This fourth style fresco portrait of a woman with wax tablets and styli, known as the “Sappho” fresco, was originally located in the Insula Occidentalis of Pompeii (Regio VI, Insula 17). It depicts a woman as an idealized docta puella (“learned girl”) archetype, suggesting one’s upper-class/well-off status and educated background. Despite this appearance, upper-class women and girls’ education was highly dependent on the inclinations of their family, and lacked the formal educational structure that boys and men received. 

Similar to other docta puella style portraits (1, 2), the subject holds a stylus in her right hand, resting it point-side up on her lips. In her left hand she holds a stack of tabulae ceratae (wax tablets) and what may be a graphiarium (stylus-case). 

Graphiaria could be made of metal or leather, the former material mentioned in Martial’s Epigrams: 

Graphiarium. Haec tibi erunt armata suo graphiaria ferro: / si puero dones, non leve munus erit. (Martial, Epigrams, XIV.XXI)

Stilus case. These stylus-cases you will arm with their steel. If you give them to a boy, it will be no slight gift. 

A strap/string also appears to hang from the opening of the stylus-case, which I can only assume could have been for ease of transportation or to secure it somewhere. 

The stack of four wax tablets held in the same hand could have been bound together to form a book-like structure. Tablets ranged from 5-10mm in thickness, and the rectangular recess for the blackened wax was often carved to a 2-3mm depth. The bottom tablet has a brownish speckled pattern– perhaps this could be used to identify the type of wood used(?). (Tablets found in northwestern provinces were often made of silver fir, and could have been imported southwards). 

Covering the top of the woman’s head is a golden reticulum (hairnet), probably woven with a sprang technique. Highlights along the rim of the hairnet and embellishments (beads?) suggest the more valuable material rather than a yellow dye (the traditional wedding color). While reticula were worn by both lower and upper classes alike, golden hairnets were clear indicators of a woman's socioeconomic status in elevating an ordinary bodily accessory.

Sources: 

Hartoch, Else, editor. “Wood use, production of writing tablets, and some associated finds.” The Writing Tablets of Roman Tongeren (Belgium), 2025, pp. 33–44. https://doi.org/10.1484/M.STIA-EB.5.150340. 

Hemelrijk, Emily Ann. Matrona Docta: Educated Women in the Roman Élite from Cornelia to Julia Domna. United Kingdom, Routledge, 1999. 

Radicke, Jan, and Raeder, Joachim. Roman Women’s Dress: Literary Sources, Terminology, and Historical Development. Germany: De Gruyter, 2022. 

Linscheid, Petra. “Hairnets and Bonnets in Late Roman and Byzantine Egypt.” Digital Egypt for Universities, University College London, 2002, www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt//textil/hairnets.html. 

Tomlin, Roger S. O. Roman London’s First Voices: Writing Tablets from the Bloomberg Excavations, 2010–14. MOLA, 2016.

Willi, Anna. Manual of Roman Everyday Writing: Volume 2, Writing Equipment. LatinNow ePubs, 2021.