 2 The discovery of Safaitic within the city of Pompeii was, therefore, absolutely unexpected, and these graffiti remain the only known examples of the script from the western Mediterranean.

However, despite their uniqueness, there has been little work done on Pompeii's Safaitic texts since their publication by Calzini Gysens, and even less has been done to try to explain their presence at Pompeii.Footnote 3 The current working hypothesis is that these graffiti were inscribed by long-distance traders who, after landing at Puteoli, visited Pompeii sometime before the eruption. Here, I present a new explanation for the appearance of Safaitic at Pompeii. I argue that these graffiti were written by nomads from the Ḥarrah who had been incorporated into the Roman army and came to Pompeii with Legio III Gallica. These men travelled with Gallica into Italy during the civil war of 69 c.e. and left their marks at Pompeii between 20 December 69 and the end of January 70, while the legion was wintered in Campania. The argument advanced here has the goal not necessarily of being the final word on Pompeii's Safaitic graffiti, but of supplanting the long-distance trade hypothesis as the best working account of these inscriptions.

I INTRODUCTION TO POMPEII'S SAFAITIC GRAFFITI

As Pompeii's Safaitic graffiti are little-known to most classicists, I begin with a brief introduction. The texts were inscribed on the north wall of the theatre corridor (VIII.7.20), a passageway connecting the Via Stabiana to the east with Pompeii's theatre complex.Footnote 4 Although the texts were recorded as early as 1832, they remained a mystery until 1987, when Calzini Gysens published her editio princeps; an editio altera followed three years later.Footnote 5 Since Calzini Gysens’ breakthroughs, the texts have received almost no attention, with two notable exceptions. First, Varone included five photographs of the Safaitic in his 2012 photographic survey of the graffiti published in CIL 4.Footnote 6 Second, Al-Manaser and Macdonald included Pompeii's Safaitic in the Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia (OCIANA), which is now the standard database for Safaitic.Footnote 7

As published originally by Calzini Gysens, the Pompeian Safaitic graffiti were construed as nine inscriptions, but two of these texts have been split in OCIANA, resulting in a total of eleven distinct texts.Footnote 8 The texts are written right to left, and are well incised into the plaster that covers the north wall of the theatre corridor, though damage and loss of plaster have affected some of the inscriptions. All are clustered in close proximity to one another.Footnote 9 As for their date, in her ed. alt., Calzini Gysens suggested 80 b.c.e.–c.e. 62, on the basis of proposed archaeological time stamps for the construction and use of the corridor, and following Maiuri's hypothesis that the theatre complex ceased to be used after the 62 earthquake.Footnote 10 However, according to more recent archaeological work, it seems instead that use of the larger theatre and the corridor continued, and thus the terminus ante quem for the corridor's graffiti can be extended to the date of the eruption itself.Footnote 11

In terms of content, all of Pompeii's Safaitic graffiti record simple, commemorative signatures by their authors (‘by X’) or very brief patrilineal genealogies (‘by X, son of Y’). Such texts are the most common type of Safaitic inscription in the Ḥarrah, where these genealogies can extend up to a remarkable twenty generations.Footnote 12 At Pompeii there are, at most, two generations represented (author and father). Moving across the wall from east to west and from top to bottom, I reproduce here the texts following OCIANA's editions and translations. Note that editorial conventions for Old North Arabian epigraphy differ considerably from those of Latin and Greek texts: so, for instance, curly braces indicate doubtful readings (like the Leiden underdot), while four hyphens indicate one or more unreadable characters.Footnote 13

While not all of the readings are completely secure, what is clear enough are the names of twelve individuals who were once present in the theatre corridor. Two of the inscriptions include genealogies, and in the case of CGSP 9, we seem to have two brothers, Ṣhb and (possibly) Hʾhys¹. Among the names that are fairly securely read, most are well attested elsewhere in the Safaitic corpus from the Ḥarrah. For example, querying the OCIANA onomastics database for ʾnʿm, the author's name in CGSP 6, returns hundreds of hits.Footnote 16 On the other hand, several names are rarer. For example, kʿz, the name of the father of ʾnʿm in the same inscription, otherwise appears only once in the corpus.Footnote 17 ʾtbt, read only with difficulty in CGSP 1, is so far unique to Pompeii.Footnote 18 Thus even if individual readings cause some difficulties, the identification of the graffiti in the corridor as Safaitic is secure. Yet the very existence of these texts at Pompeii raises more questions. Who were Tm, Ṣhb, and their companions? How did they end up at Pompeii?

