The Ancients - Roman Toilets

Episode Date: November 13, 2025

They built roads, aqueducts, and bathhouses but what about toilets?Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr Hannah Platts, to uncover the surprisingly fascinating world of Roman toilets, faeces and sewers. From communal latrines and ancient plumbing to what really happened with the “sponge on a stick,” discover what it was like to do your business in ancient Rome - smells, small talk, and all.MORERoman AqueductsRoman RoadsPresented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic SoundsThe Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to this latest episode of the ancients, where we're going back into the wonderful world of Roman infrastructure. We've done aqueducts, we've done roads, now we're doing toilets. As per your request, you are asking us to do more on Roman infrastructure, and we are delivering. Now, the wonderful world of Roman toilets is quite a dirty subject, but also it's fascinating. The sponge on the stick story, and so much more. Just what was it like to visit one of these Roman communal toilets?

You're about to find out with our wonderful guest, Dr. Hannah Platts, from Royal Holloway University of London. I really do hope you enjoy. Let's go. than the great roads, the beautiful bathhouses or grand aqueducts, but vital Roman infrastructure nonetheless. Naturally. Latrines and toilets were all across the Roman Empire, used by everyday citizens, senators, slaves and soldiers alike. But what do we actually know about them? What was it like to go to a Roman communal toilet, the sights, the smells, the privacy, or lack of? And how could

they differ depending on where you lived in the empire? Was the sponge on a stick really a thing? So many questions with so many awesome answers coming your way. This is the story of Roman toilets with our guest, Dr Hannah Platts. Hannah, it is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast today. Fantastic to be here. Thank you so much for asking me. When people mention Roman infrastructure, normally people go to the roads or the aqueducts or the baths. But toilets, they were another key part of Roman infrastructure, right? Yeah, absolutely. They really were fundamental, very, very important. And in regards to toilets in a Roman town, did their design very much depend on where in the empire you were, where you were posted? Okay, so this is a really interesting

question because toilets did vary across the empire. And actually there were quite a lot of elements that impacted how they would feature, how they would appear, how they were developed. In particular, the things that impacted their development were actually things like the geological aspects of where they were being located and also the sort of cultural norms or social and cultural aspects that might impact whether you build a toilet or how you use a toilet and things like that. So there were actually a couple of things that could impact toilet development and usage across the empire. And does climate also come into that or is it just strictly normally kind of local cultures and geology? Mostly, to be honest, it is rather more about

particularly geological concerns and then customs and social norms. And the real reason the geological conditions are actually fundamental, it's because of how you're going to get rid of the waste. That's the actual fundamental. So I guess if I can give you just a couple of examples about how it might differ in terms of the geology of a site. So if we take, for example, Pompeii, which a lot of people either have visited or know about, Pompeii is a town, it was built on a slope. So that in itself means that rainwater, waste water, could be pretty easily got rid of. So water from the rain, overflow from street fountains, that would actually flow down the sloping streets. That would then be got rid of out through the city gates. The soil, the subsoil on

which Pompeii was built was also actually relatively permeable. So it could absorb to a certain extent some level of water, some amount of urine, perhaps even some poo might also be absorbed by that sort of relatively permeable soil. And these toilets in Pompeii, they were connected to cesspits because the cess pits were built and the way they were built and the soil they were built into would allow the liquid element of going to the loo to seep away and the solid material would remain in the cesspit itself and then that would be emptied as and when the cesspit would then fill up. So the thing is that Pompeii did have a sewer, but not a complete network. It had branches that would deal with certain things like

getting rid of large amounts of wastewater from the baths, for example. But actually in Pompeii, sewers played really quite a sort of small role. Conversely, if we look at a really nearby town of Herculaneum, again, similar area on the Bay of Naples. But Herculaneum's quite different. Yes, it's built on a slope. So again, that's useful for getting rid of wastewater. But the ground itself is very different. The ground is compact.

The ground is, it's not permeable. It's not porous. So if you were going to use a cesspit, it would fill up really quickly. Nothing would really seep away. And in fact, actually, there's a really. good graffiti or note written on a wall of one house, the so-called house of the black room. And it mentions that the cesspit has been emptied for 11 asses, the cost of 11 assets. Right. Okay. So not 11 behinds then. Okay. Exactly. Exactly right. Not 11 behinds. No,

absolutely. But the thing is, so what they needed to do in perculaneum was actually they did have to start building in a sewerage system. And the toilets then began to be connected to the sewage system. And that allowed the inhabitants to connect their toilets to the sewage system and their waste would flow directly through the town's sewers. I guess if I can just give you one other example that again is different is Ostea. So Ostea is the ancient port of Rome. it's again got very different geological structures because it was flat. It was built on flat sand dunes. It actually had a depression in the middle of the town.

