2 The Alexamenos Graffito as Non-Christian Mockery

The Alexamenos graffito (typically dated to the second and third centuries ce) was found in Room 7 of what has come to be known as a paedegogium in the imperial complex of the Palatine Hill in Rome.Footnote ¹ In some instances, people wrote about ‘leaving the paedegogium’ (exit de paedegogio) on the walls of the building where the Alexamenos graffito was found.Footnote ² This has led scholars to understand the building as a paedegogium, a term that is both toponym (a name for a place of study) and a group of often enslaved male workers.Footnote ³ Few archaeological details remain for us to speak with any precision other than the likely use of the room and a general date range. For this reason, the attention of scholars has remained focused on the depiction of the graffito itself in its ancient Roman and early Christian contexts.

Both the line drawings and low-quality images of the graffito have misled or obscured details for interpreters. In this article, I have provided my own line drawing based on the best images I could find of the graffito (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

‘Alexamenos worships God’, Pal. Graf. I.246. Line drawing by Author © 2024. Published under CC by-SA 4.0

Figure 1 Long description

A line drawing depicts a figure with a donkey head on a cross, arms outstretched. To the left, a person is shown raising a hand towards the figure. Below, Greek text is inscribed, reading 'Alexamenos worships God'.

The Alexamenos graffito depicts a man standing before another man who has been crucified on a cross. While the man on the ground has a human head, the crucified man has an equine head, usually understood to be the head of a donkey. The man on the ground appears to wear short clothing and has one hand raised in a gesture (possibly of worship?) towards the crucified person.Footnote ⁴ The hybrid person, part-donkey part-human, stands on a lower beam with his arms stretched out to the upper beam of the cross (patibula) which has been secured to the crux, the vertical beam on which both the lower and upper beams have been attached. The detail of the cross is simplistic, represented only by simple lines without any dimension of width. At the top of the cross is another line attached to a square-shaped object, probably a titula, as I argue below. The donkey-man wears the same kind of clothing as the man on the ground. Above the crucified figure is an orphaned upsilon (Υ), usually taken as a mistake (though I include it in the depiction because its omission obscures the fuller context of the image).

The style of the graffito in some ways reflects wider graffiti found on Palatine Hill, especially graffitied depictions of male busts, as found in the Domus Tiberiana nearby. There are at least half a dozen or so depictions of heads, each of them varying in physical detail. Some are rough but simple sketches (Pal. Graf. I.32, I.35, I.40, I.44, I.47), and others display higher levels of details (Pal. Graf. I.45, I.128) and physical variation (Pal. Graf. I.230).Footnote ⁵ Amid this diversity, one particular graffitio of a head (Pal. Graf. II.23) from the Domus Tiberiana resembles the depiction of Alexamenos.Footnote ⁶ The shape of his eyes corresponds to the depiction of Alexamenos; both figures are viewed from a profile perspective, and the shape of their single right eye is the same reaching to the very centre of their face and nose.

Inscribed between the crucified figure and his worshipper are the words: ΑΛΕΞΑΜΕΝΟΣ ΣΕΒΕΤΕ ΘΕΟΝ.Footnote ⁷ The name Alexamenos is usually attributed to the figure who is not crucified. The inscription has usually been translated as ‘Alexamenos worships God’ (αλεξαμενος σεβετε θεον) with the ΣΕΒΕΤΕ being read as ΣΕΒΕΤΑΙ.Footnote ⁸ Harley-McGowan argues that if an imperative command were intended, ΑΛΕΞΑΜΕΝΟΣ would have been in the vocative ΑΛΕΞΑΜΕΝΕ.Footnote ⁹ Given the irregularity of spelling and prevalence of errors in graffiti, I think that it is ambitious to expect the author of the graffito to adhere to strict grammatical rules, especially given the variation in spelling, should one consider ΣΕΒΕΤΕ as meaning ΣΕΒΕΤΑΙ. Also, it is not unusual in ancient Greek to have the nominative case as a substitute for the vocative.Footnote ¹⁰ Additionally, it is possible that ΣΕΒΕΤΕ could be read as an imperative, even though ΑΛΕΞΑΜΕΝΟΣ is in the nominative.Footnote ¹¹ Therefore, the inscription could also be read ‘Alexamenos, worship God’. For the sake of this article, since I am contesting the common interpretation, we will proceed with the usual rendering and translation of the inscription as ‘Alexamenos worships God’, acknowledging that another reading is possible.

Since its initial publication in 1856, the near-total consensus among scholars has been that the graffito was created by a non-Christian in order to mock or satirise another Christian, Alexamenos.Footnote ¹² When it was first released by Raffaele Garrucci, he named it ‘blasphemous’ (‘blasfemo’).Footnote ¹³ Early work on the image among German scholars caused them to even coin a new term to describe it. Ferdinand Becker in 1866 called it Das Spott-Crucifix (‘The Satirical Cross’).Footnote ¹⁴ To be sure, some scholars have, in the past, hedged their language about whether it is satirical or not.Footnote ¹⁵ Nevertheless, even though scholars recognise the ambiguity in the Alexamenos graffito, they largely agree that it was likely created by someone who was not a Christian.