Outside Pompeii, Safaitic graffiti are almost exclusively found cut into the basalt rocks of the Ḥarrah, and scholars studying this corpus have been able to reconstruct a great deal about the lives of their authors.Footnote 19 These were pastoralist nomads, whose livelihoods came from breeding camels, sheep and goats, and who migrated across the Ḥarrah according to the seasons, the availability of water and the rhythms of life in the black desert. So far, only Calzini Gysens has attempted to explain how these nomads might have made it to Pompeii, though she offers ‘only hypotheses … with the greatest caution’: she tentatively suggested that the nomads might have been ‘slaves, political hostages, or just travellers, probably coming from nearby Puteoli’.Footnote 20 In the absence of any particular evidence for the authors being slaves or political hostages, Calzini Gysens highlighted the possibility that these men were eastern merchants, and this seems to be the best working explanation hitherto.Footnote 21 Against this, it might be said that we have no evidence for nomad involvement with trade in Puteoli — or, in fact, with trade of any kind, not even the caravan trade in Syria.Footnote 22 But, after all, Calzini Gysens advanced her hypothesis only exempli gratia. Still, with so much recent progress on the study of ancient graffiti, both Pompeian and Safaitic, I believe that it is now possible to do better.

II THE THIRD LEGION: A NEW HYPOTHESIS

The starting point for a new hypothesis is the north wall of Pompeii's theatre corridor. Though published in isolation, Pompeii's Safaitic graffiti have many neighbours.Footnote 23 The theatre corridor was — and is — a densely inscribed space, whose plaster walls seem to have served as an inviting epigraphic canvas for passers-by.Footnote 24 Roughly 150 additional graffiti have been identified here, and recent restudy of this material by Benefiel in her Ancient Graffiti Project (hereafter AGP) has made these inscriptions more accessible than ever.Footnote 25

The majority of non-Safaitic graffiti in the corridor are, in fact, figural. These include a wide variety of drawings, from boats to gladiators to animals, including horses, fish and the occasional unidentifiable quadruped.Footnote 26 Among textual graffiti, Latin dominates, but there are also seven inscriptions either in Greek or appearing with a combination of Greek and Latin characters.Footnote 27 As for Latin, there are around fifty-seven inscriptions that exhibit a considerable variety in kind. Many — not unlike the Safaitic — simply record names. Among others, Felix, Gaius Ovius, Faustus and Fadius Nasso all commemorated their visits to this space, the last apparently providing a self-portrait.Footnote 28 Some graffiti are more complex. The enslaved woman Methe, for example, recorded a prayer to Venus Pompeiana on the corridor's south wall.Footnote 29 Elsewhere, a trio of men — self-styled as the Geryones — left behind a pair of graffiti, one of which records (with a precise date) their liaison with a certain Tyche on 22 November 3 b.c.e.Footnote 30

Regarding the mystery of the Safaitic, however, two Latin inscriptions demand particular attention. Both are on the north wall, and are located close to the Safaitic, just c. 1.5 m to the east, heading toward the Via Stabiana, only three or so paces away.Footnote 31 But neither inscription is entirely straightforward. I present both texts below, according to recent updates by AGP.Footnote 32

  1. (1) CIL 4.2415, cf. p. 223 = AGP-EDR161769Footnote 33

Tertian<i> hic <h>abitaru<n>t [+1?+]ITICES verpa va(le)

The men of the Third were here … ITICES (?) farewell, prick.

  1. (2) CIL 4.2421 = AGP-EDR166493Footnote 34

Tertiani

hic ḥạbita[r]unt

Rufa ita vale quare bene fel<l>as

The men of the Third were here. So, farewell, Rufa, since you suck well.

