Excavating an Election.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVI, Issue 100, 2 May 1904, Page 4

Excavating an Election.

FLACAIIUS OF POMPEII'S LAST LOCAL CONTEST, 1800 YEARS AGO.

Judging from I he records we have of the last municipal contest of Pompeii, in 79 A.J.).. electioneering methods then did not differ sub'stantially from those of to^dav.

A large numlA.T of interesting; facts concerning this election were given by Mr Joseph OfTord in a lecture before the Society for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts last month in the galleries of the Royal Societv of British Artists, Pall Mall.

Nearly all Uie writings on the walls which have -been uncovered in the excavations relate to elections, putting forwurd the claims of various candidates in the usual convincing way. Most of them are roughly inscribed, but others are done with a good deal of embellishment, and one at least, containing occasional verse by a minor poet., hp(s been discovered painted in fiuiuUoyant red letters.

These posters appear to have been put up. not so much by the candidates themselves, as by their supporters, and by the numerous associations which were in existence at the time, and which "ran" their men just in the way with which we are familiar.

The woodworkers, the lishers, the perfumers, the dyers and barbers, no doubt with an eye to magisterial protection in their particular trades, either selected a candidate of their own, or siipporu-d one chosen by another brotherhood.

The faddists of Pompeii were represented by such societies as the Ballplayers, tlie Long Sleepers, the Deep Ih'inkers, and the Little Thieves —to adopt a free translation of some of the titles borne by these bodies. At the last election the Late Sleepers ran a candidate in conjunction with the Beep Blinkers, and tlie main plank in their platform was that pet subject of present-<lay dehate, the .suppression of street noises—presumably including volcanoes. The religious controversy was represented by the opposing sects of Isis, a species of nonconformity recently imported from "Egypt, and the established religion of Venus. When the excavation of fompeii has been completed it will probably be found ; that at the election of 7'J there were | Isis passive resistors.