Because the vast consensus has been that the image is non-Christian in origin and antagonistically satirical, no scholars, to my knowledge, have made an extended case for why the graffito should be understood this way.Footnote ¹⁶ There are a few isolated reasons that scholars do raise to support this interpretation that I will outline in brief detail here, but deal with more fully in the following section. First, scholars universally agree that the inscription about Alexamenos concerns someone in the graffito itself; since the ‘god’ is quickly isolated as being Jesus, as I mentioned above, the other figure is usually thought to be Alexamenos. Because the image describes someone named Alexamenos, it is presumed that the artist and the subject of the image are two different people. If they are two different people, then Alexamenos could not have been the one who created the image, and, therefore, it was not created by a Christian. Second, based on early Christian traditions that record pagan mockery of Jesus as a donkey-man (e.g. Tertullian, Minucius Felix), the depiction of Jesus with a donkey head is understood to be a pagan image, and thus created by a non-Christian. Additionally, some interpreters understand the graffito to display Jesus’ buttocks. This sexualisation is further evidence for the likelihood of the graffito’s non-Christian origin. Some of these claims are dubious, while others are more ambiguous than scholars have acknowledged or may realise. As I argue in the next section, none of them necessarily mean that the Alexamenos graffito was made by a non-Christian.

3 The Alexamenos Graffito as Christian in Origin

In this section, I re-analyse sporadic evidence usually used to interpret the graffito as a non-Christian creation. Then, I analyse evidence that suggests the graffito could be Christian. Typically, scholars understand both Alexamenos and the crucified man as wearing colobia (sg: colobium, a sleeve-less piece of clothing that served as an undergarment).Footnote ¹⁷ Colobia were not strictly used for enslaved persons, as argued by John Granger Cook, but were certainly a sign of the underclass.Footnote ¹⁸ Given the context of the paedegogium, however, it is likely the clothing denotes a servile status (even if the clothing is not innately servile). The short sleeves are evident from the way the artist makes curvatures around the upper arms of both Alexamenos and the crucified man. These are, however, the same kinds of curvatures we see on the thighs of the crucified, what some interpreters in the past have instead said are the crucified man’s buttocks.Footnote ¹⁹ Such lewdness suggests a non-Christian origin.

Yet we see attempts by the artist to render the same kinds of sleeved curvatures on Alexamenos’ thighs as well. Did the artist intentionally portray these figures as flashing the viewer, or is it simply the lower short-sleeved pant legs of enslaved clothing? I think the latter is more likely the case for a number of reasons. One, because the curvatures match the sleeves on the upper arms of both figures. Second, because in other Roman depictions of enslaved workers, we can see that they sometimes wore materials that looked remarkably like the short-sleeved materials that cover the upper thighs of the crucified donkey-man’s legs. For example, a fresco from a fullonica in Pompeii (VI.8.20) shows two young enslaved men working, one of whom brushes wool in a short-sleeved outfit that matches, more or less, the arm and thigh shape of the colobia portrayed in the Alexamenos graffito.Footnote ²⁰ Alternatively, it may also depict a subligaculum, a Roman undergarment. The lines across both Alexamenos and the crucified man’s waist may be intended as a representation of their belts; the author depicts the beams of the cross as simple lines, so the notion that a single line could represent a tied sash or belt is not too far-fetched. The artist may also have depicted a combination of a short piece of clothing and a subligaculum. It has even been suggested that the image draws from ancient mime parody in Rome, with ‘a crucified mime wearing hose, singlet, and a donkey mask’.Footnote ²¹ There are many possibilities, and it is not obvious that buttocks are clearly intended. Additionally, as Harley-McGowan observes, in the example here of veneration of a deity, the depiction of a god from a rear-view perspective would be unusual as ‘the customary iconography shows the deity in strict frontality to receive the gesture of adoration’.Footnote ²² It is therefore unlikely that the Alexamenos image mocks Jesus by exposing his buttocks. If anything, it tells us more about the servility of Jesus than his sexualisation.Footnote ²³

In addition to the exposed buttocks, scholars frequently connect the Alexamenos graffito to early Christian accounts of a donkey-Jesus. Such an image offended Christians greatly and therefore, by implication, the author of the graffito could not have been Christian. But something that should caution modern interpreters about whether Christians would have found the Alexamenos image offensive are Tertullian’s comments in his Apology. In multiple places, Tertullian relays the story of a person who depicts the Christian God as a toga-wearing donkey-man, given the title ‘the “donkey-fucking” God of the Christians’ (Apol. 16.12):

The hybridity of this figure, clearly meant to depict Jesus as a half-human, half-equine, centres on a critique of Jesus’ divine father as one who has sex with donkeys, but may also suggest the sexual lasciviousness of Jesus himself as half-donkey: donkeys in the ancient world were sometimes characterised as hypersexual because of their very visible equine erections.Footnote ²⁶

