One fears to venture writing an article on an inscription that has generated – at a conservative estimate – well over a thousand pages of comment – separating the maximalists (who argue that Christians were present in Pompeii) from the sceptics.Footnote 1 A similar issue is the presence or absence of Jews in Pompeii. Giancarlo Lacerenza has argued effectively: ‘the material available today does not document a Jewish community in Pompeii. At most we can speak of some single or occasional presence: “Pompeian Judeo-Christianity” referred to by some, is (if it ever existed) still safely under the ashes of Vesuvius’.Footnote 2 I believe one can make a good case that either the word Christianos or Christiani, a reference to the Christians, was probably on the wall of the atrium of the ‘shabby hotel’ now identified as vii.11.11 in Pompeii when Giuseppe Fiorelli excavated it in 1862 – despite the doubts of some later scholars.Footnote 3 If that thesis is correct, then one can nevertheless draw no conclusions about the presence or absence of Christians in pre-Vesuvian Pompeii. Besides attempting to clarify some of the details of the discovery, it is time to do a serious evaluation of the work of the amateur scholar Paul Berry who claimed to have produced an image of the word Christianos using an industrial microscope and high-intensity light.Footnote 4 Berry published his book in 1995, and the microscopic traces of carbon might still be available for a qualified researcher using a stringent methodology and modern photographic equipment – who starts out with no pre-conceived notions or at least with as few pre-conceived notions as possible. In this article, consequently, I wish to argue for two results: that, in a reference to the Christians, either the word Christianos or the word Christiani was probably on the wall of the house's atrium, and that a research project to investigate the claim that Paul Berry made an image of the word Christianos could be potentially useful – whether the result is positive or negative.
1. Ad Fontes: Revisiting the Original Publications
Rebecca Benefiel writes this cautionary note, ‘ … charcoal is a very difficult medium with which to write. The various line-drawings show that it was hard for anyone to be sure of even the strokes that were there’.Footnote 5 At the risk of reinventing the wheel, it is worthwhile to dedicate the necessary pages for a precise account of the discovery before arguing for the presence of the word Christianos (or Christiani) in the inscription and before going into the possibility of further photographic research on what might remain of the carbon particles of the letters of the word.
The house is at the corner of what is now called the Vicolo del Balcone Pensile (street of the overhanging balcony) and the Vicolo del Lupanare (street of the brothel), directly across the street from the brothel. For details of the discovery, and they are few, one has to consult the article of the dean of nineteenth-century Italian epigraphers, Giovanni Battista de Rossi, written two years later. He did not see the graffito.Footnote 6 Adolf Kiessling, however, was the first to publish two lines of the inscription in a one-page discussion in May of 1862 (lines four and six: PG ⋅ VI GAVDI ..HRISTIANI / 8 x̄ SICV . SO ..ORIIS). He briefly located the fading words: ‘The first floor contains some workshops, and in one of them an inscription marked with charcoal was discovered, unfortunately largely vanished’. Footnote 7 De Rossi commented that ‘an announcement of such a new and such an important discovery did not at all affect archaeologists and scholars of church history. The manner of that announcement left so much doubt in the minds of the readers, that it did not seem that any reliance could be placed on such an uncertain matter’.Footnote 8 Neither Kiessling nor Fiorelli made photographs of the charcoal graffito which due to exposure to the air disappeared a few days after Fiorelli excavated the house.Footnote 9
Giulio Minervini, however, made a transcription which de Rossi published – and which de Rossi stated was made before that of Kiessling.Footnote 10 To my knowledge, Kiessling never published his transcription. However, in 1871, Karl Zangemeister republished Minervini's transcription and published Kiessling's in the venerable Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. The accuracy of his reproduction of de Rossi's version of Minervini's transcription is certain because one can check it against de Rossi's publication – but one cannot check it against Minervini's at first hand since Minervini never published it.Footnote 11 One can only rely on Zangemeister for the accuracy of his reproduction of Kiessling's transcription—since it is impossible to check (see Figure 1: CIL iv, Table 16, transcriptions: 16.2 (Kiessling) and 16.3 (Minervini)).Footnote 12 Zangemeister made the important observation that the inscription was in the atrium of the house, written in charcoal on white stucco, but he unfortunately did not specify which wall it was on.Footnote 13 It is impossible now to construct a precise timeline of the excavation and transcriptions but Table 1 provides a relative picture.
