Explanation: Roman public latrines were, counterintuitively to modern Western cultural norms, places for socialization while you did your, ahem, business. Rather than desperately trying to avoid eye contact with anyone in or out of the latrines, it was common to take a seat next to someone, strike up some conversation; even play a quick game of tic-tac-toe between the seats! The Roman poet Martial even wrote a short poem making fun of a man who was lingering in the public latrines all day - not because of intestinal issues, but because he hoped (not entirely absurdly) to score a dinner invitation (free food!) by making small talk with his fellow shitters!
Wonderful. Loved your explanation. Do you have sources for that Juvenal poem?
Fuck me, fixed it. It’s Martial, not Juvenal, I was mistaken.
In omnibus Vacerra quod conclavibus
Consumit horas et die toto sedet,
Cenaturit Vacerra , non cacaturit.
Epigrams, Book 11, Epigram 77
A poetic translation being given as
In privies Vacerra consumes the hours;
the whole day does he sit;
Vacerra wants to dine,
he does not want to shit
Thanks. No harm done. I also mix up authors names at times.
Thanks for the precise references. I love learning about ancient ways. Some parts of their lives seem so alien to us today.
You say counterintuitive, but I dare ask: how many social media users are on the can right now? Shitting might be more of a social activity than people care to admit.
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I just read your comment while sitting on the toilet
Thanks, I hate it! All of it. Especially the communal butt sponges. I’m gonna choose to believe that was a Time Traveler’s prank.
Back that azz up.
Ancient Romans: You idiots put walls up around you? What the fuck, are you embarrassed? Are you ashamed of breathing, too? Holy fuck, Claudius, check out these weirdos lolol
The only time Romans didn’t want to build a wall.
As the latrine situation implies, Romans were not very privacy-oriented! To the point that Julius Caesar, of dictator and conqueror fame, was considered somewhat weird because he read silently, in his head, rather than out loud. It seemed furtive and secretive to the Romans, for whom almost everything was an affair to be shared!
Romans were not very privacy-oriented
They were into orgies and group sex?
It makes some sense that they’d think “we don’t hide from each other when the food goes in, why the fuck would we hide from each other when the food comes out?”
Does make me wonder when and what/who caused the near-global shift to the decision to normalize that regular body functions are to be seen as embarrassing.
Side effect of the sanitation movement. You don’t want your asshole neighbor judging you for only wiping once.
Eww. You guys wipe?
Interesting how social mores changed. Not too long ago I got reprimanded for ripping a fart while at the urinal in a public bathroom. How dared I, indeed.
I remember watching Spartacus and 1 episode had Batiatus use a public shitter. He used a stick with a sponge at the end, like in this pic, to wipe. Was that thing even cleaned between uses?
Define ‘cleaned’?
That channel in front of the latrines would be used to give the sponge a rinse between uses; after a user was done wiping, they’d put it back into a bucket full of salt water or vinegar (or some mixture thereof).
In any case, it’s a great way to pass along parasites. 😬
Well that’s cleaner than I first thought.
On one hand, a lot of trivia like this you have to sit back and say, “Well, they didn’t do too bad, with what they had.”
And on the other hand, you have to cringe hard and feel thankful you live in the modern day. No shared butt-sponge for me, thank you!
Yeah! We lick each other clean, like civilized beings.
I need my easy modern life, thank you. I am way too used to a bidet to go to a sponge on a stick.
Do we know for certain they actually wiped with the sponge? Because I can imagine the sponge merely being used to transfer water from the central container to the cupped hand which is then used to clean their anus like in many cultures today. A sponge-on-a-stick having better reach from the seated position than a small jug, and no risk of breaking upon dropping nor theft. I feel like the disgust at the idea of smearing feces between strangers would be just as strong 2000 years ago as it is today.
Do we know for certain they actually wiped with the sponge?
Fairly certain. There are alternate theories, but the most accepted one is still that the sponge was used for wiping.
A sponge-on-a-stick having better reach from the seated position than a small jug, and no risk of breaking upon dropping nor theft.
… sponge-on-a-stick feels pretty stealable, at least as much as a jug. Wealthier folk would sometimes have a slave carry a personal ass-sponge for them in case they had to use the public latrines while out, which seems, to me, also to point towards the ass-wiping interpretation.
I feel like the disgust at the idea of smearing feces between strangers would be just as strong 2000 years ago as it is today.
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You would be surprised at what different standards the past had. The Romans, indisputably, swished urine to whiten their teeth. And not their own urine either.
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Hygiene, in general, was not viewed as strictly as we do in the modern day. Obsessive hygiene is a product of the mid-late 19th century AD and germ theory, and even then, it took quite some time to catch on in the general population. There’s a short satirical poem(? if memory serves) in the time of the Roman Empire making fun of a guy who shows up to the bath-house with an unwashed ass. While this shows that such a thing was unusual and worth mocking, it also shows that it’s the kind of thing that could happen. You may be sharing ass-water with a guy in the public baths, it’s just life.
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You are supposed to give it a good rinse.
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I can’t remember where I read this or if I’m making it up but I think the sponge stick was stored in a bucket of urine.
They also used urine to clean laundry. I think 🤔 again it could have dreamt that.
I’m hoping they filtered the urine or something.
The sponge-stick was stored in vinegar or salt-water, but fermented urine was used for cleaning clothing!
Ah there we go. Vinegar and salt. Perfect.
I wonder at which point we decided to use the poo stick sponge liquid to flavour our food though
Other way around - vinegar was used in food first. Seems someone decided at some point they’d rather the butt-sponge smell like vinegar than butt.
Perhaps they knew of the acidic properties I guess. And salt doing salty things.
I like how a lot of the toilets in castles and forts in Kingdom Come just drop off the side of a cliff to the town/farm below with no basin. Authentic shitting on peasantry experience.
The OG enshittification
I grew up in sweden, we had outhouse double seat toilets at home (IIRC Sweden holds/held the world record of biggest numbers of toilets-seats-together in one of these “facilities”).
Everyone had indoor toilets at home but it was quite common that summerhouses had them in a sort of shed.
Me and my brother used to go have a dump. What a wild memory actually.
Just please bring your own napkin, thanks.
Hermogenes, it seems to me, Ponticus, is as great a thief of napkins as Massa was of money. Even though you watch his right hand, and hold his left, he will find means to abstract your napkin. With like subtilty does the breath of the stag draw out the cold snake; and the rainbow exhale the waters from the clouds. Lately, while a respite was implored for Myrinus, who had been wounded in a conflict, Hermogenes contrived to filch four napkins. Just as the praetor was going to drop his white napkin, to start the horses in the circus, Hermogenes stole it. When at last nobody brought a napkin with him, for fear of thefts, Hermogenes stole the cloth from the table.
And should there be nothing of this kind to steal, Hermogenes does not hesitate to detach the ornaments from the couches, or the feet from the tables. However immoderate may be the heat in the theatres, the awnings are withdrawn when Hermogenes makes his appearance. The sailors, in trembling haste, proceed to furl their sails whenever Hermogenes shows himself in the harbour. The bareheaded priests of Isis, clad in linen vestments, and the choristers who play the sistrum, betake themselves to flight when Hermogenes comes to worship.
Hermogenes never took a napkin to dinner; Hermogenes never came away from a dinner without one.
That’s pretty funny. I love the idea of this guy just being a menace to anything cloth around him.
