Christianos in CIL iv, 679: The Possibility of an Image

Abstract

AbstractThere are good warrants for believing that either the word Christianos or the word Christiani, a reference to the Christians, was probably in a graffito on the wall of the atrium of the house now identified as vii.11.11 in Pompeii when Giuseppe Fiorelli excavated it in 1862. Karl Zangemeister edited it in 1871 as CIL iv, 679 and included two divergent transcriptions. In 1995, Paul Berry published a book in which he claimed that he had made an image of the word Christianos using an industrial microscope and high-intensity light. A research project to investigate that claim could be potentially useful for verifying or falsifying Berry's results.