So wastewater, fountain waters, rainwater couldn't flow away. And the water level, the water table is actually much higher in austia than, say, in Pompeii and Herculaneum. It's only about two metres or so below street level. So cesspits aren't a good idea. You can't get rid of the rainwater easily. Cesspits aren't a good idea. So what it meant was right from the get-go, actually a sewage system needed to be laid out. And that's what we get. We see this being laid out pretty much from the start of Ostea's development. And it's being maintained and repaired over time. So that's why it's actually really interesting, but Romans understood the need to deal with their waste according to the

geographical situations in which they found themselves. I mean, it's so interesting because maybe I say myself as a guilty culprit, I might have immediately thought, oh, okay, so the classic toilet designs across Italy would presumably have been all quite similar because they're actually in the great expanse of the Roman Empire, they were all quite close together. But they'd be very different to, let's say, toilets up on Hadrian's wall, on a Roman fort on Hadrian's wall. But what you're saying there, Hannah, is almost the complete opposite. It's the fact it depends on the actual geology of the place that it's located, that is central. It's not the fact that if there are several cities located close by, then the toilet systems are going to be exactly the same.

No. No, absolutely. And in fact, you know, the examples we've got on Hadrian's wall, and we do have examples on Hadrian's wall and in other sort of strong military sites, we do actually have, you know, communal toilets, but pretty much resemble communal toilets in Ostea or communal toilets as set up in Pompeii or communal toilets as set up elsewhere. So visually, they actually don't look that different. It is just the getting rid of the waste that you really need to think about that they really needed to think about. Anna, it's so interesting. And I always remember whenever I go to Halsteads, the most popular part of the Roman fort is seeing the latrines in the bottom right-hand corner. It's really, really interesting. You've mentioned there

that kind of key archaeological sites we associate with the Romans today, like Pompeii, like Herculaneum. So is archaeology absolutely central for us today to learn more about Roman toilets and how they function? Yes. I think archaeology is absolutely crucial in terms of the evidence that we have for toilets. You know, when we're thinking about understanding the Roman toilet system, there's a huge amount of material culture that we can draw on to build up an understanding, to build up a picture of toilet habits. So, I mean, for example, if you think about it,

one thing we obviously can look at are the toilets themselves. And, you know, Tristan, you've mentioned the communal toilets that I'm sure. we will talk about shortly. Oh, absolutely. You can also look at the individual toilets. You know, there were individual toilets, and I'm sure we'll be talking about those as well. So you can look at the toilets, and we have examples of those.

In fact, actually, what's really interesting is, obviously the toilets that remain to us today that have lasted, they tend to be the ones made of either stone or indeed in some cases, marble. Imagine that. Very lavish, yep. Exactly right, exactly right, sitting on a marble. toilet, we do know also that they would have and would use wooden toilets, or indeed parts of the toilet might be wooden, like a wooden-loose seat, for example, but of course

wood being an organic material, decays, and so we don't necessarily have much of the remains, if any, of the rains at all today. But so we can look to the toilets themselves for evidence, but we don't just have to rely on toilets. There's actually a lot of other things that we can look at. So, for example, we can see waste shoots. We can see sort of disposal areas. We can see toilet seats or niches in the walls where toilet seats would have slotted in

that help us understand that that particular room may have had a toilet within it. In the communal toilets in particular, we can see evidence of the gullies that had water that would be flowing at the feet of the people using the toilets. In Pompeii, we actually have the evidence of waste pipes from upstairs that are actually built into the walls. We've got the remnants of waste pipes that actually highlight to us. You know, there were some residences that had upstairs toilets. How fantastic. So, you know, you can look at that as well.

That really does help build up a picture of toilet habits and where they might have been located. I guess on the other side of that, it's not just the archaeology that builds us that picture. You know, fundamentally, as an ancient historian and an archaeologist, we have to, if we're trying to understand the ancient world, we need to be prepared to use whatever evidence we can. Yeah, I always say to my students, you know, beggars can't be choosers in this situation. You have to take whatever evidence you can get hold of. And so actually, what's superb is we get evidence about toilets and toilet usage and what they do. did with their waste, we get evidence from the texts as well, from the written materials. So whether that is the satirical poetry of authors like Marshall or the moralising texts of authors like

Seneca the Younger, we even get agrarian treatises that say, you know, tell you how to construct the right donkey, and use the feces to fertilise your fields. Oh, wow, okay. Good recycling right there, Roman style. Oh, yeah. We can even look to legislative evidence and letters. We actually hear about how some people were punished by being made to clean toilets.

Okay. So you can learn quite a lot about Rome's toilet habits from quite a wide variety of evidence. Oh, it's so interesting, isn't it, have on one hand that philosophers or human like Seneca the Younger there, maybe, you know, thinking pensively about toilets or whatever, how it reflects on society. And then you get agrarian treaties on the other hand saying how you can recycle poo to help, you know, your crops or whatever. That's great. So you have the literature evidence. You have the archaeology.

And you also mentioned earlier, which I found fascinating, examples of graffiti. So do we have epigraphy too? So we do, actually, we do have bits of graffiti. We have some very strange, very funny examples. There's one in toilet where it actually says the physician of the Emperor Titus, cracked here, written on the wall of a toilet. Yeah, we have inscriptional evidence. We have all sorts of stories about people's toilet habits. And that's how the physician of Emperor Titus has come down to us today. That's amazing. Indeed. You kind of highlighted it earlier, but let's do it again to kind of cover the main basis that we have with Roman toilets, and the main types of toilets that come down to us today, archaeologically.

