Calends of October', we may be sure that the lower classes of Calleva
used Latin alike at their work and in their more frivolous moments
(Figs. 2, 3, 4). When we find a tile scratched over with cursive
lettering--possibly part of a writing lesson--which ends with a tag from
the _Aeneid_, we recognize that not even Vergil was out of place
here.[2] The Silchester examples are so numerous and remarkable that
they admit of no other interpretation.[3]

[Footnote 1: For these and for the following _graffiti_ see my account
in the _Victoria History of Hampshire_, i. 275, 282-4. For the
'Clementinus' tile (discovered since) see _Archaeologia_, lviii. 30.
Silchester lies in a stoneless country, so that stone inscriptions would
naturally be few and would easily be used up for later building.
Moreover, its cemeteries have not yet been explored, and only one
tombstone has come accidentally to light.]

[Footnote 2: Sir E.M. Thompson, _Greek and Latin Palaeography_ (1894),
p. 211, first suggested this explanation; _Eph._ ix. 1293.]

[Footnote 3: To call them--as did a kindly Belgian critic of this paper
in its first published form--'un nombre de faits trop peu considérable'
is really to misstate the case.]

[Illustration: FIG. 2. ... _puellam_.]

[Illustration: FIG. 3. _Fecit tubul(um) Clementinus_.]

[Illustration: FIG. 4. _vi K(alendas) Oct(obres)_....]

[Illustration: FIGS. 2, 3, 4. GRAFFITI ON TILES FROM SILCHESTER. (P.