inscriptions were sometimes written on the houses or doors of powerful or popular men or pretty women. A verse of Plautus bears testimony to such a custom (Impleantur meæ foreis elogiorum carbonibus. _Mercator_, act ii. sc. 3). But first, the inscription on the so-called house of Pansa was evidently not of an adulatory, but of a recommendatory character; and secondly, those of the former kind, as we learn from this same verse, seem to have been written by passing admirers, with some material ready to the hand, such as charcoal or the like, and not painted on the walls with care, and time, and expense; a proceeding which we can hardly think the owner of the house, if he was a modest and sensible man, would have tolerated. Recommendations of candidates were often accompanied with a word or two in their praise; as _dignus_, or _dignissimus est_, _probissimus_, _juvenis integer_, _frugi_, _omni bono meritus_, and the like. Such recommendations are sometimes subscribed by guilds or corporations, as well as by private persons, and show that there were a great many such trade unions at Pompeii. Thus we find mentioned the _offectores_ (dyers), _pistores_ (bakers), _aurifices_ (goldsmiths), _pomarii_ (fruiterers), _cæparii_ (green-grocers), _lignarii_ (wood merchants), _plostrarii_ (cart-wrights), _piscicapi_ (fishermen), _agricolæ_ (husbandmen), _muliones_ (muleteers), _culinarii_ (cooks), _fullones_ (fullers), and others. Advertisements of this sort appear to have been laid hold of as a vehicle for street wit, just as electioneering squibs are perpetrated among ourselves. Thus we find mentioned, as if among the companies, the _pilicrepi_ (ball-players), the _seribibi_ (late topers), the _dormientes universi_ (all the worshipful company of sleepers), and as a climax, _Pompeiani universi_ (all the Pompeians, to a man, vote for so and so). One of these recommendations, purporting to emanate from a "teacher" or "professor," runs, _Valentius cum discentes suos_ (Valentius with his disciples); the bad grammar being probably intended as a gibe upon one of the poor man's weak points.