Dolphin Arm Rests
and the God of Good Health
Sanitation in Ancient Rome
Sanitation in ancient Rome was not the honey- IŽll-be-on-the-throne-got-a- magazine-I-could-read business that it is now. For although eight aqueducts brought in 222,237,060 gallons of water into Rome (according to Frontinus, a contemporary of Trajan), very little of that found its way into private homes. Even when it did find its way, it was confined to the lower floors. The tenants of an insula had to get water from public fountains. The higher up the apartment, the more difficult it was to get water into it. This led to abominable conditions with filth accumulating everywhere and the insect population having the run of the place. Petronius in his Satyricon has one of his miserable characters hiding under his bed with his lips pressed against the mattress black with bugs.
These conditions, however, were not for want of a good sewer system. The cloacae were begun in the sixth century B.C. and were continually improved under the republic and the empire. Agrippa, Augustus' general and later trusted administrator in charge of the imperial rotor-rootering, did more than anyone to improve the condition and function of the cloacae. They were so big in places that you could travel through them by boat and so well constructed that the cloaca maxima can still be seen opening into the river at the Ponte Rotto. This longevity is a sobering thought for anyone who's recently had to re-pipe the privy. Why can't Agrippa be my plumber? I bet you he would at least return my calls when the toilet overflows and I'm beating back the tide with a borrowed plunger.
Unfortunately, despite the efficiency and grandeur of the sewer system, they didn't use it to its best advantage in ensuring health and decency for the citizens of Rome. It only collected the sewage from the ground floors of some buildings and from the public latrines.
Your recourse if you were rich and lived in a domus was to build your throne room on the ground floor. If you were near a cloaca the sewage would get swept away. If not, it could fall into a trench dug under the toilet. These trenches weren't very deep, nor were they hygienic even in the broadest sense of the word. So, enter the turdman.
The great emperor Vespasian was portrayed by Tacitus as being such a skinflint that he even sold the rights to collect human waste, creating the malodorous merchant position of turdman. OK, so maybe they didn't actually call him that, but anyone with an overdeveloped sense of the ridiculous would probably have thought up an appropriate Latin nickname. The turdman came with his wagon and carted off grandma's badly digested breakfast and then sold it to farmers who then used it to fertilize their crops. Ah, the cycle of life! Vespasian's name, by the way, has survived forever linked to scatology. One Spanish word for a public toilet is Vespasiana.
