What was a Roman election really like? We certainly get many words we associate with politics from the Romans, e.g. 'candidate' (which meant 'someone dressed in dazzling white'), 'election' and 'referendum'. The Latin for vote was 'suffragium' and so it was the vote that the famous suffragette women were after (NB the word 'vote' comes from Latin too but meant something slightly different to the Romans). But a Roman election was rather different to our modern day ones, and there's no better place to study this than Pompeii, where Latin political graffiti has been left everywhere.

In this stage we will:

• meet some verbs that are followed by the dative case;
• recognise Latin pronouns, such as 'I', 'we' and 'you', in the dative case;
• learn some common Latin question words.

Additionally, the aspects of Classical Civilisation covered in the stage are:

• Roman politics;
• Roman elections.

This is Holconius Rufus, a real politician from Pompeii. Watch out for him featuring in the stage of the course.