Hannah, what are the main types of toilets that they had in Roman times? So, the main types are communal toilets and individual toilets. The thing is that actually, when we're thinking about sort of how the Roman Empire spread, it spread widely, and actually we see the spread of toilets spreading through the empire as well. And, you know, as the empire grew, so did the spread of toilets across the empire. So the Romans bring the roads, they bring their aqueducts and they bring the toilets as well. So is it very much a case that wherever you visited a Roman town, one of the key bits of infrastructure you'd see is they leave their kind of Roman mark on the new settlement, would

be quickly to create a communal latrine near the heart of the city? Whether that would be one of the first things they would do, I guess is open to question. but when we look at a number of settlements, communal public facilities of toilets are certainly generally present. I think it's probably the way I'd want to say this. I wouldn't want to say they're in absolutely every single settlement ever, but we do see them dotted around in so many places, you know, as I say, from Austria, Pompeii, across to Syria, up to Britain. You know, you get the picture. There are plenty of them in plenty of different places. That having been said, it doesn't mean that they are actually uniformly taken up with such enthusiasm all across the

empire. We see examples all across the empire, but different parts of the empire are much more keen to develop toilets or demonstrate far more examples. We have found far more examples of toilets in certain parts of the empire than in other parts of the empire. Suggesting perhaps, and I think this was something I touched on earlier, about the idea of cultural norms, customs behind toilet habits. So Italy, North Africa, we really do see a high number of toilets. You know, onwards and onwards through the development of the empire, up to second century AD and on, we see that these facilities were popular in terms of being set up. So that sort of suggests that they were pretty much a well-accepted element of daily life. That's not the same

as in the Near East, or indeed in Britain, actually. The evidence for toilets in the Near East and in Britain is somewhat less. So in Britain, yes, we have found toilets and where we generally find them are at the north of the empire on the frontiers, at military sites, so Hadrian's Wall we've talked about, or other sites where you've got really strong military connections, Roxeter, for example, that sort of thing,

where the military might be located. Other than that, they're far more disparate in terms of evidence in Britain. Likewise, if we take the example of the Near East, again, the uptake of toilets here was much, much later and less. I mean, we really start to see the majority of toilets in the Near East being built sort of around about the 4th century AD, so quite considerably later than in Italy and North Africa. And there are, in urban sites, there are far fewer being found. So, for example, if you look at Judea, far fewer examples. The suggestion here, there are a few suggestions behind this,

but one possible suggestion is the idea of religious taboos, that actually there may have been concerns about questions of nudity, questions of impurity, perhaps, that actually might make using toilets difficult for some religious communities, particularly, for example, religious Jews may have found it particularly difficult. There is also the point, it's not necessarily just about concerns about nudity, but actually there might also be concerns about the proximity the closeness of being sitting pretty much in physical close contact with other people as you go to the loop. That actually that might also be a particular concern as well. And we know that

there were clear Jewish religious strictures about depositing excrement in water. Jewish law dictated that human excrement needed to be buried in a field. So that's where toilets then caused a problem if they were going to be flushing excrement into the sewers and then therefore into water, into the urban drainage system. And so naturally, let's say if we look at the Iron Age Britons, for instance, as another example, of course it can't be exactly the same reason as you've just highlighted in Judea. But perhaps we can presume that maybe there was another reason and why they were uncomfortable of adopting this particular practice. And so, you know, many of those settlements in Roman Britain

in which you would still have had a sizable number of Iron Age Britons, it doesn't pick up. They don't take it on like other places. Yeah, and actually, it's really interesting you say, or maybe we can't see the same reasoning. But actually, there may be similar connections. because actually the idea of disposal of excrement in water may have been problematic in Britain too.

Oh, okay, yes. Because there was a very long-standing connection of water and ritual. Yes. If we look at bodies of water, the River Thames, for example, was really so often used as a place of ritual deposition by pre-Roman or late Iron Age, as we might call them, communities.

So the idea that actually feces in water actually being problematic in Britain as well might also be similar here. God, that's so fascinating. Well, for the places in the world, well, for the places in the the Roman Empire where they did, where communal toilets did catch on. Hannah, do we know much about, I guess, the logistics, or do we know much about how they were set up, who was in charge of these toilets and so on? It's a really interesting question, actually, because in terms of like the communal toilets, the question of who set them up is really interesting when we

think about how we fund our cities today, how we fund our infrastructure today. You know, we use taxes for our roads and so on and so forth, that wasn't the case in ancient Rome. There weren't the councils in the same way that we have them today. And actually, although Romans did collect taxes, the taxes really were, to be honest, too small to be doing substantial infrastructure, to undertake substantial infrastructure projects. So what they relied upon was benefaction private benefaction in public areas. So that means that it would be generally elite Romans who would typically be setting up and who would be funding the public toilets in cities.

And actually, they would do so. Yes, for an idea of, when I say public health, I mean sort of a notion of clean, cleanliness, but also actually just keeping waste off the streets. and for urban aesthetics, I guess. And similarly, by setting up these communal toilets, it was a way of showing their own wealth and so on. It's what we call eurgotism,

that notion of gift giving to your community so that they see your wealth and they remember your wealth and realise that you are a someone. So you can imagine in some of these communal toilets if you walked into it, they could well be a plaque or an inscription above saying this was set up by Cornelius Gracus or whoever from ex-family in the year whatever, basically a reminder that whenever you went to the loo to remember who to thank almost

and maybe with the next election or something like that coming up to, you know, just remember what I did for you in that time. Absolutely. And actually, that really is the idea of uergotism, that actually it's about getting your name out there, whatever way you're gift giving, you know, whether that's through building a toilet, a theatre, you know, whatever it might be. But it was about making a name for yourself so that people would remember you at the time of voting and so that you would have a symbol of your status and wealth

that you were someone in the city. Interesting, you have one senator who dedicates a theatre, the other dedicates a toilet, and then you see who wins at the next vote. So if the person who makes the toilet gets the vote, they just knew exactly what the people wanted. So there you go. Exactly right.

