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Technology

Filthy Romans: Dirty secrets of the bath-obsessed ancients

The Romans brought their famous baths and toilets to three
continents, so how come they left places more unhygienic than they
found them?

By Stephanie Pain

29 June 2016

      
cartoon

Modern Toss

IF THERE'S one thing most people know about the ancient Romans, it's
that they spent a lot of time in the bath. As the Roman Empire
expanded, public baths proliferated across the newly annexed
territories. From plain and practical to polished-marble luxury,
baths provided both colonists and colonised the means of a daily
soak. Less well known is the Roman passion for another hygienic
innovation: the public convenience. Wherever the Romans went, they
took their toilets.

What did all that washing and flushing do for the health of less
fastidious folk who came under Roman rule? "Given what we know now
about the benefits of sanitation, you might safely assume this would
lead to an improvement in people's health," says Piers Mitchell, a
doctor and palaeopathologist at the University of Cambridge.

But hard evidence was lacking, so Mitchell went in search of it. He
scoured records of Roman remains from towns and graveyards to
fossilised faeces, for parasites such as intestinal worms, lice and
fleas. What he found was precisely the opposite of what he expected.

Good, clean fun? Or will you be sharing lice (below) and intestinal
worm eggs?

Interfoto/Sammlung Rauch/Mary Evans

Eye of Science/SPL

According to legend, Rome was founded in the 8th century BC. Two
centuries later work began on the cloaca maxima, or great sewer,
which eventually became part of an immense network of drains and
underground sewers. Work on the first of the city's remarkable
aqueducts got under way in the 4th century BC. By the end of the 1st
century there were nine, carrying more than enough water for
drinking, bathing, ...

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