Two Transcriptions as Published by Zangemeister.
Relative Timeline of Individuals who Saw, Transcribed, and Published the Graffito
The two transcriptions as published by Zangemeister (Figure 1) could not be more frustrating. Antonio Varone comments judiciously in a study that I have found to be one of the most useful pieces written on the inscription: ‘A transcription, if made by a competent person with all due caution, can nevertheless be as valuable as the most perfect of photographs. The problem with our text is precisely this: The two transcriptions disagree with each other and precisely in the most remarkable points; this suggests at least that the reading was by no means easy.’Footnote 14
It is worthwhile to start with Zangemeister's observations written in what has become somewhat inaccessible nineteenth-century scholarly Latin which has subsequently caused some confusion.Footnote 15 He writes that Kiessling drew the inscription and that he (Z.) strove to reproduce his transcription in the printed text as CIL iv, 679 – although Kiessling himself only published lines 4 and 6.Footnote 16 He notes that the other transcription is taken from Minervini, as edited by de Rossi, including things that he (de Rossi) records Fiorelli saying.Footnote 17 One of Zangemeister's crucial comments is this, ‘The reading of the inscription, which all have seen in a faded state, is extremely uncertain.’ For Zangemeister's printed text, see Figure 2: CIL iv, 679 p. 41; edition of Karl Zangemeister.Footnote 18
Zangemeister's Printed Text.
He makes another observation whose importance has apparently been overlooked by many: Fiorelli and Minervini omit the beginning of the second line (NER VII). This is a particularly crucial comment because de Rossi writes that Kiessling saw the inscription after Minervini and Fiorelli – and that has led some to privilege Minervini's transcription, but that is unjustified.Footnote 19 De Rossi, however, does not explicitly say when Kiessling made his transcription. But if de Rossi is correct, one wonders how Minervini could have failed to see letters that apparently were quite visible. The last word in the second line is M (or V) ARIA according to Fiorelli. The last two letters on the third line are either A (or AM) V according to Fiorelli.Footnote 20 De Rossi concluded that the first three lines are quite different from what follow and decided that perhaps A ⋅ D⋅ K ⋅ AFootnote 21 was to be read above the last word of line 4. De Rossi restored the rest as …. s audi Christianos sevos olores (I heard the Christians, cruel swans), so that the sentence might pertain to the Neronian persecution – an ‘ingenious but insufficiently certain conjecture’. With regard to Kiessling's edition of line 4 as PG ⋅ VI GAVDI ..HRISTIANI and his interpretation of the scrawl as igni gaude Christiane (Christian, rejoice in the fire), Zangemeister comments that the suggestion was ‘against his (i.e., Kiessling's) own transcription’. He notes that instead of Kiessling's words in line 4 Fiorelli had nothing, only HRISTIANOS (or HRISTIANVS), and Minervini had BOVIGS (or G) AVDI CHRISTIANOS. He notes that only Kiessling has line 5 (aet). Kiessling edited line 6 as 8 x̄ SICV . SO ..ORIIS, but Fiorelli had nothing, only SORORIIS; and Minervini had SIIVOS ORIIS (or ONIS). Kiessling and Minervini have vestiges of line 7, but Fiorelli has nothing. These variations, noted by the only individuals who saw the fading words, are enough to drive one to scepticism.
Zangemeister's conclusions are worth reflecting on after 150 years in which little progress has apparently been made:
In [the case of] inscriptions of this sort I have learned very well from too many examples how unreliable it is to seek to read more than the author of the transcription could himself, when transcriptions are our only guides, however carefully they were made. Who could restore from Minervini's transcription a [text] written in charcoal, like inscription [CIL iv,] 760, which was then [i.e., when Minervini saw it ] certainly better preserved than when I saw it eight years later.Footnote 22 We might grant this one point as not unlikely, that [the letters] .HRISTIAN.. were on the wall (though that is quite inconsistent with Kiessling's transcription); this indeed, which could scarcely be restored as anything other than cHRISTIAN.., is not the cognomen ‘Christian’, i.e., Chrestianus …,Footnote 23 but instead pertains to the Christian faith.