While scholars frequently cite ancient Jewish (e.g. Josephus, C. Ap. 2.79) and early Christian sources that deal with ancient satirical representations of the God of Israel or Jesus as a donkey, especially Tertullian, few seem to pay attention to the reactions or arguments that Tertullian (or Minucius Felix) had towards such an image. Their responses are often flattened and generalised as contempt towards the image.Footnote ²⁷ Yarbrough argues that ‘Tertullian’s linking the picture to the slander directed at Christians for worshipping an ass-headed God makes it clear he would have recognized what the street artist was doing – and refuted it vigorously.’Footnote ²⁸ But speaking about ‘the “donkey-fucking” God of the Christians’ parody in his Apology, Tertullian says: ‘We laughed both at the name and figure’ (risimus et nomen et formam). This is not the kind of response for which interpreters have usually deployed Tertullian’s comments on this depiction. The plural ‘we’ indicates that it was not just Tertullian but Christians in general who heard about the story and found it funny. Tertullian even emphasises that Christians recognised the humour of both the image – of the hybrid donkey-headed and educated Roman citizen – and also the ascription. Where is the offence and outrage so frequently implied in studies on the graffito, with some even going so far as to call such a depiction ‘blasphemous’?Footnote ²⁹ It is true that we must also remember the possibility that Tertullian may be shaping the response of Christians as positive in order to show the resilience of the Christian community. He and other Christians may have taken offence at such an image. Nevertheless, in the rhetoric of his writings, Tertullian portrays a positive Christian response to this image. Tertullian’s portrayal of himself and other Christians at the time is meant to convey that such images were not blasphemous but humorous.

Did early Christians think themselves and their faith threatened by the depiction in this way? Tertullian traces the origins of the donkey-god to multiple traditions. One origin stems from Roman rumours of Jewish worship from Tacitus.Footnote ³⁰ Another origin, represented in Apol. 16.12 above, is where a certain person trying to tame wild beasts conjures this image. A variation of this story is repeated by Tertullian in an anti-Jewish frame, this time with the characterisation that the beast tamer was in fact a Jew who, like all Jews (according to Tertullian), conspired against Christians.Footnote ³¹ Although Tertullian uses forceful language to refute this myth, on balance, we must remember that in one account he says that the image and name made Christians laugh.Footnote ³² Furthermore, in his slightly alternative account in To the Nations, he diminishes the significance of the image and argues that it was really only a rumour that circulated for nine days (Nat. 1.14–15). In other words, Christians did not seem to feel threatened by this donkey-god image because it was baseless, clearly satirical and not pervasive. Some treated it as something temporary to laugh at, and not something to be greatly concerned about.

Another reason that Christians were not concerned with the image was because, as Tertullian and Minucius Felix argue, there were many pagan deities, gods and figures in wider culture who had animal-hybrid features: dog-heads, lion-heads, horns of animals, goat legs, serpent legs, wings upon their legs.Footnote ³³ Tertullian argues that while all manners of herds are celebrated by Greek and Roman gods, the critique of Christians is merely that they focus only on donkeys (as per the caricature) (Nat. 1.11). Minucius Felix expands Tertullian’s critique by pointing out how pagans also sacrifice to animals and honour snakes, crocodiles and other animals upon punishment of death (Oct. 28.7–8.). In other words, the image of worship directed towards a donkey was not too much out of the ordinary for the deities and honoured figures in the ancient pagan world.

In fact, since so many other deities were also associated with animals, Jesus’ depiction as a donkey actually reinforces his divinity. This is why, on the whole, Tertullian does not think such a depiction is that effective. Though it was humorous, to be sure, it was by no means unique, and in a way, supported theological claims about Christ’s divine status. As Michael Squire notes, early Christian scriptures were ambiguous about how Jesus’ physical incarnation, his alleged divinity and humanity, could be represented physically, since Jesus was ‘the image of the invisible God’ (Col 1.15).Footnote ³⁴ Though satirical, the Alexamenos graffito, like the image of the donkey-man in Tertullian’s writings, is theologically useful for depicting both the humanity and divinity of Jesus. The horror of such hybridity is simultaneously a statement about the divine identity of this crucified messiah.

If theriomorphic divine images really were unexceptional, as Tertullian and Felix argue, then how might the Alexamenos graffito function as self-parody? Although Tertullian and Felix generalise about the theriomorphic gods of the Greeks and Romans, from a Roman point of view, these theriomorphic gods (e.g., snakes, crocodiles, etc.) are culturally tied to particularly ethnicities, specifically the Egyptians. Although they were governed by Rome, aspects of their culture were nevertheless marginalised (e.g. hybridity of gods, circumcision). The association of a donkey with a Jewish messiah might not have meant much to a Christian, but in a wider Roman context where eastern peoples like Judeans were marginalised as ‘barbarian’ this would have added to the parody.Footnote ³⁵ Thus, Romans who saw the graffito and were familiar with the Jewish origins of this messiah would have found it parodic, even if Christians might have situated donkey-Jesus among what they understood to be a larger Greek-Roman pantheon of divinities.

One of the principal pieces of evidence that suggests the artist of the graffito might have been a Christian is the often-ignored depiction of a titulus attached to the cross.Footnote ³⁶ Only a few scholars have noticed this detail.Footnote ³⁷ The titulus has purposefully been drawn, extending from the upper patibulum. Artistically, the titulus is a standout feature of the cross. It has both length and width, which is more than can be said of the patibula and the crux that have been depicted as simple lines; it is the only feature that has breadth other than Jesus’ body on the cross.