Both texts exhibit the sort of variation in orthography that is common in Vesuvian graffiti. The loss of the final –i in Tertiani, for example, should probably be understood as an elision before hic, with the initial h of that word perhaps not pronounced (it is, indeed, unwritten in the verb form that follows: <h>abitaru<n>t).Footnote 35 In <h>abitaru<n>t, the loss of n before t is stranger, but can also be paralleled in the Pompeian corpus, while the loss of a geminated consonant like l in fel<l>as is more common.Footnote 36

Turning to content, the pair are similar. Each begins with an announcement of the presence of the Tertiani, ‘the men of the Third’, whose identity I will return to shortly. On the basis of palaeography, it may be the case that the Tertiani sections of each inscription were written by two different hands. In (1), for example, the writer uses E capitalis, whereas in (2) we find a two-stroke E (||) (though such variation is also possible in the same hand). Following this name, each text offers a deictic hic, referring passersby to the corridor itself. Next comes a form of the verb habitare, here meaning simply ‘to be present’.Footnote 37

Following the Tertiani section, each inscription includes a phrase involving vale. In (1), the word preceding verpa is a crux and the extant traces on the wall admit no secure solutions, though one might expect a name here. The valediction that follows addresses someone referred to as a verpa. This is an example of an anatomical term used pars pro toto either as a term of general abuse, or, as is possible with verpa, as a disparagement of the addressee that insinuates that they are a pedicator or irrumator.Footnote 38 The farewell to Rufa in (2) offers more detail. The citation of her prowess at fellatio has landed her on McGinn's register of ‘possible prostitutes at Pompeii’, where she shares the company of Tyche, mentioned above; on the other hand, whether this reference to Rufa is actually evidence for prostitution or simply verbal abuse seems to me far from obvious.Footnote 39 Either way, since Zangemeister's edition in CIL, it has been suggested that Rufa's valediction in line 3 should actually be severed from the Tertiani altogether and be read separately as its own inscription, a suggestion that has had its followers.Footnote 40 The same thing might also be the case for the final vale-phrase at the end of (1), although the palaeography is indecisive. Be that as it may, the reason that these two inscriptions matter for the present argument is the presence of the Tertiani.

As Zangemeister noted in his addenda to (1) in CIL, the reference to the Tertiani, ‘the men of the Third’, seems to relate these graffiti to the Third Legion. While there were several legions in the Roman army numbered ‘the Third’, Zangemeister made a crucial suggestion as to which one could have been responsible for these graffiti. Tacitus records that Legio III Gallica was in Capua during late 69 and early 70. Given that we know of no other opportunities for members of legions numbered ‘the Third’ to visit Pompeii, Zangemeister suggested that this moment likely provided the window of opportunity for the men of the Third to leave their marks here.Footnote 41

Zangemeister was, of course, not familiar with the then-indecipherable Safaitic graffiti when he made this observation, but his connection between the Tertiani and III Gallica matters a great deal, because it places in this corridor members of a Roman legion that had recently arrived in Italy from Syria, the distant homeland of writers of Safaitic. I argue that this connection provides the crucial link between Pompeii and the Ḥarrah. Gallica had been stationed in Syria for nearly a hundred years prior to 68, when it was moved, first to Moesia just prior to Nero's death, and then into Italy, at the head of the Danube legions, marching towards Rome on Vespasian's behalf.Footnote 42 Once Flavian forces had secured the City, shortly after 20 December, Gallica was billeted in Capua as punishment for the Vitellian sympathies of the Capuan aristocracy during the civil war.Footnote 43 Thus, the Third, previously a mainstay in Syria, found itself in Campania. Its stay was short-lived, and Gallica was sent back to its long-time home sometime in January 70.Footnote 44

Gallica would have drawn manpower from its occupation zone in the years prior to its travels to Campania. This manpower could well have included nomads from the Ḥarrah — and, in fact, there is evidence, which I discuss below, that suggests that the Ḥarrah was a recruiting ground for the Roman army. Building on Zangemeister, I argue that it was during this narrow timeframe that the authors of the Safaitic left their marks at Pompeii. Rather than looking for Safaitic-literate merchants, I believe the army was the most probable source of this most improbable epigraphic moment. But how exactly might III Gallica have incorporated the nomads?

III FROM THE ḤARRAH TO POMPEII

There are at least two ways that nomad recruits might have fallen in with the legion. First, and simply, the nomads may have served as legionaries themselves in the Third. Alternatively, the nomads could have been auxiliaries that marched with Gallica. In the final analysis, the evidence is not decisive. But what emerges is a reminder of the flexibility of the Roman army and the diverse ways that it could incorporate local populations. The issue is not that there were no opportunities for nomads to be included in the army; rather, there are too many alternatives to provide a firm conclusion here.