So took me through a visit to one of these communal toilets. What do we know? This is something that you've already hinted at, but I think we should mention and highlight again. These aren't private cubicle, as are there? You walk in, and it's certainly not a private experience. Right. So this is a really interesting question.

I am really interested in the question of public and private experience in the ancient world. And the concept of going to the toilet is actually, I mean, if you think about it, it's it's innately tied to our bodies, our senses, our emotions, you know, that sort of notion of going to the loom, well, what's it going to be like in a communal toilet in an ancient city? So the question that you bring out here about privacy is really important for us to think about, but also for us to be aware that our concept of privacy is not necessarily the same as ancient concepts of privacy. so in terms of visual privacy going to the toilet in a communal Roman loo well there probably was some element of privacy from at least the outside world so that people who were outside the toilet would not necessarily be able to view into the toilet because there would be doors or some sort of screen a curtain or a partition or something like that. And we have evidence of that at a number of communal toilets. So it suggests that there was some element of blockading

that entrance from the main world outside. Inside, however, the situation is very, very different. So a really important feature of the public Roman toilet is that, as I say, they are communal. Many, they are communal. But there aren't screens. There aren't cubicles that would give any sort of block

between users. So actually, that lack of screens, that lack of cubicles would surely allow views between users. Now, one thing that will have impacted what you can and can't see in the toilet as you're in that room is of course the amount of lighting that there is. Yeah, if there's obviously a lot of light, you'll see a lot more. Obviously,

less light, you'll see less light. So that could be quite variable. The other thing that would impact what you could and couldn't see while people were on the loo would be in terms of the clothing that they were wearing. Users would be seated. So the clothing you would be wearing as you were seating would indeed cover elements of what was going on. Although, of course, that depends on the clothing you're wearing. If you're wearing Toga, potentially more than if you're wearing a tunic, which may be rather more opening up, seeing a lot more. The other thing, of course, is the question of whether people would avert their eyes. Did people go to the toilet, and actually avert their eyes from other people surrounding them.

Well, we can't really answer that, but it's difficult to say. So that's the visual side of it, but that's not the only sensory experience to be had whilst on the toilet. That's very true, yes. Indeed. Smell would obviously be a fundamental experience here. And, you know, it's very difficult to think about just how ventilated these toilets might have been, but it probably varied considerably. There may have been some toilets that didn't have roofs. There may have been some that had windows. And of course, those elements would

have helped with ventilation. But then it's possible that a number of toilets really did have roofs or didn't have windows. And then the ventilation there would be much, much less. And actually, one of the questions there might be in different parts of the empire would sometimes toilets be unroofed and some point toilets be roofed because it would be far worse in Britain to be going to the toilet in an unroofed communal latrine than say in Syria, which is rather warmer. So that may be one climactic difference as to how toilets were built across the empire. So then you've got the notion of ventilation and it's going to smell. The toilets themselves would have smelled.

Because one thing, for example, we have no archaeological evidence of stench traps. So actually, the whole idea of the stench trap is to, you know, it's a water seal to protect or to prevent the upward passage of the smelly gases. With no stench trap, they're not being kept down. They're just, ooh, free-flowing. Is there any kind of Roman sense that, yes, okay,

they can't get rid of those smells, but did they have almost a febrize equivalent? Did they try to like get sweet smelling aromatics or the like that they could also include to maybe, although it hasn't gone away, but at least try to conceal the smell to an extent. Yeah, and actually we do have examples, particularly there have been examples actually found in private toilets where you would have herbs hanging up or herbs, remnants of burnt herbs nearby, which very possibly might have been about trying to disguise the smell. That certainly is a possibility, and evidence has been found in a number of toilets, in number of examples.

The other element of going to the communal toilet, not only is it visible, not only is it smelly, but then you're touching people. You're in close proximity to other people as you are sitting going to the toilet. So actually, that could very possibly have been a concern for people. And of course, you are sitting on a toilet seat above, a deep dark hole where there could easily be the concern for rats and flies and all sorts of other unwanteds existing in the depths of the dark toilet system. And then, of course, you've got the noise. You know, actually, if you've got a lot of people going to the toilet, you've got the

sound of going to the loo. Yes, exactly, yes. You've got the sound of water running in the gutters in front of you. You've got the chatter of people. You know, actually, that is one thing. And that was why I said, when I said, did people avert their eyes? Well, I don't think we've got much evidence of that at all, because what we do have is evidence of people talking to each other on the loom. Interesting. It does seem to be that it was a place where people would sit and have a good old matter. The equivalent of a newspaper, I guess, or a toilet book in Roman times. Yeah, exactly right. Exactly right. Catching up on the gossip. Yeah, finding out what's going on. It's a place where there were many, many experiences, sensory experiences to