The appearance of some kind of inscription above Jesus’ body is something found in all of the canonical gospel accounts.Footnote ³⁸ In his exhaustive survey of ancient Mediterranean sources on crucifixion, John Granger Cook raises only two other sources that suggest the presence of a titulus during crucifixion, but in neither of the two sources is it clear that the titulus was attached to the cross itself, but merely nearby (e.g. around their necks).Footnote ³⁹ Although it may have been prevalent to have tituli attached to a cross, given the paucity of representations in our historical sources, the presence of a titulus on the graffito attached to a cross reflecting early Christian gospel texts betrays a suspicious familiarity with Christian traditions. Out of all the details of Jesus’ crucifixion, this feature is a strangely specific thing to include, especially if you were not a Christian. If the artist was not a Christian, this possibly might mean that he had heard the gospels’ story or perhaps read it himself with close enough attention to detail in order to prepare for the graffiti; this seems like a little bit too much commitment for an on-the-wall invective. Alternatively, it could have been that the author was a Christian (or perhaps a former Christian?) and was already familiar with gospel traditions.

Felicity Harley-McGowan argues that it is unlikely that a titulus is represented: ‘The function of the line is unclear, and Garrucci’s identification may result from a desire to read back into this image both a prominent element of the gospel narratives and a standard element of later crucifixion iconography.’Footnote ⁴⁰ Unfortunately, the line drawing that Harley-McGowan uses does not correctly chart the titulus (even though the photograph in the next facing page explicitly shows the titulus inscribed). There is no need to read later images of crucifixion back into the image, since, as Harley-McGowan notes, there is already an earlier textual precedent for the titulus in gospel materials. The simplest explanation is that, given its prominence in the gospel narratives, the graffito draws iconographically from the textual details of the Gospels themselves. By establishing a connection between Christian scriptures and the image, we establish another connection between the image and its possible Christian origins.

The fact that the inscription seems to describe Alexamenos also cannot discount the possibility that Alexamenos might have been its author. The many other names graffitied on to the walls of the complex are likely to have come from the persons inscribing on the walls. For example, for those leaving the paedegogium (e.g. ‘Corinthus leaves the paedegogium’, Corinthus exit de pedagogio, Pal. Graf. I.70), it is more likely that the named person in the inscription is the author. Graffiti as a medium lends itself to a third-person point of view, since the first person renders a marking anonymous except by those who are physical witnesses to the inscribing.

While the inscription ‘Alexamenos worships God’ might be taken as satirical given the perceived content of the graffito, it is also possible that it can be read as a positive statement about both the crucified man and his worshipper. In other words, it could be read as an earnest, even if caricatured, demonstration of worship. Jane Heath draws attention to the fact that interpreting the image depends not on physiology but perspective: ‘There are two ways of looking at such visual signs: to look upon them in faith is to be built up, whereas to look without faith is to have one’s faith opposed. Physiological sight does not differentiate the one from the other: it is the eyes of faith that draw the distinctions.’Footnote ⁴¹ Heath’s point, as I understand it, here is less that a historical interpreter must have faith (in a religious sense) but that in coming to understand ancient perceptions of visual imagery like the Alexamenos graffito, religious faith can affect the way such an image is received. Heath provides an important corrective to scholarly approaches towards Alexamenos. Instead of prioritising only a single form of sight, from the perspective of an outsider (e.g. a non-Christian), multiple, even faithful (i.e. Christian) ways of seeing the graffito are possible.

The inclusion of Alexamenos throwing a kiss towards the God suggests a genuine act of adoration, at least on the surface. Imagine for a moment that we removed the donkey head, and the crucified figure was portrayed with a normal human head. Scholars would argue that rather than a caricature, all of the evidence of this graffito points to a pious representation of Alexamenos’ worship. But, as Tyler Schwaller argues, Jesus’ crucifixion already has parody built into the very story itself: ‘Christians worship a crucifiable figure, and crucifixion is particularly slavish.’Footnote ⁴² Alexamenos worships someone who is dying a shameful kind of Roman death. In other words, were we to remove the donkey head, the caricature of someone worshipping a crucified person would remain, and earnest worship directed to an image of what would widely be considered a caricature would still be characterised by scholars as a Christian image.

The reintroduction of the donkey head does not necessarily subvert a pious reading. Recently, interpreters of the graffito have emphasised how donkeys could be viewed as synonymous with enslaved workers in the ancient world. In Room 8 of the paedegogium, adjacent to the room where the Alexamenos graffito was found, we find a detailed depiction of a donkey tied to a mill, grinding some kind of grain.Footnote ⁴³ Inscribed under the image are the words: ‘Work, Little Donkey, as I have worked, and you will profit by it’ (labora, aselle, quomodo ego laboravi et proderit tibi).Footnote ⁴⁴ The use of the second-person perspective to speak to enslaved workers working in these parts of the building make obvious the enslaved origins of the artist. Another enslaved worker, donning the persona of a donkey, speaks to other donkeys, other enslaved workers, reassuring them of the end goal of their productivity. While genuine in message, this depiction involves enslaved self-parody. Whatever enslaved worker made this was neither ashamed to be equated with a donkey nor ashamed to equate their fellow workers with donkeys.