A simple but useful conclusion in what later resulted in baroque speculations.Footnote 24 Several other scholars have opted for the view that Christiani, or rather Chrestiani, is a cognomen.Footnote 25 One argument in favour of that thesis fails, however. Herman Schiller contends that the ‘puzzling’ inscription contradicts Tertullian, Apol. 40.7 who asserts that during the destruction of Pompeii there were no Christians in Campania.Footnote 26 Tertullian, however, did not have a census of the religious proclivities of all individuals in Campania before the eruption of Vesuvius, and even if there were none in the town, a pagan could still be aware of the Christians and could have scrawled something about them on a wall. It probably is not a cognomen, because the plural form is not found anywhere else in Latin literature or inscriptions as a cognomen – as opposed to the plural use of the term for Christians in literature.Footnote 27 In addition, there is no accompanying nomen or cognomen (present in all other uses of the cognomen ‘Chrestianus’ in the inscriptions).Footnote 28 Jean-Pierre Cèbe opts for scepticism since ‘we have no solid basis for interpreting the text’ and settles for a ‘non liquet’.Footnote 29 Fiorelli himself, in an observation published in 1873, wrote these intensely sceptical words:
But those traces vanished after a few days, and from the diversity of the transcriptions, obtained then from Minervini, from Kiessling (Bull. Inst. 1862. p. 92), and from myself, there now remains only doubt, for that matter quite justified, whether, that is, there were not instead mentioned in that epigraph VINA VARIA; all the more so since from the remains of the entry AETatis(?), and numerical notes, it might be inferred that there the age, name, and price of the wines were mentioned, which in that great caupona were to be found displayed at the request of patrons.Footnote 30
Varone clarifies this result: VINA / VARIA / …A(mphoras) V (quinque) and AET(atis) on line 5 (different wines … five amphorae … of great age).Footnote 31 And Varone notes of Fiorelli, ‘and although on the fourth line he read exclusively “HRISTIANOS” or “CHRISTIANUS', he did not think the name of Christians was mentioned in it’.Footnote 32
One conclusion, however, seems reliable. Three researchers (Fiorelli, Kiessling, Minervini) asserted that they saw the inscription including the excavator of the house, Fiorelli. Kiessling was as dispassionate an observer as one could wish – an editor, translator and commentator on many Greek and Latin authors.Footnote 33 The same can be said for Fiorelli. De Rossi, who in Varone's words was ‘of an authority equal to that of Mommsen’, did not see the graffito but transmitted the views of Fiorelli and Minervini.Footnote 34 This is a good prima facie case for excluding the hypothesis that the charcoal words were the work of modern visitors.Footnote 35 These conditions would have to be met to warrant the conclusion that the graffito is a forgery (that is, a modern product): Fiorelli, Kiessling, and Minervini were either consummate liars or profoundly mistaken in what they claim to have seen. A precise archaeological report (with dates) of the excavation and inspection of the graffito does not exist – other than Fiorelli's comment that after encountering the inscription (una leggenda incontrata) ‘the traces’ of the graffito ‘vanished after a few days’.Footnote 36
De Rossi could not see the inscription: ‘but however much I fixed my eye to discern some trace of it, all my efforts were in vain: no more vestige of it remains’. Then he describes what Fiorelli could tell him: ‘The learned discoverer told me that he saw and knew that the letters in three lines were written at one and the same time (1) VINA, (2) MARIA (or VARIA), (3) ADIA A V ; and below in two longer lines he read at the end of the first line … HRISTIANOS or …HRISTIANVS, at the end of the second SORORIIS (sorores)’.Footnote 37 Then he makes an observation that some later scholars have neglected:
Therefore in so much difficulty and perhaps given the impossibility of drawing from this epigraph an entire and not arbitrary sense, only one thing remains to be looked for, and it is worth looking for carefully, – that is, at least if it is certain that Christians are spoken of here: in a word, if the reading of the word CHRISTIANOS is well founded. Three different witnesses saw the letters HRISTIAN. Fiorelli also saw the last S, which was manifest; Minervini discerned the entire entry CHRISTIANOS; Kiessling who came after the first two saw only HRISTIANIFootnote 38
Despite de Rossi's warning about trying to find a meaning in the epigraph that was not arbitrary, he then makes a suggestion that Zangemeister above called ‘ingenious but very uncertain’: AVDI CHRISTIANOS SEVOS OLORES (audi Christianos s(a)evos olores) (I heard the Christians – savage swans). De Rossi's last comment is, ‘If we cannot clearly understand all the malice or wit of this mockery, everyone knows, however, that it is not without sense, and that it is the spontaneous reading of the epigraph.’