To start with the legionary option: Rome's legions became increasingly provincial under the Empire, from about fifty per cent provincial under Claudius and Nero until, under Trajan, legionaries of provincial birth outnumbered Italians 4:1 or 5:1.Footnote 45 In the case of III Gallica, we actually have explicit testimony regarding the effect of provincial recruitment on the unit — and for precisely the time period of interest. About two months prior to the arrival of III Gallica at Pompeii, the men of the Third sowed some productive confusion at the onset of the Second Battle of Bedriacum on 24 October. Tacitus records the episode:

undique clamor, et orientem solem (ita in Syria mos est) Tertiani salutavere. vagus inde an consilio ducis subditus rumor advenisse Mucianum, exercitus in vicem salutasse. gradum inferunt quasi recentibus auxiliis aucti, rariore iam Vitellianorum acie, ut quos nullo rectore suus quemque impetus vel pavor contraheret duceretve.

Everywhere there were shouts of acclamation, and the men of the Third saluted the rising sun, as is customary in Syria. As a result, there rose an uncertain rumour — unless it was fabricated according to the plan of the commander — that Mucianus had arrived, and that the forces had greeted one another in turn. The troops advance as if they had been reinforced by new forces, while the line of the Vitellians was now thinner, as is natural for men that were all — in the absence of a leader — being driven together or led away by impulse or fear.Footnote 46

Thus, according to Tacitus and consistent with shifts in legionary demographics, III Gallica contained a significant element that was culturally Syrian.Footnote 47 Aside from this passage, we largely lack evidence for the origines of the Tertiani during our time period, but it should be noted that recruitment of legionaries from areas in contact with Safaitic-literate populations is quite well documented later. In the third century, for example, III Cyrenaica drew a significant number of troops from ‘Semitic-speaking populations of Auranitis, Trachonitis, and the area around Bostra’.Footnote 48 Ancient Auranitis included the Ḥarrah, and inscriptions that suggest nomad contact with Bostra are also known.Footnote 49 Finally, in the light of Seyrig's study of heliolatry in Syria, the religious detail mentioned in Tacitus’ passage above should instill confidence in the historian's report.Footnote 50 In sum, the extant evidence seems compatible with the hypothesis that Gallica included local, Syrian recruits among its ranks as it marched into Italy in 69 — and these men could have included nomads from the Ḥarrah.Footnote 51

The other possibility is that the authors of Pompeii's Safaitic were auxiliaries, who might have fought alongside III Gallica.Footnote 52 Though there was no standing policy of moving locally recruited auxilia over long distances, pressing security threats — in our case, conflict on the Danube, then civil war — could spur their relocation, and examples of long-distance redeployment of auxiliaries are indeed known from the civil war of 69.Footnote 53 Further, Tacitus himself mentions auxilia fighting with the Tertiani, though he does not specify a particular, named auxiliary unit.Footnote 54

There is also considerable evidence for recruitment of auxiliaries within Syria that makes the nomads good candidates, so to speak, for serving in such units. As Kennedy has noted, ‘with few exceptions the Syrian auxiliary regiments came from that section of the population which lived along the desert's edge and in the more isolated and difficult terrains of the Syrian desert itself and the lava country of the Hauran and Trachonitas’.Footnote 55 The evidence from within Syria's ‘lava country’ is even more suggestive. In 2014, Macdonald argued that a number of challenging terms in Safaitic inscriptions point to the incorporation of nomads within the Roman army, serving in a cavalry unit, for example, or patrolling near Roman outposts in the greater Ḥawrān.Footnote 56 Macdonald suggested no specific named alae or cohortes, and it should also be emphasised that the texts involved cannot be dated much better than within the first four or so centuries c.e. But he did suggest that such nomads might have been organised in some less formal ‘ethnic unit’ (natio, ἔθνος or ms¹rt in Safaitic) or perhaps even a cohors equitata.Footnote 57