This has important implications for our reading of the Alexamenos graffito. Although the donkey-headed Jesus was a trope known among Roman audiences, as attested by Tertullian, in light of the fact that enslaved workers could self-present as donkeys, the addition of the donkey head to Jesus does not need to be read as a mockery. The donkey-headed Jesus, dressed in the clothes of an enslaved person, dying a slavish death, becomes not an image of mockery but an image of solidarity for Alexamenos or any other enslaved Christian.Footnote ⁴⁵ The image of the enslaved mirrors the image of the enslaved saviour. While non-Christians might have mocked the image, they might also have recognised themselves and the precarity of their own situations. To a Christian slave like Alexamenos, the image of the graffito could be one of pride. As Alexamenos worships his God, a viewer might draw a parallel between the milling donkey in the adjacent room: ‘Sacrifice, Little Slave, as I have sacrificed, and you will profit by it.’

There is one final piece of contentious evidence that may serve as proof that the Alexamenos graffito (or at least its inscription) was made by a Christian. In Room 6, adjacent to Room 7 where the Alexamenos graffito was found, there is a bilingual inscription that reads: ΑΛΕΞΑΜΕΝΟΣ FIDELIS (Pal. Graf. I.*2).Footnote ⁴⁶ Since it was brought to light by Carlo Visconti in 1870, many interpreters have taken it as a single statement.Footnote ⁴⁷ That it is written in two different hands suggests that one part – probably fidelis – was added at a later time by someone else, or perhaps they are two different but adjacent graffiti that have been grouped together.Footnote ⁴⁸ The presence of the name ΑΛΕΞΑΜΕΝΟΣ is relevant, of course, for the Alexamenos graffito. Based on the line drawing by Visconti, the graffiti hand looks similar to the writing in the Alexamenos graffito, although there are some differences. In particular, the omicron of the fidelis graffito is more oval-like than the omicrons in the Alexamenos graffito. Additionally, and most noticeably, the xsi in the fidelis graffito looks very different from the xsi in the Alexamenos one. Nevertheless, Richard Wünsch once proposed that both inscriptions were written by the same hand, and as such, the Alexamenos graffito might not be taken as a mockery but as a drawing by Alexamenos’ own hand.Footnote ⁴⁹ As much as can be discerned, the palaeography does look very similar, especially in comparison to other Greek graffiti in the paedegogium.Footnote ⁵⁰

Out of the hundreds of graffiti found in this complex, only twenty-three (23 out of 374, 6%) are in Greek. Of the twenty-three, in addition to the two graffiti involving Alexamenos, eight are significant for palaeographic comparison.Footnote ⁵¹ Three are written with a very clean epigraphic style, both in terms of consistency and symmetry of shape and depth of each letter.Footnote ⁵² One is very clean and probably reflects the most literary-like style.Footnote ⁵³ Four others are written in a rougher style similar to the two Alexamenos graffiti. Yet none of their palaeography matches either each other or the Alexamenos graffiti to the same extent that both Alexamenos graffiti match each other. For example, Pal. Graf. I.208 (ΑΡΙΣΤΟΔΗΜΟΣ) has a much narrower mu, a drawn-out bottom line to the sigma, and serifs on the iota and tau. Pal. Graf. I.220 (ΑΡΙΩΝ) displays a much thicker and denser line and has a mixture of upper- and lower-case letters (the omega is lower case). Pal. Graf. I.230 (ΒΑΣΣΟΣ ΠΥΓΙΔΖ[ΕΙ], ‘Bassos ass-fucks’) has a similar omicron as that found in the fidelis graffiti, but other letters are different in shape and have been executed more cleanly. Pal. Graf. I.235 (ΑΡΕΙΩΝΟΣ) has a completely different palaeographic hand, much shakier, with more corrections and overlaps, and jagged curves. In light of these wider graffiti comparisons, it is possible that the fidelis and the donkey graffiti may have come from the same creator.

Critical scholarship has been reluctant to use the fidelis graffito because its authenticity was questioned from early on. Solin and Itkonen-Kaila remarked that while it only was observed in 1870, some fifteen or so years after the initial publication of the Alexamenos graffito, it was later destroyed, sparking speculation that ‘the author repented and wanted to destroy what he had written’ (‘l’autore si sia pentito e abbia volute distruggere quanto aveva scritto?’).Footnote ⁵⁴ Given this problematic history, scholars have been reluctant to use it.Footnote ⁵⁵ Indeed, there are other Christian graffiti in Room 6 of the paedegogium, such as a chi-rho (Pal. Graf. I.*3). Like the fidelis graffito, because Garrucci contested its authenticity from early on, it has been relegated, perhaps unfairly, to the inauthentic. It is conspicuous, however, that out of five suspected forgeries, the only two explicitly Christian graffiti in the paedegogium have had their authenticity questioned.Footnote ⁵⁶

Raffaele Garrucci was the most vocal opponent to the authenticity of the fidelis graffito, in part, because his reputation as an archaeologist was on the line. In 1880, ten years after the graffito was published by Carlo Visconti, Raffaele vehemently rejected the authenticity of the graffito arguing that his team did a thorough job copying everything and that if he did not notice it, and if no one else noticed it for six years, then it must not have actually been there; for him (or anyone else) not to see it the first time would have been a kind of inconceivable blindness.Footnote ⁵⁷