One, however, who engages Kiessling's transcription dispassionately (see Figure 1: Table 16.2 above) can see that de Rossi's suggestion contradicts what Kiessling saw in line 6 (beginning with the symbol ‘8’ and x) – certainly not the Arabic numeral ‘8’.Footnote 39 In addition, Kiessling in line 4 has AVDI followed by a larger vertical line and space for two letters – one which might have been C. Ninety-eight years later, Margherita Guarducci speculated that the lines instead should be read, BOVIOS AUDI(t) CHRISTIANOS / S(a)EVOS O[s]ORES (Bovios hears the Christians, cruel haters).Footnote 40 It is ingenious, and it is unconvincing for the same reasons that de Rossi's conjecture is unconvincing. It does not cohere with Kiessling's transcription. Guarducci failed to include Kiessling's PG at the beginning of line 4. Her conjecture is missing the AET in line 5 and the 8 and X in line 6, and the next word of Kiessling's transcription (SICV) definitely contradicts the transcription of Minervini.
2. The Presence or Absence of Christianos or Christiani in the Inscription
At the beginning of the article, I mentioned the adversarial relationship between the extreme sceptics and the maximalists with regard to the inscription. The question arises whether any scholar can claim to be completely objective and willing to approach a subject without any dogmatic pre-conceived beliefs. A typical ad hominem argument is: people see what they want to see in the inscription – especially religious believers. One can turn that argument on its head: the extreme sceptic does not see what (s)he does not want to see. A longstanding problem in the philosophy of science is whether there are any theory-neutral observations – it is hard to establish that there are.Footnote 41 One can well doubt that there are any observations that are not theory-laden in some sense. Although clearly not a philosopher of science, Rudolf Bultmann wrote a seminal essay entitled ‘Is Exegesis without Presuppositions Possible?’Footnote 42 For example, one of the very sceptical critics of the alleged appearance of Christianos in the inscription is the classicist Mary Beard who writes, ‘The charcoal graffito which was said to include the word “Christiani”, but faded almost instantly, is almost certainly a figment of pious imagination.’Footnote 43 Her conclusion does not appear to be based on the literature surveyed above. For example, Beard seems to assume that a revered classicist like Adolf Kiessling was a victim of his ‘pious imagination’ along with the epigraphers Fiorelli and Minervini. Her statement, taken at face value, is an example of the type of ad hominem arguments that abound in the discourse about CIL iv, 679. Brent D. Shaw comments, ‘Lampe … states that “the text obviously speaks of Christians”. In the face of no other supporting evidence, I remain rather sceptical. “Lectio inscriptionis, quam omnes viderunt evanidam, incerta est” [the reading of the inscription, which all have seen in a faded state, is extremely uncertain], the editors of CIL wisely remarked. It is (rightly I think) rejected as having anything to do with Christians.’Footnote 44 Shaw bases this conclusion on one footnote in an article of Jobjorn Boman. Shaw has no grounds for concluding that the inscription has nothing to do with Christianity.Footnote 45 Only that it might not, or probably does not, have a connection – based on the following reasoning. One has to ask what would count as supporting evidence – presumably something like five inscriptions in the house that mention Christians. If Christianos (or the like) were in the inscription, it would militate against Shaw's views that Christiani is a second-century word.Footnote 46 In the beautiful garden of vii.11.11, there is a lararium. In the niche is a large image of Jupiter and a Genius – each holding the patera.Footnote 47 Twelve inscriptions were found in the house, none of which have the remotest connection to Christianity.Footnote 48 That piece of evidence alone would caution one from trying to read too much into the graffito – if the word Christianos were written on the first floor, that would not justify any grand conclusions about the presence of Christianity in Pompeii.
