Archaeologists Say They've Identified Traces of a 2,000-Year-Old Love Note Still Etched Into a Wall in Ancient Pompeii

Advanced imaging technology has revealed 79 new pieces of graffiti on a wall in the city’s theater district. Until now, these inscriptions had been too faint for the human eye to see

Some 2,000 years ago, a woman named Erato walked the streets of ancient Pompeii’s theater district. When she reached a long passageway covered with graffiti, she decided to carve a message of her own into the wall.

“Erato amat,” she wrote, or “Erato loves” in English. The end of her message, presumably revealing the object of her affection, has been lost to history.

Erato’s love note is one of roughly 300 surviving inscriptions etched into this wall. When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 C.E., volcanic ash buried Pompeii—but it also preserved the ancient city, leaving homes, baths, gardens, benches, statues and wall frescoes frozen in time.

Archaeologists have been excavating Pompeii since the 18th century. This particular wall was discovered in 1794, with experts recording roughly 200 of its graffiti inscriptions in the centuries that followed. Many others, however, were too faint for the human eye to discern.

Now, advanced imaging technologies have revealed some of these faded messages. With the help of Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), a technique that involves combining many images taken with different light sources, researchers have deciphered 79 additional inscriptions.

“This project highlights urban communication, especially from sections of the population that do not usually appear in literature or official inscriptions,” Marie-Adeline Le Guennec, a historian at the University of Quebec at Montreal, tells Smithsonian magazine. “It also sheds light on the way theaters were used as public spaces in the Roman world, as well as on the graphic skills and literacy of ordinary people.”

By combining the RTI images with metadata and photogrammetry, researchers have created a new online tool that will allow for closer examination of the inscriptions, as they write in the journal Scavi di Pompei. Le Guennec is spearheading the project, known as Corridor Rumors, alongside Louis Autin and Éloïse Letellier-Taillefer, historians at Sorbonne University in Paris. The Art Newspaper’s James Imam reports that the tool will debut this year and eventually be made available to the public.

“Technology is the key that is shedding new light on the ancient world,” says Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, in a statement. “Only the use of technology can guarantee a future for all this memory of life lived in Pompeii.”

Scholars say that Erato’s message, which is one of the newly identified inscriptions, is consistent with the wall’s previously known etchings. “I’m in a hurry; take care, my Sava, make sure you love me!” reads one. Another preserves the passions of an enslaved laborer named Methe, who wrote that she “loves Cresto in her heart.” She added, “May the Venus of Pompeii be favorable to both of them, and may they always live in harmony.”

Another newly identified piece of graffiti is a drawing of two gladiators, each measuring about four inches tall. One figure, who holds a sword and shield, is leaning backward, “perhaps to represent a feint or a parry,” according to the study. The other is only partially visible, but he appears to be wielding similar weaponry.

“The movement depicted here, through the twisting of the left gladiator’s chest, seems unique and appears to be rather reminiscent of the experience of a spectator at the amphitheater,” the researchers write.

The researchers are also particularly fond of another image depicting gladiatorial combat on the south wall. This figure, who may be a woman, was drawn wearing a helmet and wielding a shield. “Few female gladiators are mentioned in ancient documents, and if we are correct, this might be one of the only references to them in [imagery],” Le Guennec tells Smithsonian.

The 90-foot-long passageway, which once connected two theaters in ancient Pompeii, was likely “a place for passing through, walking, chatting, spending time and socializing,” the study says. Passers-by scrawled graffiti over the wall’s entire length, though many etchings have been lost because of the deterioration of the decorative plaster.

“It’s a kind of notice board … where people left messages, history, greetings, insults, drawings and much more,” says Zuchtriegel in a video, per a translation by the Art Newspaper.

5 Surprising Facts About Pompeii

This wall is a particularly rich example of Pompeii’s graffiti, but similar markings have been found all over the city. In total, archaeologists have uncovered more than 11,000 inscriptions, including political commentary, declarations of love, sporting slogans, jokes and poems.

“Although many of these inscriptions are not strictly of importance, yet still they are very suggestive of the humors, vulgarities and vices of old Italian life,” wrote the New York Times in 1881. “Some are memoranda of domestic transactions, one telling us, for instance, how many tunics were sent to the wash.”

Men appear to have scrawled graffiti more frequently than women, though examples like Erato’s aren’t uncommon. The many messages addressed to women “show that it was expected they could read them,” Rebecca Benefiel, a classicist at Washington & Lee University, told Smithsonian magazine’s Anupama Ramakrishnan in December 2025. “Women sometimes responded with their own greetings, and a few women wrote longer, touching messages.”

Some of Pompeii’s wall inscriptions read like a modern-day Reddit forum, with two or more people responding to and riffing on previous messages. However, Pompeians were “much nicer in their graffiti than we are,” Benefiel told Smithsonian’s Kristin Ohlson in 2010. “There are lots of pairings with the word felicter, which means ‘happily.’ When you pair it with someone’s name, it means you’re hoping things go well for that person.”

On the other hand, the surviving inscriptions also include insults, political barbs and even sneering commentary on the graffiti’s ubiquity. One message reads, “I admire you, wall, for not having collapsed at having to carry the tedious scribblings of so many writers.”