But no historian is free from mistakes. It is now clear to scholars that Garrucci (and even Visconti to some extent) did make transcription mistakes and even questionable conjectures.Footnote ⁵⁸ Jessica Della Rosso in reviewing ancient Jewish inscriptions with Garruci’s own manuscript notes observes: ‘Reviewing this material, it is clear that many variations among the copies are found. Letters, words, and even lines of text can be omitted; images are not necessarily drawn or recorded with attention to detail, and the form, size and execution of the letters are not always considered in the haste to copy the entire text.’Footnote ⁵⁹ Garrucci himself is not immune to recording something allegedly there that is in fact not. In analysing depictions of the ‘forbidden fruit’ of Genesis 2–3, Azzan Yadin-Israel notes: ‘Though admirable in many ways, the forbidden fruit drawings in Garrucci’s Storia [della arte Cristiana] consistently represent apples where none exist. Indeed, Garrucci goes to almost comical extremes in his sketch of the Fall of Man scene from the Cimitero di S. Gennaro in Napoli, representing Eve with an apple, which in fact is nothing more than a blemish in the fresco’s plasters.’Footnote ⁶⁰ Additionally, though the graffiti in the paedegogium in critical editions are presented neatly and separate from one another, on the plastered walls they overlap with one another in a dizzying array of scribbles and markings, sometimes dozens on top of one another on a single wall. It is both possible that Garrucci and his team simply missed the inscription the first time.

What can we say about the destruction of the fidelis inscription and whether it was purposefully done to hide the guilt of a forger? The reality is that since there were no witnesses, these conjectures are all speculation. We cannot say that a forger destroyed it to hide evidence, any more than we can say that Garrucci, upon his return to the site to see the fidelis inscription for himself, destroyed it in order to preserve his reputation. In reality, the instability and lack of preservation of the site are reflected in the other inscriptions that are preserved and known only through the use of diaphanous paper. For example, the donkey of Pal. Graf. I.289 (‘Little Donkey’) was destroyed in 1886, apparently by an ‘unscrupulous tourist’.Footnote ⁶¹ Presumably, this was not someone who had forged it and then come back to cover up the evidence of their forgery. In the same way, then, because visitors were allowed to come and go over the years, and since it is known that more and more of the fragile plaster has been destroyed over the years, it is more likely that the fidelis portion was accidentally destroyed, rather than purposefully removed. By itself, this evidence is not enough to prove that the Alexamenos graffito may have been created by a Christian, perhaps Alexamenos himself. Yet, the methodological issues surrounding the authenticity of the fidelis graffito, alongside the rest of the arguments as presented in this section above, raise enough doubt to question whether the Alexamenos graffito was indeed non-Christian in origin.Footnote ⁶²

4 The Alexamenos Graffito as Self-Parody

So far, I have provided six arguments for the possibility of a Christian origin for the Alexamenos graffito: (a) the image does not necessarily sexualise Jesus through the display of his buttocks, (b) early Christians were not offended by a donkey-Jesus but rather amused, (c) how presence of a titulus may suggest someone knowledgeable of Christian traditions and thus potential a Christian, (d) a donkey-headed messiah might actually generate solidarity with an enslaved Christian, (e) the inscription might be self-referential, and (f) that an adjacent graffito (fidelis) may have been written by the same person who created the Alexamenos graffito. Even if none of the above arguments were possible, there is still the possibility that the image (if taken as satire) is a self-parody.

Anyone familiar with ancient Roman graffiti knows that the medium lends itself to the comedic. In the adjacent room to where the Alexamenos graffiti was found (Room 6), there are two graffiti that depict phalluses, one simpler in nature (Pal. Graf. I.134) but the other a side profile image of a man from the abdomen and upper thigh, depicting his buttocks, his erect phallus, pubic hair and what look to be lines of ejaculation (Pal. Graf. I.92).Footnote ⁶³

But while comedy often took aim at others, sometimes comedians turned on themselves in self-parody. One of our earliest comedic parodies comes from the 6^th to 5^th century bce Athenian Old Comedy poet, Cratinus.Footnote ⁶⁴ At the very end of his life and even after his death, Cratinus was made the butt of jokes in the plays of the young and up-and-coming Old Comedy poet Aristophanes. In 424 bce, in his Knights, Aristophanes pokes fun at Cratinus’ age and its effect on his ability to write, mocking his poetry and his body, and depicting him as a washed-up celebrity and drunk whose golden prime has long passed (Eq. 526–36). The very next year, Cratinus wrote his most well-known (and the first-place prize-winning) play, known as the Pytine (‘The Wine Container’). Although only fragments of it survive in our ancient sources, we know from ancient scholia on Aristophanes’ Knights more or less the plot and purpose of the play:

Rather than writing a play that refuted the base accusations of Aristophanes, Cratinus’ play doubles down on the portrayal, reiterating his drunkenness (he’s in a relationship with Drunkeness!) and his commitment to hedonism. As Storey argues, ‘But however we reconstruct the comedy, it is clear that Cratinus presents himself in a purposeful negative light. He is seen to be an unfaithful husband, a poet who has abandoned his art, and an aging drunk and philander. What Cratinus has done is to take the comic picture that Aristophanes used in Knights and, rather than opposite it, reinforce it by agreeing to the points of caricature and recast himself as the lovable drunk for whom alcohol is the source of his comic inspiration.’Footnote ⁶⁶ Had we not known who the author of the play was, we might have thought that it was written by someone who had picked up Aristophanes’ critique and perpetuated it further in extended comic form. Cratinus doubles down, embracing rather than trying to dispel the critiques of young Aristophanes. Although the work is largely lost, through quotation we know that Cratinus’ self-parody had a long shelf life, being quoted in the work of Athenaeus and Plutarch (2^nd century ce), Julius Pollux (3^rd century ce), up to Priscan’s Institutes (6^th century ce). Even the Christian author Clement of Alexandria quotes from Cratinus’ play (cf. Strom. 6.20.3). So, it is not merely that self-parody was only known in Old Athenian Comedy.

