ABSTRACT
Our textual sources tell us that boys/youths were praised as kalos in graffiti on walls and trees in ancient Greece; a number of the actual graffiti are still extant, from Athens and other cities.1 Painters began to include such inscriptions in their vase-paintings around the middle of the sixth century; the trend diminished after the Persian wars, though a few inscriptions appear down to the 420s.2 These inscriptions are very common: there are about a thousand which name the boy who is being praised; those that merely announce that ho pais kalos (the boy is beautiful) are so common that no-one has ever tried to count them.3 Indeed, scenes with kalos-inscriptions alone far outnumber all the other scenes of pederastic interest together.
