THE MID-TERM campaigns have offered up perhaps the most venomous volleys of political advertising in U.S. history.

Everything from race, sexual appetite, corruption and patriotism has been fodder for mudslinging and nastiness. And the many modes of transmitting the negative words and pictures, from broadcast and print to the Internet, ensure that Americans will be inundated with personal attacks on opponents right up to the election, day and night.

Yet as Americans ponder how much of it is true and how much pure vindictive blather, we might note that we're rather backward compared to the pointed, frank and refreshingly honest political ads of the Romans more than 1,900 years ago. True, there were no TV sets or print ads. But the citizens were fairly literate and involved in daily life. They met in public forums, and debated the wisdom of their politicians.

And when it came to swaying elections, the Roman "ad men" used walls, creating graffiti as well as paintings and formal signs. The remains of Pompeii, buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D., provide us with examples of Roman political advertising copy.

We may think that political action committees, 527s and special-interest groups are modern inventions. Not so. Look at one group that supported Marcus Priscus for duovir, or magistrate: "The fruit dealers... unanimously urge the election of Marcus Holconius Priscus as duovir." It should be noted that, for similar offices, the goldsmiths wanted Gaius Cuspius Pansa and the mule drivers "urged the election of Gaius Julius Polybius."

Often, advertising was done by individuals and was of a personal nature. Someone who agreed with the muleteers wrote: "I ask you to elect Gaius Julius Polybius... he gets good bread." Another wrote: "If upright living is considered any recommendation, Lucretius Fronto is well worthy of the office." That sure has a modern ring to it.

Today, media buyers worry about their ads appearing at the right time in front of the right audience. In Pompeii, some worried about their ads lasting out the day.

One wrote: "His neighbors urge you to elect Lucius Statius Receptus duovir with judicial power; he is worthy. Aemilius Celer, a neighbor, wrote this. May you take sick if you maliciously erase this!"

In today's elections, any dark past of a candidate is carefully concealed by managers and handlers. But the ancient Romans had no problem advertising what a candidate was really about. Two happy-spirited writers thought they could help their candidate by writing, "We ask you to elect Marcus Cerrinius Vatia to the aedileship. All the late drinkers support him." And one unsavory group let its feelings be known with the line: "Petty thieves support Vatia for the aedileship." Or perhaps Vatia's opponents wrote it - we'll never know.

In the modern era, we continue to be inundated with ads pushing the best and worst qualities of the ambitious and egocentric - whether those qualities are accurate or fabricated is academic.

We haven't quite gotten to the point where a weary public finally cries, "Enough!" and demands a better form of political education that avoids having to slither in the gutter.

But it may have happened in Pompeii. One anonymous writer probably reached the point of "ad exhaustion" - maybe ad nauseam is more appropriate - when he wrote: "I wonder, O wall, that you have not fallen in ruins from supporting the stupidities of so many scribblers."