It was carried forward into the Roman and Christian literary world in which the Alexamenos graffito was produced. In the poet Horace’s Satires, on occasion, the satirist turns the ridicule on himself. In Satires 1.2.68–72, the satirist imagines a man having a conversation with his own mutto (his penis). When his member speaks, without missing a beat, the man answers back. As Kirk Freudenburg argues, ‘No matter how earnestly the satirist may seem to intend the lesson at hand, one cannot escape the fact that he has here presented the picture of a man arguing with his own penis…This brilliant piece of parody takes as its primary target the satirist himself.’Footnote ⁶⁷ Horace, thus, demonstrates his ability to not take himself too seriously. The parody of the self is always a possibility.

Plutarch, in his Table-Talk, mentions that at a party, ‘It makes teasing less distressing, too, for those who tease to share in some way or other the condition ridiculed: for example, if a pauper speaks of poverty, or a low-born man of mean birth, or a lover of love. For, if it is done by similar people, the teasing seems to spring not from insolence but rather from a kind of playfulness; otherwise it is irritating and distressful’ (Quaest. conv. 2.12 (634B–C)).Footnote ⁶⁸ In other words, the best kind of public satire is self-parody. Within this same context, he also mentions Cratinus’ self-parody: ‘So some of the comic poets seem to take away bitterness by ridiculing themselves, as Aristophanes on the subject of baldness and Agathon’s departure, and Cratinus brought out the Wine-Flask…’ (Quaest. conv. 2.12 (634D)). Even by the second century ce, people like Plutarch recognised that self-parody and self-deprecation were strategies used both in high literature (e.g. poetry) and in everyday discourse.

Ancient self-parody was not limited to the literary or conversational realm, but also the iconographic. At the Villa Romana del Casale near Piazza Armerina in Sicily, there is an early fourth century ce mosaic of a circus featuring little humans on chariots being pulled by different types of birds (pigeons, flamingos, geese and perhaps plovers). Although typically identified as children, it is also possible that it represents short-statured people (people with dwarfism), as they were known to participate in public events (e.g., as boxers).Footnote ⁶⁹ This mosaic image juxtaposes the many other images of the Roman Empire throughout the villa. Jaś Elsner detects visual irony in their iconographic contrast:

The persona reflected by images is constructed and not always reflective of reality. The self-parodying mosaic of the Roman circus makes vivid the illusion of athleticism and Roman masculinity. Rather than the subduing of horses, it is the subjugation of fowl. Rather than victory over other men in courage, it is a palm of victory among children (or perhaps, ‘dwarfs’). Such athleticism and masculinity were not athleticism or masculinity at all, but merely the little playing in a sandbox. These are not the scribblings of graffiti by an enslaved person on the walls of a paedegogium, but are the commissioned mosaic works immortalised on tesserae in the house of an elite (and likely imperial) Roman figure. If iconographic self-parody is possible at such an elite level, how much more so is it possible at the social level of Alexamenos.

Self-parody was not only a Greek and Roman activity but also an early Christian one as well. No other figure in New Testament writings self-parodies themselves more than Paul the apostle. In his second letter to the Christian community in Corinth, Paul pretends to be a fool and parodies his beatings, floggings, whippings, calamitous seafaring travel, constant danger and weakness (2 Cor 11.16–29).Footnote ⁷¹ He boasts about being let down from the city walls in Damascus in a basket (2 Cor 11.30–3). While elsewhere he draws on his visionary abilities to reinforce his apostolicity (e.g. Gal 1–2), in 2 Cor 12.1–10, Paul parodies his apocalyptic experiences by talk about how ‘someone’ (a clear reference to himself) went up to the third heaven and was tormented by an ‘angel of satan’ he calls a ‘thorn in the flesh’.Footnote ⁷² Earlier in the letter, he has raised the critique of some in the community who find his bodily presence and ability wanting (2 Cor 10.1, 10). Rather than denying the weakness of his body, he doubles down on its weakness, arguing that the shameful treatment of his body and his ‘boasting of beatings’, to use the phrase from Jennifer Glancey, is actually a sign of Christ working in him.Footnote ⁷³ Early Christian self-parody had early moorings in Pauline textual traditions.

This wider context of Mediterranean self-parody does not make it more plausible that the Alexamenos graffito is self-parody. Rather, it shows that – given the evidence in the previous section – self-parody was a wider discourse that would have been known and accessible to the graffito author. Even though all of the examples here are from elite literary contexts, the self-parody of enslaved workers as donkeys in the graffito mentioned above (Pal. Graf. I.289), just two rooms over from the Alexamenos graffito, demonstrates that self-parody was not only something practised by elites but also by the enslaved in Alexamenos’ very own context.

