Pee-you! B'kak! P'tooey!

by Caroline Lawrence

Hey, KIDS! If you went back in a TIME MACHINE to ANCIENT ROME, what do you think would surprise you most?

I'm thinking THREE THINGS.

Roman funeral pyre

1. PEE-YOU! (the smell)

They washed clothes in urine (PEE) and then smoked them with sulphur (smells like ROTTEN EGGS). But those little MUREX sea-snails they used to dye cloth scarlet smelled even worse! Steaming piles of HORSE, OXEN and DONKEY MANURE sat right there in the streets. People had BAD BREATH caused by rotten teeth. (We know this because they DRANK PERFUME to make their breath smell better.) Daily sacrifices would have made a RANCID BAR-B-QUE smell. And smoke from a thousand braziers would have caused terrible SMOG. Also, they BURNED DEAD BODIES (cremated) in the graveyard just outside the town walls. Market-stall-keepers probably left FRUIT and scraps of MEAT to ROT! You wouldn't want to be downwind of the garum factories; there would be an awful FISHY smell from the blood and fermented fish GUTS. There would have been lots of SWEATY MEN and PERSPIRING LADIES because there was no deodorant! Have you ever smelled the sickly sweet smell of OPEN SEWERS in the heat? Urgh. Not to mention the PUBLIC TOILETS with multiple seats but no doors (see picture below). And some famous graffiti from Pompeii asks people not to POO in the street. Ew. At night they carried PINE-PITCH torches. But those might have smelled nice because they sometimes burned PINECONES as AIR FRESHENER.

Can you think of any other yukky smells?

soothsayer and sacred chicken

2. B'KAK! (free range animals)
I think there would have been ANIMALS everywhere in ANCIENT ROME. Walking through the Roman Forum, you would have to be careful not to trip over GUARD DOGS, LAP DOGS, SCAVENGING DOGS, Mangy half-wild CATS & RATS feeding on rotting food. You might see a goat herd driving his GOATS to the Forum Boarium, a cow herder driving his CATTLE to the Forum Boarium, a shepherd driving his SHEEP to the Forum Boarium. A priest leading an OX to the altar would be a common sight. So would a priest leading a RAM to the altar.  SACRED CHICKENS, FREE-RANGE CHICKENS, CHICKENS IN A MARKET PEN. SACRED GEESE on the Capitoline Hill were fierce enough to act as guards. Also, what about BUGS? There would have been NITS, LICE, COCKROACHES, FLEAS, FLIES, MOSQUITOES, WEEVILS and DUNG BEETLES. Guess what? Near Ostia's port of Rome there was an ELEPHANT farm to supply the GAMES. Maybe sometimes other WILD ANIMALS destined for BEAST HUNTS in the Colosseum got loose, too.

Can you think of any other animals you might have seen in Ancient Rome?


2. P'TOOEY! (superstition)

whistling in the latrines by Helen Forte 

Romans were INCREDIBLY superstitious and probably SPAT on the ground, KNOCKED ON WOOD, made RUDE GESTURES and grabbed their WILLIES to fend off EVIL. A non-rude SIGN AGAINST EVIL is to hold out your left hand palm first. Here were some NO-NOs that might bring BAD LUCK crashing down on you: Stepping over the threshold with your LEFT FOOT. SNEEZING on board a ship. CUTTING YOUR HAIR on board ship. Doing ANYTHING on the anniversary of a terrible DEFEAT. Romans wore good luck AMULETS shaped like MEDUSA's FACE, EYEBALLS and WILLIES. They feared the EVIL EYE and were wary of people with BLUE EYES. They studied BIRD PATTERNS to see what the gods were saying. Also LIGHTNING, THUNDER and WIND. It was bad luck to get MARRIED in JUNE! Any animal born with a DEFECT was a monstrum or PORTENT. Romans thought DEMONS lived in the SEWERS. To stop them POPPING UP you could WHISTLE. That's why they painted SNAKES & FORTUNA (good luck) on bathroom walls. A HARUSPEX was a man who looked at animal guts to see what the gods were saying. An AUGUR studied BIRDS and WEATHER. A SOOTHSAYER used any methods he could to foresee the future so you could stay safe. Also, most Romans had an altar called a LARARIUM in their house so they could make DAILY OFFERINGS to their special gods. And what do you find hundreds of in museums and at Roman sites? ALTARS. These were stone slabs dedicated to the god in fulfilment of a vow. You could make little offerings on them, too, sometimes even slaughter an animal, which was called a SACRIFICE.

