Four written languages are attested from the Ancient Roman city of Pompeii. The first three are no surprise: Latin, Greek and Oscan. The fourth is (wait for it...) Arabic*. Specifically the ancient variety of Arabic traditionally called Safaitic (thread) https://twitter.com/Safaitic/status/1037717369853030400

All written in the Safaitic script on the wall of a theater corridor, and there are multiple names. A lot of Safaitic Arabic speakers passed through this spot. Who were these guys?

Helms (2019) makes an important triangulatory deduction based on a bevvy of evidence. It can be tentatively dated to a visit by the Gallic Third Legion in 69-70 AD.

To me, at least from what I have read of the linguistic makeup and variety of the Roman military, this argument certainly checks out. The Legio Tertia Gallica normally served in Syria and it was only exceptional circumstances that brought it to Campania in the winter of that year

In Pompeii, just a decade before Vesuvian ash killed the city into immortality, some of the Roman soldiers who marched with the Legio III Gallica (following its campaign to install Vespasian) not only spoke this form of Arabic but were literate in it.

I'm not sure I can express how many levels of cool that is. Not often that my interests in Greco-Roman antiquity and the linguistic history of Arabic coincide.

*Just a final note. I see no reason not to call this language Arabic, and its speakers "Arabic-speakrs". Any linguistic criteria that would include all other stuff (incl. all dialects) which we agree to call "Arabic" would have to include this language as well. And especially...

...since its own speakers probably called it "Arabic" (or rather <ʕrby> [ʕarabej]) as well, I see no reason to do otherwise. https://www.academia.edu/41753832/Al_Jallad_2020_%CA%BFArab_%CA%BEA%CA%BFr%C4%81b_and_Arabic_in_Ancient_North_Arabia_the_first_attestation_of_%CA%BE_%CA%BFrb_as_a_group_name_in_Safaitic

In a previous thread, I gave an audio-reconstruction of what this kind of Arabic might have sounded like https://twitter.com/azforeman/status/1302463501034610688