be had. I guess one of the questions then is, and particularly about smell, but actually the sound and so on. How much would those sensory experiences have displeased Romans is open to question. You know, we live in quite a deodorised world. So for us, smell can be quite foul. But actually, you do get habituated to smell. So how, how? badly some of this smells. To us, if we went back in a time machine, yeah, the smell I should imagine would be horrendous in these toilets. But actually, would it have been as bad or would it been perceived as bad? That is a more difficult question to answer. Because we don't have that information surviving from a philosopher or someone writing down saying like the stench

of the toilets was horrific or this is like the depths of depravity or anything like that. We do have comments about the smell of toilets, and we do have the, we do have disgust written about the disgust of towards latrines, but just, I'm just thinking about if you're walking around the street and so on, actually, if you come across the smell of a toilet, would it really impinge and be so, you know, I guess what I'm trying to say here is we need to be very careful about putting our modern concepts of our sensory experiences. of our world and actually just transporting those onto understanding the sensory experiences of the ancient world is, I guess, the point I'm trying to make here. That does raise another important question, though. Is there a sense that almost like with so many other things, with ancient Rome, I mean, your status in society depends, you know, very much set what types of pleasures you enjoyed, and I guess it's the same with toilets.

Would you expect richer Romans to ever visit one of these communal toilets, or is this a place that, as a richer Roman, you did not go? It is difficult to answer this in terms of being absolutely sure, but we know that upper class Romans would pay, obviously, for the setup of communal toilets, but it is probable they didn't use them that much. If they had the choice of using their own rather than a communal toilet, then that's likely to be what they would be. aiming to use. Was it divided up by gender or would men and women visit these communal toilets together? So that's also the other side. Again, and it's a very frustrating answer I'm going to give you here because the thing is, it's very difficult to say, but actually the architectural design of toilets, their location, doesn't give us any real firm evidence as to any gender separation. There's actually also no written evidence about any gender separation.

We have a wall painting in Ostea where we've got a depiction of men on a toilet. But that's just one picture. A wall painting? You have a wall painting showing it. Wow. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We have a wall painting in Austria of men sitting in a toilet. It's a painting known as the Sete sapienti, seven philosophers having a conversation about digestion

and going to the toilet. Yeah. Brilliant. Absolutely. But, I mean, that's seven men going to the loo, but actually it's really, it's too limited for us to really make any statement, a fundamental statement about gender or gender ideas within toilet and segregation in toilets. So I would be very wary about saying that.

However, it's again, probably unlikely you would find an elite woman. many times in a communal toilet. Because actually it's the dangers of that would probably be quite high. Being mugged, whatever, that could be a real problem. The experience itself obviously also potentially wasn't going to be seen as very nice either. So again, it's that notion of if you've got a toilet in your house, you'd rather use your own toilet in your house. It's not likely to be somewhere where you would find an elite man or an elite woman wanting to spend a penny or a cistercius or whatever. Well, that's another quick question.

I hadn't thought about it. But of course, you know, in some public toilets today, there is the case that, you know, sometimes you have to pay to get entry. Do we have any idea at all from the surviving evidence? You're shaking your head. I can imagine the answer already. But like whether there were certain ones

where the person who'd built the communal toilet actually says, I'm going to get a bit of money out of this at the same time. I can't recall of coming across any evidence. for that. That doesn't mean there might not be some. I just have never come across that evidence. And I think that actually it would be difficult for them to have done so,

because then it takes away from that kudos of that it takes away from that gift giving. So I think that would be unlikely. I've just thought of one area where we do see also segregation in terms of status. Okay. And that is actually within army toilets, within Britain. Ah, okay. There does seem to be some evidence of social segregation,

because where we see multiple communal latrines for lower-ranked soldiers, it does seem that the centurions might have separate individual toilets. So we see this at modern-day Chester. We see that there was single toilets for the commandant in his house, for example, and then there were communal toilets elsewhere for the other sort of lower-ranking soldiers. So we do see some evidence of segregation, but yeah. Interesting in a military context, it does seem to certainly make sense with the commander's house and all that in those Roman forts.

Hannah, I can't have us talked. Hanna, I can't have us talk about toilets and communal toilets without also asking about the famous sponge on a stick. Now, it feels like this is one of the most popular parts of Romans and going to the loo. I mean, how popular was this object as the Roman equivalent of toilet paper, I guess? Okay, so the sponge on a stick. This is always the question. The toilet stick, yeah. So the difficulty actually that we have about this sponge on a stick is actually being sure about really how it was used okay so we have a story from Seneca who tells us about a gladiator who was going to be forced to fight and didn't want to and as he was preparing for his going to fight he picked up the xylospongium

that's the Greek terminology but it was often referred to by the Greek terminology and or Roman terminology but essentially the sponge on the stick he picked that up and stuffed it down his throat

and suffocated himself and actually Seneca just as an aside here Seneca was actually he really praised this example Yes it was a good way to die wasn't it?

Totally It's hilarious It was a really good way to die It was a self-determined death although it was a really rather undignified weapon of death. So yeah. But the problem is, so that's the story, and that's what everyone talks about. But actually, the literary text don't describe the actual use of the sponge on the stick.

