Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears! But not your noses. Because you all kinda stink,
and you’re covered in olive oil. Get the scraping knives! Today on Nutty History,
we’re airing all the dirty laundry on Hygiene in Ancient Rome. Let’s dive into this cesspool.
In the eighth century BC, the city of Rome was founded along the banks of the Tiber River.
This city would become the center of a vast civilization. Transforming over the course of many
centuries from Kingdom to Republic to Empire, this unique state continues to inspire politics, art,
and architecture to the present day. Throughout the course of its existence, Ancient Rome was
the birthplace or adopted homeland of millions of people. At its height, the Roman Empire was
home to over 60 million people. Of those, more than a million lived in the city of Rome. If
you’ve ever lived in a big city, it will come as no surprise that all those people living so close
together made sanitation a major government concern. The answer? Giant public baths!
Romans famously employed a system of Aqueducts to provide running water. Lead pipes brought
water directly to the homes of the rich, while the poor made do with cheaper public baths. We tend
to think of the people of the past as stinky and unsanitary, but the Romans were actually
fastidious about bathing. These baths were a big deal – there were over 900 of them in Rome.
The largest of the public baths covered multiple city blocks and could fit over 3,000 bathers.
Sometimes, you might score lifetime access to the baths in a rich relative’s will,
a pretty sweet deal if constant access to naked wrinkly people is up your alley.
Bathing was so important it became ritualized in Rome - with separate, specialized rooms
for undressing, bathing, sweating, and post-bath resting. Everyone, including slaves, would bathe
daily. Despite this obsession with cleanliness, bathing actually made Rome much grosser. The baths
weren’t emptied and refilled with any regularity, and the gross warm water full of oil and poop was
the perfect breeding ground for bacteria. A Roman Scholar named Celsus wrote a prudent
warning about not going to the baths with an open wound, because you might get gangrene. I mean,
we’re not philosophers but…maybe don’t go anywhere sporting an open wound?
Before bathing or physical activity, the Romans would use Olive Oil or other special scented
oils to anoint their skin. Athletes, after their intense sweaty and nude activities,
would be covered in oil and dirt before heading to the baths. Then they would use a special eight
inch long dull knife, called a strigil, to scrape the sweat, oil, and dirt off. Between you and me,
I prefer a sponge. Now what to do with all that accumulated skin gunk...did
you think they were just gonna throw that hard earned residue away?! Nope,
they actually believed it had healing properties, so they saved it to be used in medicinal salves.
The Strigil was an exceptionally common tool of Roman times, and was used by
men and women of all social classes. Some were fashioned from shells or simple loops of iron,
while more lavish and expensive versions had handles of ivory or bone. Wealthy people,
however, would have their servants scrape them down instead of doing it themselves. Presumably,
you’d only have the guys you really trusted scrape your whole body with a knife. The Roman Emperor
Augustus was said to have had Strigil scrape his face too hard, causing sores. Because nobody wants
to spend eternity covered in oil, Strigils were also commonly buried with the deceased.
On top of those public baths, the city of Rome also had plenty of public latrines. There were
over 144 public bathrooms during the late Roman Empire, set in the narrow alleyways between
houses. Well, when we say public bathrooms, that’s being generous. These establishments were called
Dolia Curta, and were basically just buckets for people passing by to, uh,
do their business. Once the buckets were filled by conscientious citizens, the contents would
be sold to a kind of business known as a fuller. These were people who cleaned wool for a living,
and to do it they needed a source of ammonium. Yeah, it may sound icky, but pee has been used as
a cleaning agent for thousands of years. Fullers would stand ankle deep in tubs of stale human
urine, cleaning the cloth. The constant demand for pee meant that the government put a tax on it,
called the urine tax. The pee collectors signed lucrative contracts and could face steep fines
if they were late with their deliveries. I suppose you could say it was the Number One job in Rome…
Before you ask, they did use commodes and chamber pots for option number two. Of course,
instead of toilet paper, they had a communal toilet brush. This important tool was known by
the unacceptably fancy name of Xylospongium – a sea sponge on a stick, not a Star Trek alien.
To give them a bit of credit, they did rinse the brush in water and vinegar after each use,
but this was still pretty solidly unsanitary and another source of bacteria and disease.
So close your eyes and try to imagine what it was like living in the city of Rome
1500 years ago. Not just the sights, but the sounds and especially the many, many
smells. A million people living, working, eating, bathing, scraping oil, and peeing in the alley.
We sometimes assume we can only learn from the big events of history, the wars and peace treaties and
disasters. But the lessons of history can also be found in the little things, the everyday
moments. For example, don’t jump in a pool with an open wound. See, there, you learned something.