A number of Greek inscriptions from the region also relate to this question.Footnote 58 These texts mention, for example, a ‘general of units of nomads’ (στρατη[γ]ὸς παρε[μ]βολῶν [ν]ομάδω[ν]), and another names an ‘ethnarch, general of nomads’ (ἐθνάρχου, στρατηγοῦ νομάδων).Footnote 59 According to Macdonald, phrases like παρεμβολὴ νομάδων were most likely ‘Roman administrative terms for military units raised from the nomads’.Footnote 60 Another text mentions a certain στρατηγός of the Αουιδηνῶν, identified by Sartre with the nomadic tribe ʿAwidh, which is well known from the Ḥarrah.Footnote 61 According to Sartre, the epigraphic evidence demonstrates ‘sans aucun doute’ that the Romans recruited nomads as ‘troupes auxiliaires’.Footnote 62 Finally, a recently published assemblage of graffiti from the Ḥarrah has been said to provide ‘the first concrete evidence for the activities of Roman auxiliary military units raised from the nomadic tribes of the ḥarrah’.Footnote 63 The texts (five Safaitic inscriptions and one Arabic-Greek bilingual) appear to reveal that a certain Ẓʿn son of Kḥ s¹mnʾ served in the military and, importantly, that one of his comrades was gyṣ ḏ ʾl rm, ‘Gaius of the people of Rome’.Footnote 64

While the evidence for nomad auxiliaries thus seems to be mounting, it is, admittedly, difficult to assess how securely this can be related to 69 and the Tertiani at Pompeii. Overall, the legionary option would be the simplest explanation, while, for auxilia, Macdonald's suggestions of a national numerus of nomads or some similar irregular equestrian unit, or perhaps a cohors equitata, are as close to definitive as the present evidence permits.Footnote 65 In the final analysis, there were multiple pathways for incorporating Rome's subjects into her army. One can hope that further clarity will be forthcoming from the black desert, given that — even 34,000 inscriptions later — ‘the majority of the Ḥarrah remains unexplored’.Footnote 66

IV CONCLUSION

The Roman imperial army had the ability to move people incredible distances.Footnote 67 Such movement also created opportunities for language contact, and the effects of this, I argue, remain visible today in Pompeii's theatre corridor.Footnote 68 Still, supposing that the ‘third legion hypothesis’ is accepted, there remains something quite unusual about Pompeii's Safaitic graffiti. The present hypothesis accounts for how Ṣhb and his comrades might have ended up in Pompeii — but it does not explain the motives that lay behind their commemorations. After all, why inscribe a text that would be inevitably incomprehensible (at least in antiquity) to passers-by? What might have spurred these men to leave their marks — and in their own tongue and script?

On the one hand, though occasional Arabic-Greek bilingual inscriptions have emerged from the Ḥarrah, the nomads in the army may have had quite uneven knowledge of Latin or Greek — to say nothing of their literacy in those languages.Footnote 69 But in terms of audience and intelligibility, Adams has suggested a path forward for interpreting cases like these, viz. purposefully inscribed texts in languages that, given their surroundings, would have been hopelessly unintelligible. Writing about a famous Palmyrene-Latin commemoration from South Shields, Adams reasons that, in the absence of a larger Palmyrene community nearby, the Palmyrene text cannot have been intended for any wider audience.Footnote 70 Rather, Adams suggests, the author's decision to leave behind the text in Palmyrene conveys his own ‘ethnic pride’.Footnote 71

Pompeii's Safaitic could be interpreted in much the same way: these men were proud of their identities and their language. One also wonders whether there was an aspect of competition. Were the nomads inspired to leave their own marks after seeing their comrades scratch Tertiani into the plaster?Footnote 72 This too seems possible. If, however, we are ultimately only able to offer informed speculation about the private motives behind these texts, it remains remarkable that the inscriptions left behind by ʾnʿm and his messmates still survive at Pompeii at all — surely beyond their authors’ own expectations. If nothing else, Pompeii's Safaitic graffiti commemorate a strikingly imperial moment: when nomads walked on the Bay of Naples.

Footnotes

I thank audiences at the University of Puget Sound, St. Olaf College and CAMWS (2019 annual meeting) for feedback on earlier versions of this project. Thanks also to Rebecca Benefiel, Hannah Cochran, Jacqueline DiBiasie-Sammons, Ian Haynes, Matthew Loar, Holly Sypniewski, and especially to Bill Barry, for his encouragement and support at a critical moment. Finally, I offer my gratitude to the editor, Peter Thonemann, and the Journal's anonymous readers for their invaluable feedback. Any remaining errors or misunderstandings are, of course, my own.

1 Al-Jallad Reference Al-Jallad, Pat-El and Huehnergard2019 is the most recent treatment of the language.

2 Macdonald Reference Macdonald1993: 311; Al-Jallad Reference Al-Jallad2015: 21–2; Reference Al-Jallad, Pat-El and Huehnergard2019: 342–4; Macdonald and Al-Manaser Reference Macdonald and Al-Manaser2019: 209.

