1,500-Year-Old Graffiti reveals Gladiator Battles

The Italian word graffiti dates only to 1851, online sources say, but the practice of drawing and scribbling on walls and surfaces in public places dates back millennia. In fact, a Professor from Princeton University in New Jersey did a talk in Toronto in 2015 in which he revealed the discovery of  hundreds of pieces of ancient graffiti in the Turkish city of Aphrodisias depicting gladiator bouts, religious controversies, sexual imagery and other aspects of city life from 350 to 500 AD.

Angelos Chaniotis, with Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, said in a talk at the Royal Ontario Museum, “Hundreds of graffiti, scratched or chiseled on stone, have been preserved in Aphrodisias — more than in most other cities of the Roman East” area that stretched from Greece to parts of the Mideast.

Three religious factions posted graffiti around the city, Chaniotis told a meeting of the Classical Association of Canada in Toronto. They were the polytheistic Pagans, Jews, and Christians.

“To the Christian symbol of the cross, the followers of the old religion responded by engraving their own symbol, the double ax,” Chaniotis said. The double ax or double cross is a symbol of Zeus and was minted on city coins. Christians wrote in abbreviated form “Mary gives birth to Jesus” around town to refute the Pagans.