Thomas A. Wayment and Matthew J. Grey appear somewhat mystified by Zangemeister's edition (see Figure 2 above) of the inscription in which the word CIIRISTIRAII appears, ‘For example, Zangemeister introduced the second “R” into the word, despite that fact that neither of the previous editions suggested the word's ending was in doubt (both read it as “IAN”).’ They make this somewhat surprising claim, ‘Through this and other alterations, Zangemeister changed the word Christianos into ceristirae or christirae (depending on how one renders “II”).’Footnote 49 Zangemeister made no alterations to Kiessling's transcription (Figure 1) in his edition Footnote 50, however. One should consult Zangemeister's chart of cursive forms for Pompeiian charcoal inscriptions.Footnote 51 The lambda-shaped cursive letter can be either an ‘R’ or an ‘A’ as one clearly sees in Zangemeister's chart.Footnote 52 That is why Zangemeister writes (of Kiessling's transcription), supraque exhibere studui (and I strove to reproduce it above) – in other words, he based his printed edition on Kiessling's version, and clearly he interpreted the lambda shape in that transcription as an ‘R’ and the ligature after the lambda as ‘AI’. Heikki Solin writes, ‘As to 679, a mention of the Christians is extremely improbable. Kiessling wanted to read CIIRISTIRAII. That can be everything. It is useless to continue the discussion.’Footnote 53 Solin's position is certainly a live option.
Epigrapher John Bodel comments on the word in question:
The writing in the graffito is partly cursive, partly block capitals which explains the different letter forms for ‘R’. Yes, the form in CIL iv, Plate 16.2 (Figure 1) could be a cursive R, but it could also be an A. The form after it, however, looks like an AN or possibly ANI in ligature, so the form could be read [CH]RISTIRIANI or [CH]RISTIRANI. By a simple (and common) transposition of letters this could become ‘CHRISTRIANI’, perhaps.Footnote 54
However, he believes CHRISTIRANI is more probable than CHRISTRIANI and that the ligature is either AN or ANI.
The difference in the transcriptions is of course highly problematic.Footnote 55 Erich Dinkler – I believe correctly – argues that one should privilege that of Kiessling (as Zangemeister does in his edition): ‘Further one would have to ask whether Kiessling's transcription proves to be not only substantially more complete in the comparison with that of Minervini.’Footnote 56 That is the same argument used by Varone mentioned above.Footnote 57 Kiessling's transcription, seemingly, is more careful not only because he saw more scrawls than Minervini did but also because of the shapes of some of the letters. In the word in question (last word of line 4), after the lambda symbol, there is a ligature which is better formed in Kiessling's transcription than in that of Minervini. The ligature clearly has an extra vertical stroke that extends from the diagonal line on the left side of the symbol (see Figure 1). Minervini's depiction of the ligature appears more careless.
Varone, in a thought experiment, refers to the third letter from the end of the fifth line that is often interpreted as an ‘R’ (i.e., Guarducci's O(s)ORES (haters) or de Rossi's O(l)ORES (swans). It is identical with the second sign from the end of the last word in line 4. So that word could end in RII. Then he writes, ‘Wanting then paradoxically to push such an analysis to its extreme limits, it might not be entirely excluded that, again on line 4, the sign that in both transcriptions is reported as S in RISTIA in reality might have been a simple vertical stroke and precisely the second vertical stroke of an E.’Footnote 58 This analysis results in the word RETIARII (net fighting gladiators). He states, however, that ‘it is absolutely not his intention to advance this new interpretive proposal’ but only to show that it is possible.Footnote 59 In the end, he decides that Guarducci's reading is the best proposal so far, but cautions that it is still uncertain: ‘Needless to say, such a reading is undoubtedly the best of those proposed so far, as well as being difficult to refine; concomitantly, however, it cannot, like any other for that matter, offer any guarantees, precisely because it is based on a transcription, which we have well seen is tainted by flaws.’ Footnote 60 Crucially, Varone argues, ‘those few letters that seem sure lead back to the name of Christians alone, better than any other word’.Footnote 61
Giuseppe Camodeca, like Varone, another master of Campanian epigraphy, is not so sanguine about Guarducci's reading, ‘“the sense” reconstruction (la ricostruzione ‘a senso’) of Guarducci is very suspect’.Footnote 62 Guarducci's deep faith may have affected her critical faculties in this matter – which is ad hominem – but possibly quite true. On the other hand, Camodeca is willing to concede the possibility of knowledge in Pompeii of the Christians’ existence in 79Footnote 63: ‘the confirmation of the word would not be an extraordinary fact: that in 79 Christians were known in Pompeii cannot be surprising’.Footnote 64 The remark on Guarducci's fideism may be relevant in this case because she ignored Kiessling's transcription in her conjecture. The same cannot be said about Karl Zangemeister, however. His explicit conclusion bears repeating – namely, that the word ‘could scarcely be restored as anything other than cHRISTIAN..’ and is not the cognomen Chrestianus, ‘but instead pertains to the Christian faith’. His argument is reasonable.