3 Calzini Gysens Reference Calzini Gysens1987; Reference Calzini Gysens1990.

4 For recent work on the theatre district at Pompeii, see Letellier-Taillefer Reference Letellier-Taillefer2019; Letellier-Taillefer and Chapelin Reference Letellier-Taillefer and Chapelin2019; more generally, Eschebach Reference Eschebach1993: 391.

5 First recorded by Wordsworth, who visited Pompeii during summer 1832 (Wordsworth Reference Wordsworth1837: 1). Mau republished Wordsworth's line-drawings as CIL 4.4961–4962; neither was aware of the language of the inscriptions.

6 Note that it was Varone Reference Varone2012: 2.414 who first connected Wordsworth's line-drawings in CIL 4.4961–4962 to the texts published by Calzini Gysens.

7 Al-Manaser and Macdonald Reference Al-Manaser and Macdonald2017. OCIANA is maintained at http://krc.orient.ox.ac.uk/ociana/

8 Distinct graffiti are sometimes mistakenly grouped together; on this phenomenon, see Benefiel Reference Benefiel2008 and further Section II below.

9 Calzini Gysens Reference Calzini Gysens1987: 108–9 provides a line-drawing with an overview of all of the texts. On graffiti clusters, see Benefiel Reference Benefiel2010: 87.

10 Calzini Gysens Reference Calzini Gysens1990: 3–4.

11 See Letellier-Taillefer Reference Letellier-Taillefer2019: 182–4; Letellier-Taillefer and Chapelin Reference Letellier-Taillefer and Chapelin2019: 15.

12 Al-Jallad and Jaworska Reference Al-Jallad and Jaworska2019: 10.

13 For a complete set of conventions, see Al-Manaser and MacDonald Reference Al-Manaser and Macdonald2017: xii.

14 I am not entirely persuaded by OCIANA's reading of this inscription. I can clearly see a case for dividing CGSP 7, reading first, l {ʾ}s¹lm, as OCIANA does, but the text that remains for 7.1 then looks like l ts²m. I do not understand what characters are being read l s²---- bn nor do I see space for those markings on the wall.

15 Tentatively suggested in the OCIANA app. crit.

16 http://krcfm.orient.ox.ac.uk/fmi/webd/ociana (accessed 17 April 2021).

17 Winnett and Harding Reference Winnett and Harding1978: no. 1803.

18 Cf. the OCIANA app. crit., where Macdonald mentions the possibility of reading this name as ktbt.

19 Macdonald Reference Macdonald1993.

20 Calzini Gysens Reference Calzini Gysens1990: 5.

21 For eastern traders in the region, see Terpstra Reference Terpstra, Romanis and Maiuro2015 on Nabataeans at Puteoli and Tran Tam Tihn Reference Tran Tam Tinh1972 for catalogues of relevant material. There are some examples of self-identified Nabateans using the Safaitic script in the East (Al-Jallad Reference Al-Jallad2015: 18–19), but such cases are few. While language is not necessarily the property of any particular ethnic group, Nabataean authorship is not the working assumption with Safaitic, even when the inscription might mention Nabataeans. See further Macdonald, Mu'azzin and Nehmé Reference Macdonald, Mu'azzin and Nehmé1996: 447–9; Macdonald Reference Macdonald1998: 185–6; cf. Norris and Al-Manaser Reference Norris and Al-Manaser2018.

22 Macdonald Reference Macdonald, Dijkstra and Fisher2014: 156: ‘we have no evidence that the nomads who carved these graffiti were involved in the caravan trade and, given that they describe many of their other activities, it would be strange if they were entirely silent about this’.

23 On studying graffiti in context, see Benefiel Reference Benefiel2010; Baird and Taylor Reference Baird and Taylor2011.

24 Graffiti as social enterprises: Benefiel Reference Benefiel2010; cf. Stern Reference Stern2018: 17.

25 AGP's database is maintained at http://www.ancientgraffiti.org All of the corridor's graffiti can now be browsed through AGP's Interactive Maps feature: http://www.ancientgraffiti.org/Graffiti/results?property=162 On AGP in the theatre corridor, see Benefiel and Sypniewski Reference Benefiel and Sypniewski2020: 4–5.