I have mentioned earlier that there was a gutter in front of the users on the ground that had flowing water. And the sponge on the stick would sit in this. cleaning. And the suggestion is, obviously, one of the suggestions is that sponge on the stick would be used to wipe yourself after you pooed. Yeah, wipe your bum. Exactly right. So it becomes that toilet paper. And it was shared around. Nice. So it becomes that, yeah, it's the equivalent then of Roman toilet paper. That's one idea. There is actually another train of thought to suggest it might have actually been used to clean the toilet and the gullies themselves, but actually maybe it wasn't used as toilet paper. The difficulty is really, how do we come to the answer? Because

the problem is a sponge on a stick doesn't survive. But it's difficult. And it isn't in the evidence. It isn't in the literary evidence. And we do know, actually, that they would use other elements or they would use other. So if you're out and about, smooth stones were one thing that could be used. That really does sort of make your wince, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah.

Or moss and leaves. Moss, yes. I've heard the moss one before, particularly on like a Roman fort, like house steds on Hadrian's wall, right? Normally moss is readily available and they could use that instead. Yeah. And in fact, they've done loads of,

they've actually, you know, you can actually then have a look and see when you've done excavations, you can actually not find a moss, but remnants of parasite eggs, which suggest so on. so for the feces has been there. So, yeah, the sponge on a stick, I mean, the Latin turn, the tersorum literally means a wiping thing. So it could be to wipe your bottom, but it could be

to wipe the toilet. I mean, one point else that I would suggest, and I think it's something to bear in mind, one thing I would suggest that I actually find myself thinking about quite a lot, which is a little bit odd, sponge as a material in some parts of the empire will be readily available. But in some parts of the empire, sponge would really not be readily available and would be quite expensive and difficult to get hold of.

So there may also be a question of, were there geographical aspects that changed what you used to wipe yourself with? If sponge is difficult to get hold of, why would you then use it to wipe your bottom? That's just my musings on toilets. No, but I get what you mean. In the world that we come from today, once again, I think this is the modern world idea that we have, because we are so used. Everywhere we go, effectively there will be toilet paper, and that's kind of the accepted thing.

Whether that actually was the case back in Roman times, you know, different things, and is it different materials where you go? So I actually think it's very likely indeed, isn't it? So you shouldn't think of it's being uniform, you know, wherever you go in the Roman world, even though it seems like, as you say, these communal toilets, they spread outwards as the Roman Empire is spreading outwards to. And I think when you think about it, who are doing, who's doing the writing? That's elite Romans. That's where we get a lot of our Roman, so Seneca the Younger. Yeah, he's telling, he's an elite Roman.

He's telling us what it's like where he is. but we don't get written sources from Britons so we don't know what it's like for them and what they're seeing. So I guess that's just one of the queries I would raise. And it's something, as I say, I have thought a bit about it because I'm that exciting. Well, no, I'm very excited to talk all the things in Roman toilets with you. So don't you worry at all we want to harness that excitement. Especially if you're going to the next bit now, actually going over to private toilets. And actually one question I have about toilets in elite houses

and even sometimes like imperial palaces and the like, just how sophisticated could they be? Because I remember doing an interview in the past where people say we've got a flushing toilet from the Minoan palace at Connoisse or something like that. So do we have evidence of the Roman equivalent of flushing toilets in the most, in the richest houses and palaces that we know of? Yeah, yeah, we do.

Because actually what you would do is you would have your toilet, you would be able to flush it through with water. You would actually, there were communal toilets that would actually have water flowing through them. So they were automatically flushing constantly. So yes, we absolutely have examples of flushing toilets. Yes, in private situations and communal public flushing toilets. But in terms of private toilets, in terms of actually, how you might make your toilet really stand out. Yeah, they could be really luxurious. They could be elaborately carved. They could have mosaic floors. You could actually sort of

really make your toilet stand out however you wanted with decorations, with all sorts of accoutrements. There's evidence for hand basins in some but not other toilets. It wasn't a must. You might have fountains, which, okay, could offer alternative, possibly hand-washing facilities, although if you washed your hands or not, that's up to you, basically. But it would also potentially improve the ambiance of the toilet, the noise of the toilet. Yeah. Oh, the trickling of water. Yeah, very nice, yes.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And come to think of it, the more you do think about it, It's like that whole, you know, society part of it with the elites of Rome, you know, inviting your fellow elites over to dinner, you've got your triclinium, you've got your beautiful wall paintings and mosaics in those public areas to show off your wealth and talk about it. Of course, your guests will probably want to use the toilet once you over there. And then it also becomes, I guess, a public space. So people, you know, you would embellish your toilets, wouldn't you, with lots of beautiful

patterns and artistic images and so on, because once again, that's an area that you can show off how rich and affluent you were and that you could afford the best even for your toilet. Yeah, you certainly could do. I mean, that having been said, not all toilets in big, posh houses were all that opulent either. I guess it becomes that element of choice of what you want to do. I mean, we do find, you know, toilets tend to be located in or not. near kitchens. So perhaps that was about keeping the noisy and the smelly places located together. They could also be tucked away under the stairs or they could be situated in gardens or indeed actually sort of near the street so that the smell might waft into the street rather than

wafting into the house. But I guess the point that's important to think about is, again, it comes back to this statement of it's not uniform. You know, individual details of toilets can vary. and I think you can set your toilet up as you see fit. But you would often, as I say, locate them in your kitchen or near your kitchen. There were certain places where you might locate your toilet. But what you then did with decorating that toilet, it's up to you. So having talked about everything that we've done so far, communal toilets and toilets were the richest in society, how likely would you say it is that an everyday Roman would have had access to a toilet in their own house?