Proposed Reconstructions by Selected Epigraphers/Historians
My conclusion is that the word cHRISTIAN.. probably was on the wall. But the longer reconstructions of de Rossi and Guarducci are highly suspect – too much in those reconstructions contradicts what I take to be the most careful transcription – that of Kiessling. There is a small but highly intriguing possibility that Paul Berry made an image of the word.
3 The Image of Paul Berry
In 1995 Berry published his book on the inscription and included an image that he wrote he made from the southwest wall of the atrium (see Figure 3: atrium of vii.11.11; southwest wall; photograph courtesy of Jackie and Bob Dunn; su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività - Culturali – Parco Archeologico di Pompeii). His book, while fascinating, is characterised by a nearly complete lack of technical detail and would be difficult (but not impossible) to subject to any kind of serious peer review for a variety of reasons to be sketched below. Berry, in his retirement, made ‘architectural drawings’ for the ‘Historical American Buildings Survey in Washington, D.C.’ In addition, in his study of nineteenth-century structures, ‘an archaeological approach was also required’ including ‘reading wall surfaces’. Then he makes an important claim: ‘At Pompeii, a random search in this matter was not called for, since the location of the Christian inscription was described in the accounts written at the time of its discovery.’ That is precisely what is missing in the accounts, which only have vague indications such as ‘in the atrium’.Footnote 66 The following is the only technical account of the methodology he used:
Nonetheless, the actual reading of the letters proved to be a slow task; the script resembled the track of a pale design across some gossamer fabric. A small area of the wall, no larger than the size of a man's open palm, would be lighted by high intensity illumination. At that point nothing would be revealed to normal viewing. Yet under magnification to the 100th power by the use of an industrial microscope traces could be detected and vestiges that had become imperceptible could be discovered. The wall surface on which the letters were written had been troweled flat to a moderately coarse texture. The facing (of the wall surface) was ideally grained for the retention of scattered particles of carbon embedded along the baseline of the stucco coat. A transparent film was inserted below the lens, and on it, an outline of the trace could be produced.Footnote 67
Figure 3.
This excessively brief account of his methodology leaves more questions than it answers. Berry claims, for example, that the inscription ‘was discovered on the southwest wall of the atrium by Alfred Kiessling in 1862’, however Kiessling never mentioned ‘the southwest wall’.Footnote 68 Berry also claims Benjamin Aubé stated that the inscription was on a wall ‘that ran only in general alignment with the wall of the atrium’, but Aubé does not write that. What he does write is, ‘In 1862, on the wall of a vast room located in the street that runs along the Stabian baths, characters were found that were lightly traced in charcoal in a flowing hand that apparently mentions Christians.’Footnote 69 Berry read that line to mean that Aubé was locating the orientation of the inscription, but Aubé provides no orientation.Footnote 70 Aubé concludes that de Rossi's interpretation is the result of fantasy and that the only probable result is that the word ‘Christians’ was on the wall.
Berry – somehow (given his vague description of the methodology used) – produced an image of the word Christianos, although it has to be approached with extreme caution (see Figure 4: Paul Berry's alleged image of Christianos from atrium of vii.11.11; southwest wall; used by permission).Footnote 71 To my knowledge, no one has forensically analysed Berry's image, which is not a photograph in the normal sense of the word. One reason caution has to be exercised is that Berry's image does not cohere with that of Kiessling but with that of de Rossi. The lambda shape is missing (which both Kiessling and de Rossi recorded in their transcriptions), and the ligature that Kiessling recorded (immediately before the I at the end of the word in question) is also missing. Varone writes,
No trace of coal can be found on the wall, and I highly doubt that Paul Berry could ever have photographed any traces of the inscription with a high magnification microscope. The air, the wind, and the rains have carried away in a hundred and fifty years of history every last trace of coal. Also. On which wall of the atrium was the inscription read? And again. On what part of the wall? Everything eludes us, and there is unfortunately no tool whatsoever that can help us go back in time and retrieve the data.Footnote 72
Figure 4.