Can you think of any other strange superstitious beliefs they held?

Threptus the beggar by Helen Forte

One of the things I try to do in my books is make them a bit like a TIME MACHINE to take you back to Ancient Rome. I start with an interesting character, put him in an exciting story and then mix in some of the SURPRISING and UNUSUAL ingredients of life in ANCIENT ROME.

My newest series is about a BEGGAR BOY turned SOOTHSAYER's APPRENTICE who lives in OSTIA the PORT of ROME. His name is THREPTUS and he is 8 years old.

We first meet THREPTUS in The Man from Pomegranate Street, when he is bidding four young detectives farewell. The youngest detective, LUPUS, tells Threptus to CARRY ON MY GOOD WORK and gives him a wax tablet.

THREPTUS then pops up in a short story called "Threptus and the Sacred Chickens" in The Legionary from Londinium and other Mini-Mysteries. Ingredients include a KITTEN, a SOOTHSAYER and of course some SACRED CHICKENS. 

Threptus the Roman beggar boy gets a mystery all to himself in The Sewer Demon. In that book, poor THREPTUS has to GO DOWN THE SEWER to look for CLUES!

Pee-you! (illustration from The Sewer Demon by Helen Forte)

Next comes The Poisoned Honey Cake. In that book poor THREPTUS is so hungry that he steals a honey-cake dedicated to a demigod and LOSES HIS VOICE. He has to solve the MYSTERY of how to get his voice back. This book includes ALTARS, SACRIFICIAL HONEY CAKES and SACRED CHICKENS.

I hope you will enjoy all the SMELLY, ANIMAL-FILLED and SPOOKY bits of my stories about THREPTUS, the Roman beggar turned soothsayer's apprentice. www.carolinelawrence.com

Roman Poo & Pee

[WARNING: this blog entry contains excerpts from a talk I gave at the British Museum called "Ancient Romans & their Poo". It will make you go "Ewww!"]

When I first started studying Classics, I thought ancient Rome must have been nice and clean because of their marvelous engineering and the aqueducts that brought tons of water from miles away. I thought ancient Rome had luxurious bath-houses and sparkling white marble columns and steps, like this scene (right) from the 1953 film Julius Caesar. I thought everybody wore nice clean tunics and no rubbish marred the streets. And of course Romans used sponges-on-sticks as toilet paper. The next best thing to puppy-soft Andrex. (read more in my blog So What's with the Sponge-Stick?) What could be more sanitary than a soft sea-sponge on a stick?

toilet in shape of chariot

However, as I researched my books and travelled the world, I realized that Rome was probably more like a hot, crowded third-world city: Calcutta, Marrakesh or Cairo. Roman cities would have been colourful but also dirty, crumbly, smelly and very unsanitary. There would have been human and animal dung in the road, plus pee, dead animals, flies, sick and infected people, tainted water, sour wine, mud, blood, rotting vegetables and rubble. Romans didn't know about bacteria or germs, so in many Roman homes you often find the toilet is right next to the hearth in the kitchen. Very rarely do you find a toilet like this luxurious marble one from the Baths of Caracalla, (shaped like a chariot in case you need to go in a hurry!)

In my first book, The Thieves of Ostia, Vespasian is Emperor.

One ancient Roman described Vespasian's expression as that of a man sitting on the toilet trying to do a poo. Here he is (right) with his son Titus. Both these portraits are upstairs in the British Museum. What do you think? Does Vespasian have a strained expression on his face?

When Vespasian was emperor he did several eccentric things, including putting a tax on urine. The ancient version of dry-cleaners were called fullers and they used urine (pee) for part of their cleaning process. (In fact the Latin word for urine is lotium and is linked to the word for wash.) The fullers often had pots outside their establishments where men could stop to pee. They also bought urine from the public latrines, and this was when the tax was paid.