So like, you know, an everyday person living in a place like Pompeii, you know, not a very big house whatsoever. Like, is it very much, is the communal toilets your main kind of official toilets? Or what do we know? Yeah. So, I mean, we do know that a number of dwellings do have their own private toilets. We do also know that a number of dwellings absolutely don't. Particularly, as you say, it often does come down to status and the amount of money you have, the amount of wealth you have. Those who are of the lower echelons of society might very well not have had access to a toilet of their own.

So that may be then where they would be needing to go to use the communal toilets, for example. Yeah, absolutely. Certainly we do not have, they are not within every house under any stretch of the imagination, no. And if they didn't have one in their house, is that when they would resort to chamber pots? Yeah, yeah, indeed. you may go to the toilet, communal toilets, but you're unlikely to want to go to a communal toilet in the middle of the night, for example.

So that's, of course, where you would be using chamber pots. Absolutely right, yeah. And indeed, I mean, actually we do find, we do have this great story from Petronius. He's writing under the reign of the Emperor Nero, and he writes about this dinner party of this elite freedman. Or Trimalkio, isn't it? Trimalkio, exactly, Kena Tramalkionis.

And the way he's represented in this story by Tronius is he's a very uncouth, for want of a better way of putting it, individual. And as they're all dining in there, in his rather vulgar, vulgarly decorated troughlinium, he at one point clicks his fingers and summons a slave to come. with a chamber port so he can relieve himself in front of his guests. Lovely. Yeah, exactly. But in that case, is that the case of Petronius just once again showing how vulgar Trimalkio is, how he doesn't do things as expected for an elite Roman that they would actually go to their private toilet?

He's doing something that's associated with someone of a lower status. So it's poking fun at Trimalkio. Exactly right. And of course, you always have to say, well, how we're a lot. Bible is the story. It's an novel. It's an ancient novel. So really, yeah. And actually, the whole point is he's making a social statement. He's making a statement about Tramalkio being an ex-slave, about Tramaccio being a freedman, and not really understanding what elite society does and how they should behave. So what he's doing is calling for the chamber pot and using it in and amongst to everyone. So I'd like now to ask about sanitation and first of all, the importance of

washing your hands. Did the Romans, was there a general acceptance of the need to wash your hands after you've been to the toilet? Do we know much about that? So it's really interesting to think about hygiene and hand washing and so on. Romans might, can's awful to say, they might have washed their hands, but that's the point because they didn't really have any notion that the idea of washing your hands would be for hygiene purposes. Actually, you know, we do have this story about Tremalkio washing his hands after using the chamber pot, but actually, and then what he did was he dried his hand on the enslaved person's hair. So really not very much about hygiene at all. And actually, what he's doing

there, that's about showing power and control, actually. That's about really highlighting that he is now a freed man, and this is now his enslaved individual. But the point is that when we're thinking about hygiene and Romans, Romans had developed sewers, and they developed sewers to remove waste, but they didn't really understand that notion of bacteria and bacterial diseases, and that they were held within species. So that idea of washing your hands as a means of hygiene was not really going to be the reason why Romans would wash their hands. It's interesting because also you associate with the Romans and the Greeks to an extent as well, this idea of cleanliness, if you're about to perform a religious ritual or going to the

baths and so on. So, you know, constantly get these ideas of the Romans wanting to get clean. But you've highlighted another thing there that, you know, if you can't see dirtiness on yourself, Yeah, that's another case entirely. So that's, I guess, where you can differentiate between maybe not washing your hands after going to the loo and, you know, having physical dirt on your body and wanting to clean yourself of that. Yeah, and actually the point you make about sort of ritual purity, that may be exactly why Romans would wash their hands, the notion of if they're going to do something that needs ritual purity, that may be where you would see references to hand washing, for example. but the idea of needing to wash your hands after going to the loo, that wasn't the necessary. You know, there is no reference in ancient texts, for example, that sewers were built for hygienic purposes. For example, yeah, it was more of a practical thing. You build a sewer

because there's no other way to get rid of dirt, the waste, human waste, wastewater. So it's about getting it away from the urban environment. But that's not necessarily the same thing about hygiene and healthful reasons. Yeah, so you don't think they had any idea about, you know, diseases like cholera where, you know, drinking water could mix with human waste and so on. So there's no clear desire to differentiate the two kind of water strands? No. I mean, there were concerns about cleanliness of water in, for example, in bathhouses to extent. I mean, you need to be careful about, you wouldn't want to be deliberately depositing excrement in water. That seems to sort of be a step too far. But the idea of waterborne diseases like cholera, that was not a

consideration. So it wasn't until, you know, London had a series of cholera epidemics in the 1800s, and a man called John Snow, Dr. John Snow, realized that the disease was being caused by water that was contaminated by feces that was carrying dangerous bacteria. And that was, that gave the understanding of, okay, you need to be careful about bacteria for hygiene. That understanding was not in any way understood in the ancient Roman world. But what is interesting is when those modern-day hygienists who are thinking about, okay, we know about these waterborne diseases now, what do we do? what they did do, actually is really interesting, because they looked back to antiquity to places, including ancient Rome, and they saw the fabulous sewage systems that were developed.