Even more confusing is the fact that Berry included two images of the inscription: one which he identified as seen ‘at the time of the first wall cleaning’ (Plate 9), which corresponds precisely to the transcription of Kiessling, and the second (Plate 10) which he identified as the letters ‘seen at the time of the second wall cleaning’ which correspond precisely with the transcription of de Rossi.Footnote 73 However, there is no evidence of two wall cleanings in any of the original literature.
Paul Berry died in 2018, so there is no possibility of any further clarifications on his part. Varone's scepticism is well justified. Camodeca's comment is also appropriate,
Berry is the only one who has attempted to document at least the word Christiani; this is the ground I am familiar with, and the only one that allows scientific discussion; the problem is that it leaves the method and result of the investigation in doubt. Those who wish to prove something a priori believe they have proved it in the end. It would take a new investigation done without thesis to prove and with the refined means now available; if it was readable (as Berry states) still in 1995 it should still be readable today. But, as I have already said, even the confirmation of the word would not be an extraordinary fact: that in 79 the Christiani were known in Pompeii cannot be surprising; quite different is the question of understanding the entire graffito …Footnote 74
As far as the physics of the problem go, it is possible that there are microscopic elements of carbon left on the wall. Physicist Kevin Ludwick comments,
Carbon in this form will not decay to anything, and when it has been scratched onto a bumpy wall, I am sure you could get remnants that absorb bright light while the other parts of the wall specularly reflect light in all directions. So it seems plausible that a blown-up image could be made that has the absence of light forming the shape of these letters.Footnote 75
This could be checked under the sceptical assumptions laid out by Varone and Camodeca. Berry claimed to have made his image using microscopic bits of carbon on the ‘southwest wall’. Some of the stucco is left on that wall (see Figure 3). Bruce Longenecker comments on Berry's method in general, ‘It is hard to know what to make of his claim. It seems highly dubious.’Footnote 76 In my view, the importance of the question might well warrant a serious modern investigation. Even if one were to come to a negative result concerning the modern presence of Christianos on the atrium walls that would be worthwhile.Footnote 77 Even if something were to be revealed, one would not know whether the inscription is complete or which parts might have disappeared since the earlier efforts. Although it is an ad hominem (and argumentum ab auctoritate) argument, the integrity of Paul Berry has not been questioned.
4 Conclusion
The two transcriptions of Kiessling and Minervini are contradictory in crucial details. Consequently, one cannot produce a global interpretation of the graffito. Guarducci's conjecture, while brilliant, has to be rejected for those reasons. After critical examination, however, it is reasonable to believe that CHRISTIANOS or CHRISTIANI, a reference to the Christians, was present in the graffito. Although ‘dubious’, as Longenecker writes, Berry's images could potentially be verified. If one fails to find evidence of them on the wall, the case against Berry's entire investigation would be strengthened even if not settled once and for all.
5 Lemmas to the Conclusion
If, as seems probable, CHRISTIANOS or CHRISTIANI was on the wall of the atrium of vii.11.11, then scholars will have to consider more seriously Luke's claim about the early use of the word in Acts 11.26.Footnote 78 In addition, if the word occurs on the wall of the atrium, then Shaw's position that Christianus first occurs in the second century is decisively refuted. The use of the word also does not indicate the presence (or absence) of Christians in pre-Vesuvian Pompeii. All that is necessary is a knowledge of the Christians’ existence by some pagan or other who scribbled their name on a wall.
Acknowledgements
I thank Professors Rebecca Benefiel, John Bodel, Jan Bremmer, Giuseppe Camodeca, Antonio Felle, Robert Kaster, Heikki Solin, Antonio Varone, Senior Reader Ian Morton, physicist Kevin Ludwick (principal research scientist, Center for Applied Optics, University of Alabama at Huntsville), and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on issues in this article.
Competing interest
The author declares none.
