Archaeologists Discover a 2,000-Year-Old Love Note in Pompeii’s Graffiti-Covered Walls
Somewhere along a 90-foot-long passageway connecting two theaters in ancient Pompeii, a woman named Erato picked up a sharp tool and carved two words into the stone wall: “Erato amat” — “Erato loves.”
Who did she love? We will never know. The name of her beloved has been lost to history.
But her impulse — the desire to declare love out loud, to make it permanent — has survived for nearly two thousand years, outlasting the eruption that buried her city, the centuries of silence that followed, and the painstaking work of excavation that continues to this day.
Erato’s note is just one of 79 newly deciphered inscriptions that researchers have uncovered using advanced imaging technology on walls first discovered more than two centuries ago.
Together, these fragments offer something extraordinary: the unfiltered voices of ordinary people in the ancient world.
A Corridor That Doubled as a Community Bulletin Board
The passageway where Erato left her mark once functioned as a social hub in Pompeii’s theater district — a place for passing through, chatting, and socializing.
Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, put it in strikingly modern terms.
“It’s a kind of notice board … where people left messages, history, greetings, insults, drawings and much more,” Zuchtriegel said in a video, per a translation by the Art Newspaper.
Across Pompeii, over 11,000 inscriptions have been found, including political commentary, love declarations, sporting slogans, jokes, and poems — the graffiti of its time, almost like an ancient Reddit board.
But this particular corridor, with roughly 300 surviving inscriptions on its walls, stands out for the sheer density and variety of its messages.
The wall was first discovered in 1794. About 200 inscriptions were recorded by experts over the following centuries, but many others were too faint to read — until now.
How New Light Revealed Old Words
The breakthrough came through a technique called Reflectance Transformation Imaging, or RTI, which combines many photos taken under different light sources to reveal surface details invisible to the naked eye.
Using this method, researchers deciphered 79 additional inscriptions that had eluded scholars for generations.
The findings were published in the journal Scavi di Pompei.
RTI images were combined with metadata and photogrammetry to build a new online tool for examining the inscriptions, set to launch sometime in 2026 and eventually open to the public.
The project, called Corridor Rumors, is led by historian Marie-Adeline Le Guennec of the University of Quebec at Montreal, alongside Louis Autin and Éloïse Letellier-Taillefer of Sorbonne University, Paris, per CBS News.
“Technology is the key that is shedding new light on the ancient world,” Zuchtriegel wrote in a statement. “Only the use of technology can guarantee a future for all this memory of life lived in Pompeii.”
Love, Faith, and the Words of the Unnamed
What makes these inscriptions so moving is how personal they are. These are not the words of emperors or senators. They belong to people whose names would otherwise be completely lost to us.
Consider Methe. She was an enslaved laborer, and she left behind not just a declaration of love but a prayer. Methe wrote that she “loves Cresto in her heart.” She also wrote: “May the Venus of Pompeii be favorable to both of them, and may they always live in harmony.”
A woman in bondage, asking a goddess to bless a love she had no guarantee of keeping. The specificity of her words — invoking Venus of Pompeii by name — anchors the message in place and time with remarkable intimacy.
Then there is the anonymous author of another inscription, whose message vibrates with the breathless pace of daily life: “I’m in a hurry; take care, my Sava, make sure you love me!”
It is the kind of message you might dash off as a text today, hurrying between obligations but unwilling to leave without saying something tender.
“This project highlights urban communication, especially from sections of the population that do not usually appear in literature or official inscriptions,” Le Guennec said in an interview with the 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,” Le Guennec added.
A First-of-Its-Kind Gladiator Sketch
The inscriptions are not the only discoveries.
A newly found sketch shows two armed gladiators, each about four inches tall. One appears to be leaning back in a feint or parry — described as resembling the perspective of a spectator at the amphitheater.
It is as though someone sat in the stands, watched a fight, and then walked to this corridor to sketch what they had seen from memory, the researchers described.
Perhaps even more remarkable is a figure found on the south wall: possibly a woman, depicted wearing a helmet and carrying a shield. Female gladiators are rarely mentioned in ancient documents, making this potentially one of the only known images of one.
If confirmed, it would be a striking addition to what we understand about who fought — and who watched — in Roman arenas.
A Future for Memory
Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 C.E., burying and simultaneously preserving Pompeii. Archaeologists have been excavating the site since the 18th century, per History.com.
And yet, even after more than two hundred years of digging, the city still has stories to tell — stories that belong not to the powerful but to the people who lived, worked, loved, and prayed in its streets.
With the forthcoming online tool expected to launch in 2026 and eventually open to the public, these voices may soon be accessible to anyone with an internet connection — a fitting outcome for messages that were always meant to be read by passersby.
Erato loved. Methe prayed. Someone rushed off and begged Sava to love them back. The wall held their words. And now, thanks to a beam of light angled just right, we can read them once more.
Production of this article included the use of AI. It was reviewed and edited by a team of content specialists.
