What the Poop? The Pooptacular story of the Roman Toilet
- Imagining History
- 4 hours ago
- 3 min read
On average, people live a lot longer today than they have at any other point in history. As a dude you can expect to circle the sun 78 times, whilst as a dudette you can enjoy getting a 360 degree view of the sun 82 times. There are many reasons for this, of course; modern medicine, more food, no rampaging bands of Norse invaders setting fire to your village. These things have all had an impact. But one of the biggest changes has been the invention of modern plumbing.
Funnily enough, if you don’t live next to piles of poo, you tend to live longer. Flushing toilets, running water, and a poop ton of sewage pipes take away our business. This allows us to be far healthier than all the poor people throughout history who were tossing the stinky contents of their toilet bowls out a nearby window for their entire lives.
But if you thought that decent toilets, pipes, and plumbing were a modern invention, then you’d be pooping wrong. The Romans were washing away their bodily excretions thousands of years ago.
Sadly, unlike many fantastic Roman inventions, we’ve no idea who invented the public toilet. Though I like to think that it was a fella called Weenus Poopalicus. Either way, a public loo was first built around the 1st Century BCE.
A deceptively simple idea, the Roman Toilet consisted of a long stone bench with holes carved into it in which to stick your buttocks. Unlike today, there were no cubicles or walls between poopers, meaning you’d be sat right next to your mate Gallus as he tried to pass the vast quantity of slightly out of date olives he ate the day before.
Anyhow, water flowing beneath the bench whisked away Gallus’ shame, carrying it far out of the city through a clever array of pipes. Actually, ‘whisking’ suggests the poo was carried away quickly. In fact, the water flowed rather slowly, the poop bobbing away as it gradually made its way to freedom. As such, these toilets often stunk, especially during a sticky hot summer. Though at least you could play poo sticks with actual lumps of poo, all whilst pooing. What a treat, huh?
Once our pal Gallus had finished pooping, he wouldn’t reach for some ultra-soft, double-thick, balsam-scented, sprinkled-with-angel’s-tears toilet paper, as it hadn’t been invented yet. Instead, he’d wipe his bum with something called a tersorium – basically a bit of sea sponge on a stick. Thing is, this wasn’t Gallus’ personal tersorium, instead it was a public one, kept in the toilet, for everyone to use. After a quick rinse, Gallus would kindly pop the tersorium back, ready for the next person to use. Whilst this is totally gross to us today, it was totally normal for the Romans.
The tersorium was also much better than the other bum-wiping options the Romans had come up with, rubbing their bum cracks with everything from bits of cloth, to clumps of moss, and even broken chunks of pottery. Yowch!
Some historians think the tersorium was actually used to clean the toilet itself, and never even saw the curves of someone's bum. But, seeing as how this theory is both sensible and not at all gross, we're sticking with the bum wiping idea. But what do you think? Let us know in the survey below!
What was a Tersorium used for?
Wiping bums?
Cleaning toilets?