And they studied them as an example of, yeah, this is how we can get rid of water. We can use this as a means of public health. so sewers were a really important technical technological way forward they removed waste into underground channels absolutely it removed waste you don't want to go near waste and these sewers were held up by these modern day hygienists as really important because they were getting rid of what you don't want around and then would the sewers the output of the sewers be something like a river nearby or the sea and so on But I guess also the fact that we've done an episode on aqueducts recently. So this continual idea of almost downward movement of water. So they get their water from a reservoir higher up somewhere, let's say the Apennine Mountains or whatever.

And the water would come down via the aqueducts into fountains and so on. Maybe some of it is used into one of the big tanks, maybe for water in one of these communal latrines. And then the waste gets taken away in the sewers. So actually in that way, they don't mix as much as you might initially think. No, absolutely. And actually that is the thing, that the Romans also were really proud of their sewers. They were really, really proud of their sewers. They wrote about them. They thought they were really impressive buildings, really impressive constructions. We've got loads of a number of writers talking about, you know, Pliny the Elder in his natural histories, he actually sort of

sees the sewers as areas of pride. You know, they are a really noteworthy achievement. And yet they also, just like those modern day hygienists, they also understood that they were taking away waste that was not nice. So you've got this weird ambiguity and antiquity. Our sewers are great. They take away rubbish that isn't very nice. And those modern hygienists, let's look at the Roman sewers. They were fantastic. They can help us with our public hygiene. And they take away the stuff that's not very nice. So there's this weird ambiguity here that's quite interesting. One of my most popular social videos of all time is me walking through a Roman sewer beneath Colchester today and I think the top comments are just like you're walking

through ancient poo and they're like which is quite funny and but we could do a whole another episode dedicated to sewers and like they are another marvel of Roman infrastructure we're running out of time Hannah but I would like to ask one other question which is these communal toilets in particular I mean if sanitation you know some really interesting elements but they aren't the most hygienic of places given that you do get so many like diseases and and epidemics across the Roman world throughout the time. Do you think that communal toilets did become hotspots for diseases and central areas for the spread of diseases in Roman societies?

Well, I imagine in a sense they must have done to some extent. They were dirty. They were where feces and urine were got rid of. They were where people had contact with each other. They were where people did or didn't wash their hands. They were where people did or didn't share the sponge on the stick. They were also, they didn't have that stench trap. They were directly connected to the sewer or the cesspit underneath.

So rats and other animals could also then get into that area and further spread disease. So I think we need to bear in mind that actually toilets were not really about, improving the health of the Roman world. I think they could have been incredibly dangerous and actually there are a number of toilets where there are decorations on the walls of of sort of almost apotropaeic symbols or snakes or to ward off the evil ice almost as a sort of protection against almost like possibly you're going into a dangerous area here. Now whether that that wouldn't have been a knowledge of you're going into a dangerous area because of disease as such, just you're going to an area that's polluted because it's dealing with feces.

But also there could be all sorts of other things that exist. I mean, we do have one story of a toilet in a house where the guy who owned the house, he suddenly realized that things were being eaten from his kitchen. So he set up a tram and he realized it was an octopus that was coming up out of the toilet and eating stuff in his kitchen. Now, I mean, really how reliable that is I actually have to flag. But I think what it does highlight to us is that that the cesspit or the sewers, they weren't closed off. You know, you could just stuff could come up.

Is there a story of a snake coming up in one, like kind of a scary story of me you might hear in Australia today of a, you know, a snake peeping its head out of a toilet or something like that? Do you get that from Roman times as well in the East? We do know that various creatures might very well live in them. sort of poisonous centa bees, poisonous spiders. You never know. Getting bitten by a spider that lives in a loo, that's not going to be a very hygienic bite. Wow. Okay. We might want to leave it there. Then that's quite, Hannah, we've covered so much. And what a story it is. It is an important part of the Roman daily life. And is there anything, Hannah, that you'd like to leave us with, with the topic of Roman toilets?

Is that how would you want us primarily to think of Roman toilets today? I think I want you to realize that they're quite varied, in that you've got individual toilets, you've got communal toilets, you've got some being connected to sewers, you've got some not being connected to sewers, but being connected to cess pits. You've got some people having toilets, some people not having toilets. So actually, it really does highlight that point we made earlier about there isn't a uniformity here. I think that's really important to understand about the Roman world. It's not a uniform story of this, this, this and this.

It's not just everything all falls one way. And I think that's the brilliance of the Romans, actually. They were quite keen to adapt things and use what worked in certain places and what didn't work in other places they wouldn't use. And I think that's why they're so brilliant in terms of, just their ingenuity. I find that really exciting. I guess one other thing just to highlight is we do get some great stories about those people who didn't have toilets and did rely on chamber pots. One of the real risks of walking around the city of Rome was do be aware of

people emptying their chamber pots out of their windows because it may very well land on you as you walk around the streets of Rome. Oh, wow, God, the smell of walking around Rome, if that was the case. What topic? Hannah, this has been absolutely brilliant. It just goes to me to say, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Thank you very much for having me. It's been great.

Well, there you go. There was Dr. Hannah Platt talking through the story of Roman toilets. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Thank you for listening. please follow the ancients on Spotify or wherever you get to your podcasts. That really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. If you be kind enough to leave us a rating as well, well, we'd really appreciate that.

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