This wider comparison to Mediterranean self-parody also allows us to consider the rationale for why the Alexamenos graffito participates in this mode of discourse. Among sociologists and anthropologists, it is well known historically that communities that experience oppression (ethnic minorities, enslaved persons, occupied nations, ‘low-class’ folks) often combat oppression through self-parody and reflexive humour. Nazi-occupied communities in what was then Czechoslovakia during the Second World War would make self-parodying jokes about themselves and their occupiers, finding ‘in anecdotes an intellectual and emotional escape from the disturbing realities’.Footnote ⁷⁴ Dexter Gordon argues how contemporary African-American humour is influenced by American slavery ‘in which the material of tragedy was converted into comedy, including the absurd. This often included self-deprecation, as the slaves themselves were often the subjects of their comic tales’.Footnote ⁷⁵ Self-abasement could also be found among ‘low-status’ occupations in twentieth-century North America, as in the case of an Indigenous Jewish ‘puller’ (a kind of door-to-door salesman) who would use self-abasement to build rapport with potential customers, especially those of high status. T. E. Levitin noted that this strategy allowed him ‘role distance’, meaning that ‘if the puller made himself, as puller, an object of humor that both he and high status customers found ridiculous, he aligned himself with that customer and separated himself from that ludicrous low-status occupation’.Footnote ⁷⁶ In the contemporary social sciences, studies are beginning to appear that examine how self-parody and self-abasement function among minoritised youth in North America and Europe.Footnote ⁷⁷ Sociologist Jienian Zhang observes how Latinx students controlled perceptions of the self by using racial humour ‘to play with oppression’.Footnote ⁷⁸

What we see is that self-parody can serve a variety of different strategic purposes, from escape to coping to control to resistance. In each of our ancient examples above, we see similar strategies employed. Cratinus resists Aristophanes’ caricatures by controlling the narratival portrayal of his alleged drunkenness and reframing it as the source of his brilliant poetic abilities. Horace does not take himself or others like him so seriously, taking advantage of the humour that can arise in a preposterous situation. Plutarch’s affirms people who live in poverty, ‘low’-birth or passion-filled vice and who during parties with the elite take the opportunity to debase themselves. From Plutarch’s perspective, self-deprecation reminds the marginal of their place without contaminating the virtue of the elite. Alternatively, self-parody could have also been a strategy of the marginal to comfort themselves in contexts of social inequality. The image of the circus at the Villa Romana del Casale uses self-satire to critique and resist traditional Roman identity. Paul uses self-parody as a means of gaining the upper hand in a fight for authority in first-century Corinthian Christian communities.

In light of these patterns of self-parody, let us turn back to Alexamenos. These different examples, from the ancient to the modern, widen our perspective for the satirical possibilities latent in the graffito itself, possible historical contexts beyond simple anti-Christian antagonism. Like Cratinus, the creator of the Alexamenos graffito, instead of trying to show the legitimacy of his faith towards Jesus, might be doubling down on the shame of the image. Like Horace, perhaps the author does not take themselves too seriously as a Christian, acknowledging the preposterous nature of a crucified and slavish messiah. Like Plutarch, the graffito author might have recognised that self-parody about his own particular circumstances and religion was more appropriate than being the butt of the joke by someone else. Like the artist who made the mosaic of the circus at the Villa Romana del Casale, the artist, through self-parody, might be critiquing Roman ideals of masculinity and divinity, following Paul the apostle’s rhetoric of ‘strength in weakness’. The graffito might be an act of resistance to oppression and stigma experienced by the author and his Christian way of living.

One question remains, which is whether such a sophisticated and complex use of iconographic Christian self-parody was possible for an enslaved worker. The medium of the graffito, as a crude and satirical depiction, and its potential origins among enslaved workers in the imperial household, causes some scholars to minimise the complexity of its creation and context. Oliver Yarbrough contrasts the apparent simplicity of the graffito with the more complex critiques levelled at Christians by the second-century philosopher Celsus: ‘It is not at all clear the Alexamenos artist would have understood Celsus’s theological arguments against Christian belief and practice. They may have been overtly subtle for him. There is no doubt, however, that he would have appreciated Celsus’s satirical humor.’Footnote ⁷⁹ There are two significant issues with Yarbrough’s comparison here. The first is a categorical distinction between theological and satirical argumentation, not in terms of genre but in terms of subtlety. On face value, one is more complex than the other. As I demonstrated above, however, the contexts and driving rhetoric behind satire and humour can be just as complex and subtle as early Christian theological argumentation. The second significant issue with Yarbrough’s assessment of Celsus and the artist who carved the Alexamenos graffito is the implied difference between the philosopher and the slave, that complexity lies only with the former, while the latter does not have the capacity for intellectual subtlety. Indeed, many of the graffito in the paedegogium are quotidian, with some being crude. It is a mistake, however, to equate crudeness with simplicity, especially given that out of all the extant graffiti in the complex, the Alexamenos image is one of the most iconographically complex – not simply because it relates to ancient Christianity, but because of the complexities of the image itself. By minimising the complexity of the Alexamenos artist and the medium of graffiti, scholars minimise the historical possibilities that lie behind the creation of the image. In other words, when scholars assume a simplistic origin for the graffito, such a perspective imposes a simplistic frame that unduly forecloses real historical possibilities, short-changing our understanding of the graffito but also, in a way, de-intellectualising ancient, enslaved workers.