Pompeii is intended to reproduce the style of writing found on wax tablets and in grafitti from the Roman city of Pompeii, destroyed during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE. It includes a fairly complete alphabet, omitting only y and z, characters borrowed from Greek and only used in Greek loan words and characters for which I have no models at hand. Since there is some variation in the shape of most letters, I have provided two complete alphabets, one using the shift key and standard letter keys (there is no distinction between minuscule and capital letters in this style of writing), and one using the unshifted letter keys. There are no numbers, since the Romans used letters for their numerals. Certain option and shift-option key combinations with regular letter keys are used to produce further variations on letter shapes found in Pompeii. The alphabets and options are shown below.
Using lower case keys a-x:
Using upper case keys A-X:
Special key combinations:
The letters i and j both produce i, the letters u, v, and w all produce u, since these letters were either not distinguished (vocal i and consonantal j, vocal u and consonantal v) or nonexistent (w) in the Roman system of writing.
Below are some samples of an actual text from a Pompeian wall typed using 12 and 24 point sizes of Pompeii. A transcription follows. The 24 point size is also used for high quality Imagewriter printing of the 12 point size. There is also a 48 point size included for high quality Imagewriter printing of 24 point size. The 48 point size does does not faithfully reproduce the effect I was trying to achieve and has no 96 point size accompanying it for high quality printing, so I do not recommend using it for display text
12 point:
24 Point:
successus textor amat coponiaes ancilla nomine hiridem quae quidem illum non curat. sed ille rogat illam comiseretur. scribit rivalis. vale.
