The same story furnishes further particulars regarding the ancient mode of crying. When Psyche has absconded, Venus requests Mercury “to proclaim her in public, and announce a reward to him who shall find her.” She further enjoins the divine crier to “clearly describe the marks by which Psyche may be recognised, that no one may excuse himself on the plea of ignorance, if he incurs the crime of unlawfully concealing her.” So saying, she gives him a little book, in which is written Psyche’s name and sundry particulars. Mercury thereupon descends to the earth, and goes about among all nations, where he thus proclaims the loss of Psyche, and the reward for her return:—“If any one can seize her in her flight, and bring back a fugitive daughter of a king, a handmaid of Venus, by name Psyche, or discover where she has concealed herself, let such person repair to Mercury, the crier, behind the boundaries of Murtia,[9] and receive by way of reward for the discovery seven sweet kisses from Venus herself, and one exquisitely delicious touch of her charming tongue.” A somewhat similar reward is offered by Venus in the hue and cry she raises after her fugitive son in the first idyl of Moschus, a Syracusan poet who flourished about 250 years before the Christian era: “If any one has seen my son Eros straying in the cross roads, [know ye] he is a runaway. The informer shall have a reward. The kiss of Venus shall be your pay; and if you bring him, not the bare kiss only, but, stranger, you shall have something more.”[10] This something more is probably the “quidquid post oscula dulce” of Secundus, but is sufficiently vague to be anything else, and certainly promises much more than the “will be rewarded” of our own time.
So far with the Greeks and their advertisements. Details grow more abundant when we enter upon the subject of advertising in Rome. The cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii, buried in the midst of their sorrows and pleasures, their joys and cares, in the very midst of the turmoil of life and commerce, and discovered ages after exactly as they were on the morning of that ominous 24th of August A.D. 79, show us that the benefit to be derived from publicity was well understood in those luxurious and highly-cultivated cities. The walls in the most frequented parts are covered with notices of a different kind, painted in black or red. Their spelling is very indifferent, and the painters who busied themselves with this branch of the profession do not appear to have aimed at anything like artistic uniformity or high finish. Still these advertisements, hasty and transitory as they are, bear voluminous testimony as to the state of society, the wants and requirements, and the actual standard of public taste of the Romans in that age. As might be expected, advertisements of plays and gladiators are common. Of these the public were acquainted in the following forms,—
AEDILIS . FAMILIA . GLADIATORIA . PUGNABIT
POMPEIS . PR . K . JUNIAS . VENATIO ET VELA
ERUNT.
or,
N . FESTI AMPLIATI
FAMILIA GLADIATORIA . PUGNA ITERUM
PUGNA . XVI . K . JVN . VENAT . VELA.[11]
Such inscriptions occur in various parts of Pompeii, sometimes written on smooth surfaces between pilasters (denominated albua), at other times painted on the walls. Places of great resort were selected for preference, and thus it is that numerous advertisements are found under the portico of the baths at Pompeii, where persons waited for admission, and where notices of shows, exhibitions, or sales would be sure to attract the attention of the weary lounger.
Baths we find advertised in the following terms,—
THERMAE
M . CRASSI FRUGII
AQUA . MARINA . ET . BALN.
AQUA . DULCI . JANUARIUS . L.
which of course means “warm, sea, and fresh water baths.” As provincials add to their notices “as in London,” or “à la mode de Paris,” so Pompeians and others not unfrequently proclaimed that they followed the customs of Rome at their several establishments. Thus the keeper of a bathing-house near Bologna acquainted the public that—
IN . PRAEDIS
C . LEGIANNI VERI
BALNEUM . MORE . URBICO . LAVAT.
OMNIA COMMODA . PRAESTANTUR.