The Alexamenos Graffito

Since its discovery in 1857 in a room of the Pedagogium, a one-time imperial palace turned page school on the Palatine Hill in Rome, the Alexamenos Graffito has been one of the most widely known inscriptions attributed to early Roman attitudes toward Christianity. A sensation after its discovery, the Graffito was described by an international host of nineteenth-century writers and scholars; these descriptions of the Graffito's environment and the host of Latin and Greek graffiti served as fodder