26 AGP helpfully unifies the figural and textual graffiti in one location. For the corridor, most of the figural texts were published in Langner Reference Langner2001; see further Benefiel and Sypniewski Reference Benefiel, Sypniewski, Felle and Rocco2016.

27 For Greek graffiti at Pompeii, see e.g. Solin Reference Solin, Leiwo, Halla-aho and Vierros2012.

28 For Nasso, see CIL 4.3204.

29 CIL 4.2457.

30 CIL 4.2450; for prostitution in such locations, see McGinn Reference McGinn2004: 22–3; Levin-Richardson Reference Levin-Richardson2019: 2–5.

31 For measurement data, see Varone Reference Varone2012: 2.414, 2.417, 2.420; AGP's commentaries also indicate proximate inscriptions.

32 All translations are my own, unless otherwise indicated.

33 http://ancientgraffiti.org/Graffiti/graffito/AGP-EDR161769 (Benefiel and Helms).

34 http://ancientgraffiti.org/Graffiti/graffito/AGP-EDR166493 (Benefiel and Helms).

35 For elision of -i, see Väänänen Reference Väänänen1966: 40; for loss of initial h, Väänänen Reference Väänänen1966: 58.

36 Väänänen Reference Väänänen1966: 67; cf. CIL 4.2, indices p. 779; Väänänen Reference Väänänen1966: 60.

37 See CIL 4.2, indices p. 759 s.v. for other examples of the verb.

38 Adams Reference Adams1982a: 12–14; Reference Adams1982b: 37–8.

39 McGinn Reference McGinn2004: 301.

40 Line three is printed as a separate inscription in Varone Reference Varone2002: 77 and Weeber Reference Weeber2003: 48, 143.

41 Note that Hunink Reference Hunink2011: 274–5 does not follow Zangemeister's suggestion, nor does he understand Tertiani to be the ‘men of the Third’. Instead, Hunink translates the relevant sections of these inscriptions as ‘Hier wohnen die Brüder Tertianus’ and ‘Die Brüders [sic] Tertianus / haben hier gewohnt’. I cannot entirely rule out the possibility that the men that wrote these inscriptions were two brothers, each named Tertianus. Still, against this interpretation (which is advanced without argument), one might note that Tertianus as a name appears nowhere else in Pompeian graffiti, at least among those collated by Mau in his indices to CIL 4.2. The only other published translation of the text is vague on this point: ‘Hier haben die Tertiani gewohnt’ (Weeber Reference Weeber2003: 143).

42 On III Gallica, see, conveniently, Dąbrowa Reference Dąbrowa, Bohec and Wolff2000.

43 See Wellesley Reference Wellesley2000: 212; Tac., Hist. 4.3.1.

44 Tac., Hist. 4.39.4; cf. Morgan Reference Morgan2006: 260.

45 See Forni Reference Forni1953: 65–6 and Reference Forni1974; Mann Reference Mann1983; Roselaar Reference Roselaar2016: 139–43. For Syria, see Pollard Reference Pollard2000: 113–34.

46 Tac., Hist. 3.24.3–25.1. The text of the Histories is from Wellesley's Teubner (1989).

47 Wellesley Reference Wellesley2000: 149; Morgan Reference Morgan2006: 175. Cf. Dio 64.14.3 = Xiph. 198.

48 Mann Reference Mann1983: 42.

49 See Macdonald Reference Macdonald1993: 309–10 with n. 39.

50 Seyrig Reference Seyrig1971: e.g. 364–5. Tacitus’ characterisation of heliolatry as a Syrian religious tradition has been challenged by Millar, but his objection is more against ‘the notion that there was a “Syrian” culture’, i.e. a unified, homogenous set of beliefs and practices: see Millar Reference Millar1993: 74–5, 522 and 493. Cf. Tacoma and Tybout Reference Tacoma and Tybout2019: 60: ‘Soldiers from the Near East became Syrian or Arabian when they served Rome’.

51 Though it is sometimes said that legionary recruits from Syria in the early empire were largely from Hellenised or ‘Romanised’ urban areas (Kennedy Reference Kennedy1980: 9; Pollard Reference Pollard2000: 116–17). Pollard indeed seems sceptical of Tacitus’ testimony here due to lack of epigraphic confirmation, but the fact is that, for our period, only one inscription survives for III Gallica that may attest to a recruit's origo (CIL 12.2230; Mann Reference Mann1983: 144). While Roselaar (Reference Roselaar2016: 141) estimates that ‘for only 0.1% of all legionaries we have information about their geographical origin’, for the Tertiani it seems to be much less even than that.

