From the Roman world, there are also lead sling-bullets with things like ‘Get Pompey’ written on them, rather like the ‘love to Saddam’ that was chalked on laser-guided bombs in recent years (55).
The graffiti of Pompeii include soldiers and gladiators boasting about their love-lives; there is material about gay sex at the palaestra; there are curses, such as: ‘May your ulcerous pustules burst open and burn like never before’ (56); and Herculaneum has a graffito by a doctor (?) who wrote ‘I had a really good crap here’. Pompeii also has drawings with written graffiti — such as Fortunata (fellat).
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Deep inside the Ice Age decorated cave of Niaux, France, there is a graffito from a century or two ago saying ‘Here at the age of 13 I lost my virginity’ (57).