Titulus pictus

A titulus pictus is an ancient Roman commercial inscription made on the surface of certain artefacts,[1][2][3] usually the neck of an amphora.

[17][18] There are around 2,500 tituli picti recorded in CIL IV (the volume of Latin inscriptions from Pompeii and Herculaneum).

[19] The text of these inscriptions used a wide variety of abbreviations such as primum, excellens, optimum, flos, florum, praecellens, penuarium, and secundarium.

Usually, these tituli were painted in black, and indicated the amphora's weight, contents, producer, and owner's name in the genitive case.

These inscriptions informed the reader of the qualities of the wine, the volume of the container, the date, the origin, and the owner (whose name was written in red and the dative case).

One Cretan titulus pictus found in Capua reads:[33] wine which is owed to Campania, amphora 472