52 On auxilia and legions, see (still) Cheesman Reference Cheesman1914: 49–52; cf. Spaul Reference Spaul2000: 6; for recruitment, see Kennedy Reference Kennedy1980; Haynes Reference Haynes2013: 103–34.

53 See Haynes Reference Haynes2013: 121–2; Ivleva Reference Ivleva2016: 161 with n. 17. For units involved in the civil war, see Spaul Reference Spaul1994: 262 and e.g. the case of ala Siliana in Spaul Reference Spaul1994: 200–3.

54 Tac., Hist. 1.79.1. For auxilia in Syria, see Dąbrowa Reference Dąbrowa1979 and catalogues in Spaul Reference Spaul1994 and Spaul Reference Spaul2000.

55 Kennedy Reference Kennedy1980: 270.

56 Macdonald Reference Macdonald, Dijkstra and Fisher2014.

57 Macdonald Reference Macdonald, Dijkstra and Fisher2014: 156–8, 160–1. Cf. SEG 64.1851, 61.1493, and 43.1088. For cohors equitata, see Holder Reference Holder1980: 7. There is debate on the use of ἔθνος as a military term in these contexts: cf. SEG 45.2026 and 65.1791.

58 See discussion in Macdonald Reference Macdonald, Dijkstra and Fisher2014; Sartre Reference Sartre, Genequand and Robin2015; cf. also Sartre Reference Sartre1982: 122–8.

59 PAES IIIA, nr. 752, lines 1–5 = Dussaud and Macler Reference Dussaud and Macler1901: 147, no. 7; Waddington Reference Waddington1870: no. 2196 = Graham Reference Graham1859: 297 no. 27. Cf. SEG 65.1831.

60 Macdonald Reference Macdonald, Dijkstra and Fisher2014: 156–8; see further in Macdonald Reference Macdonald1993: 368–77; Reference Macdonald2009b: 9–11.

61 Sartre Reference Sartre, Genequand and Robin2015: 45–6.

62 Sarte Reference Sartre, Genequand and Robin2015: 47, but not all agree: see SEG 65.1791.

63 Al-Jallad et al. Reference Al-Jallad, Al-Salameen, Shedeifat, Harahsheh and Akkermans2020: 360.

64 Translation from Al-Jallad et al. Reference Al-Jallad, Al-Salameen, Shedeifat, Harahsheh and Akkermans2020: 357.

65 For numeri serving as extra forces already in the early Empire, see Southern Reference Southern1989: 86.

66 Al-Jallad and Jaworska Reference Al-Jallad and Jaworska2019: 20.

67 See Roselaar Reference Roselaar2016; Ivleva Reference Ivleva2016; cf. Woolf Reference Woolf2016: 454–5. More generally on ancient mobility, see De Ligt and Tacoma Reference De Ligt, and Tacoma and E2016; Lo Cascio and Tacoma Reference Lo Cascio, Tacoma and E.2016; Yoo, Zerbini and Barron Reference Yoo, Zerbini and Barron2019.

68 Adams Reference Adams2003: 761. For mobility and language contact, see Clackson et al. Reference Clackson, Patrick, McDonald, Tagliapietra and Zair2020.

69 Adams Reference Adams2003: 20 n. 61; see Haynes Reference Haynes2013: 301–36 on Latin and Greek in the auxilia. For nomads learning Greek, see Al-Jallad and Al-Manaser Reference Al-Jallad and Al-Manaser2015: 63. Cf. Al-Jallad and Al-Manaser Reference Al-Jallad and Al-Manaser2016. For Graeco-Safaitica, see the catalogue in Al-Jallad Reference Al-Jallad2020: 111–23. On nomad literacy in the Ḥarrah, see Macdonald Reference Macdonald, Ragazzoli, Harmanşah, Salvador and Frood2018: 67–8.

70 RIB 1065 in Adams Reference Adams2003: 32–3.

71 Adams Reference Adams2003: 32.

72 Writing about dedications by different ethnic units within cohors II Tungrorum equitata at Birrens near Hadrian's Wall, Haynes Reference Haynes2013: 231 asks: ‘Were some elements within the regiment inspired to assert their identity in this way after witnessing the group dedication of another contingent?’ Cf. Ivleva Reference Ivleva2016: 174–5.

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