Nothing’s new about the writing on the wall A

TOURIST from Ecuador has been arrested for scrawling the names of his son and wife on the walls of the Colosseum. Rome’s mayor Virginia Raggi said: “Whoever harms the Colosseum harms all Romans who love the city.”

Similar cases have seen fines imposed up to £17,000.

Quite right, too! How dare they write on those ancient walls!

Except that people have been doing so since the 2,000-year-old ampitheatre was built, creating layers of their own history.

Unfortunately, much of it is so over-written as to be indecipherable and not particularly interesting anyway. Kilroy was always there.

Fifty years ago my wife Maria and I read the graffiti on Stonehenge. There was no entrance fee, no attendants and no protective fence.

We parked by the side of the road and wandered round the ancient stones one misty day in November with no-one else in sight.

Security has all changed now, of course. And so have the crowds.

The graffiti was not over-whelming but it did stretch back over the centuries.

It first appeared as carved axe heads about 3,500 to 4,000 years ago, 1,000 years after it was built.

More recent additions include names and dates. Shame on John Louis De Ferre (17th century), W Skeat 1814, Tom Senior 1817 and H Bridger of Chichester 1866.

Actually much more damage was done by the 19th century practice of hiring a chisel and hacking off a piece of stone to take away as a souvenir.

Those wanting to immortalise their name choose historic locations but the place to find the most complete, abusive and amusing ancient everyday graffiti is in the streets, homes, brothels and bars of Pompeii, all preserved by the volcanic ash that destroyed the city in 79 AD.

Up Pompeii the graffiti was cruder than a Frankie Howerd script. Two thousand years on, much of it is too lewd to use in a family newspaper.

It goes from declarations such as “Marcus loves Spendusa” and “Atimetus got me pregnant”to the boastful “Celadus the Thracian gladiator is the delight of all the girls” and “If anyone does not believe in Venus, they should gaze at my girlfriend”.

The sorrowful: “Pyrrhus to his colleague Chius: I grieve because I hear you have died; and so farewell.”

The vindictive: “Chie, I hope your haemorrhoids rub together so much that they hurt worse than they ever have before.”

And the explanatory at a boarding house: “We have wet the bed, host. I confess we have done wrong. If you want to know why, there was no chamber pot.”

An omission that would probably have earned the establishment only three stars out of five on Tripadvisor.

Found in the Basilica, the commercial and judicial centre of the city, was a particularly apt observation: “O walls, you have held up so much tedious graffiti that I am amazed that you have not already collapsed in ruin.” They did, soon after.

In the latrine of one of the most luxurious houses of the city was: “Secundus defecated here” written three times on one wall.

He was obviously a frequent visitor with little imagination.

Inevitably, the early Kilroy was also out and about.

On the wall of a house was carved: “Aufidius was here.”