Painted election notices in Pompeii reveal how candidates sought support from women and tradespeople, and how much those endorsements can tell us about the city’s ordinary residents.
By Matthew A. McIntosh
Public Historian
Brewminate
The fruit sellers of Pompeii supported Aulus Vettius Firmus for aedile. So did the ball players. Their endorsements survive among the painted election notices that made the city’s walls part of its political life before Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE. More than 2,600 electoral inscriptions have been recorded at Pompeii, preserving appeals intended to attract attention along its streets. Some offered little beyond a candidate’s name. Others identified the people asking neighbors to elect him. Behind the formal Latin and unfamiliar offices lies a recognizable campaign question: whose recommendation might persuade someone walking past?
These elections concerned the government residents encountered close to home. Although Pompeii belonged to an empire ruled from Rome, it continued to choose local magistrates. Two aediles held annual office, overseeing matters that included streets and public buildings, along with supervision of markets. Above them stood two duovirs, magistrates with executive and judicial responsibilities. An aedile’s work could affect the condition of a road or the management of the marketplace, making his reputation relevant beyond the families competing for prestige. Access to office was sharply restricted. Candidates were freeborn male Roman citizens with the standing and resources to undertake public responsibilities; women and enslaved people could not vote. Magistracies brought honor rather than salaries, and wealthy officeholders were expected to spend on their community. Local campaigning operated within an unequal society, with prosperous families enjoying advantages that a painted appeal could not erase. Yet those families sought visible backing from people whose names would seldom appear in accounts of imperial affairs.
Campaigners used walls as advertising space, employing skilled painters to produce some of their messages. Red or black lettering announced candidates on building façades, and some painters signed their work. The notices, usually called programmata, followed compact formulas, with familiar words reduced to initials. OVF stood for a request commonly translated as “I beg you to elect.” A candidate could be commended as a “good man” or someone “worthy of public office.” Such praise supplied a public character reference, though its repetition makes it a poor guide to any individual’s actual conduct. The surviving advertisements generally offer names and reputations rather than detailed proposals. Their brevity suited a street audience. A passerby could encounter the same candidate repeatedly without stopping to read a lengthy argument. Politics became part of the visual surroundings through which residents conducted their daily business.
The supporters give these otherwise repetitive appeals much of their interest. Occupational groups, including fullers who cleaned and finished cloth, appeared alongside people identifying themselves as neighbors. Naming a trade could make an endorsement recognizable to customers and fellow workers, although a claim of collective support does not establish that every member agreed. Women also entered this public conversation despite their exclusion from voting and municipal office. One notice identifies Taedia Secunda as the grandmother of the candidate Lucius Popidius Secundus, making a family connection explicit. That endorsement needs no conjectural job title to be understood. Kinship was itself part of the recommendation. It also cautions against treating all female supporters as one social category. Elsewhere, notices on the frontage of a food-and-drink establishment name women including Asellina and Zmyrina. The building is conventionally known as Asellina’s tavern, but the inscriptions alone do not prove that she owned it or that the other women worked there. Assigning everyone a job from the wall bearing her name can turn an appealing reconstruction into an unsupported biography. What the texts securely establish is that women’s names could be presented as reasons to support a candidate. Political visibility extended beyond those entitled to cast ballots, and an appeal could draw authority from relationships formed outside the council chamber.
Occasionally, an advertisement became more concrete. An appeal for Gaius Julius Polybius praised him with the words “He brings good bread.” The phrase may refer to bread already distributed or to an anticipated benefit, but its brevity prevents certainty. It neither identifies Polybius as a baker nor supplies the terms of a campaign promise. Nevertheless, the choice of praise is revealing. Alongside conventional assurances of good character, a useful staple could be presented as a qualification for leadership. If the phrase referred to a gift, its appeal rested on something residents could actually eat.
Reading the notices as a record of ordinary opinion requires restraint. We rarely know who paid for an inscription or how its named supporters became involved. Friendship might explain an endorsement, as might dependence on a wealthy patron; the wording often cannot distinguish between them. Location also shaped the audience. Research on their distribution finds many notices near entrances to large private houses, suggesting that access to prominent walls depended partly on social connections and property. Nor do all the surviving appeals belong to one campaign. The eruption preserved advertisements of different ages. Without reliable vote totals, counting notices cannot tell us which candidate commanded the most popular support. What remains is a record of the relationships campaigns put on public display. Pompeii preserves the identities that advertisers considered worth naming before their neighbors. Fruit sellers and a candidate’s grandmother could contribute to his advertised standing, even within institutions that allotted power unevenly. An office belonged to the man elected; the reputation that helped make him electable involved people far beyond the ranks of magistrates.
Originally published by Brewminate, 10.11.2026, under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
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