How to impress a date, by Mary Beard

When you’re trying to impress a date, it’s better to be subtle. At the Pompeii and Herculaneum exhibition at The British Museum, I would steer clear of that famous Roman sculpture of the god Pan ‘coupling’ with a lady goat, in a rather awkward missionary position. It’ll mean red faces all round.

You could always try one of the rather more romantic wall paintings on display. The couple half-naked on a bed, tickling each other’s hands, seems tender enough in its way, but on closer inspection there’s another girl in the background. Is she a slave? Or is this encounter about to become a threesome? Better perhaps to give this one a miss, too.

My advice would be to take a leaf out of the Roman poet Ovid’s book. In his down-to-earth handbook The Art of Love, written about a hundred years before Pompeii was destroyed, he recommended a display of erudite learning as the best pick-up technique (it doesn’t matter, Ovid said, whether your facts are right or not — just say them confidently).

So, at the exhibition, I would head for the Latin section. There are all sorts of ancient graffiti on show, scratched on to Pompeian plaster, from snatches of Latin poetry to declarations of love. They are helpfully decoded and translated on the labels. So mug these up and then try pointing out the original words in a spuriously knowledgeable fashion. You’ll be inventing it all, but you won’t get found out. Only a handful of people in the world can actually read real Latin handwriting.

If you’re now feeling brave, then impress with your knowledge of Oscan — the language spoken even before Latin became the lingua franca of Pompeii. There’s one nice piece of Oscan at the start of the show, commemorating some building work done by a local official. But if you want to make things a little more personal, explain to your companion that the last recorded bit of written Oscan ever found is a graffito from the Pompeian brothel — on a predictable theme. (What a place for a language to die.)

Afterwards, I’d continue the learned tone with a visit to the London Review Cake Shop in Bury Place; or with a glass of the Romans’ favourite Falernian wine at Truckles wine bar in Pied Bull Yard.

Confronting the Classics by Mary Beard is out now (Profile Books, £25)