Soon after this urine tax was imposed, Roman wits started calling piss-pots "vespasians". Embarrassed, Vespasian's son Titus asked his father why he insisted on making money by taxing smelly urine. Vespasian pulled out a sestertius and asked Titus to sniff it. "So?" shrugged Titus. "You see," said Vespasian. "Money doesn’t stink."  Some people in Germany liked this story so much that they made a family board game based on going to the toilet in Roman times! It’s called PECUNIA NON OLET which means "money doesn’t stink." Sadly, it doesn't exist in English.

In my second book, about the eruption of Vesuvius, I investigated the different types of graffiti on Roman walls. As well as the Christian graffiti that appears in this book they wrote things like DON'T POO HERE! We also know from inscriptions and graffiti that there were often queues outside the public loos! That meant the public latrines - the foricae - were heavily used and therefore probably quite filthy.

Romans didn't have soap. Instead, they had olive oil. They would go into the baths, strip off and rub scented olive oil all over their bodies. After some exercise and maybe a session in the steam room, they would then scrape it off with a bronze knife thingy called a strigil. Then they flicked this oily mixture of dead skin, oil, sweat and dirt (called gloios) onto the floor by the drains. They did this in the public baths. Imagine if you used your public swimming pool to get clean… along with all the neighbours on your block, young and old, healthy and sick. I used to belong to a health club until I found out people kept getting sick from going in the jacuzzi, the warm tub. If that can happen in today’s world, think how icky it must have been in Roman times!

a Roman chamberpot

In The Charioteer of Delphi, my characters Jonathan and Lupus go to the new Baths of Titus near the Circus Maximus in Rome. Jonathan finds something floating in the hot plunge. This probably happened a lot, unless pools were cleaned regularly. In addition to floaters, imagine a thin scum of dead skin, hair and scabs floating on top of the pool. As well as a scum on the water, think of what would cover the floor. Slippery gloios, spilled oil, and also crumbs from snacks, which we know people ate in the baths. It’s no wonder Pliny the Elder tells us that cockroaches loved the warm and steamy Roman Baths.

Because the Romans didn’t really understand about hygiene, there were probably flies everywhere. Vespasian’s younger brother Domitian used to amuse himself by trying to spear lazy summer flies with his stylus (the sharp implement used to write on wax tablets). One day a man went to see Domitian and asked his Greek scribe if there was anyone else in the room with the Emperor's younger brother. “Nobody,” replied the secretary dryly. “Not even a fly.”

Zoe from Blue Peter drinks pee?

My seventh Roman Mystery, The Enemies of Jupiter, has lots of gruesome facts about medicine and doctors. Doctors were called "dung-eaters" because some of them sipped your pee and tasted your poo to diagnose what was wrong with you. In that book I also tell how one doctor bleached his teeth by drinking his own urine! When I was on Blue Peter a few years ago I convinced presenter Zoe to try some urine teeth-bleaching mouthwash. She didn't like the taste! (Of course she was just pretending.) You can watch the clip on YouTube; the Roman beauty bit starts 4 minutes in. (That's me standing behind Zoe, in the unbleached stola.)

The Sirens of Surrentum is full of passion and poison. For this book I researched half a dozen deadly plants and their antidotes and learned some more fascinating facts. For example, everybody knows an antidote is something you take to stop poison taking effect. But what most books and TV shows don’t tell you is that an antidote counteracts poison by getting your body to expel it, either by vomiting or pooing! Or both.

In The Fugitive from Corinth, a Roman Mystery set on the Greek mainland, somebody accidentally empties a chamberpot out of a tavern window onto somebody down below! What is a chamberpot? It’s a pot you keep underneath your bed or in a corner of your room as a portable toilet. One Latin word for chamberpot is matella, which usually means a narrow necked flagon. Other words were pelvis, scaphium and situla. A Roman poet called Martial wrote an epigram about a  chamberpot "peeing from a chip in the side". (Epigram XII.32) Some scholars think chamberpots might have been more hygienic than toilets over pits or sewers. This is because animals might crawl out of the pit or sewer and track bacteria from poo onto food and bedding.

title card for my British Museum talk

There have always been urban myths about creatures climbing up out of the sewers or toilet. You can read more about this on my blog called Demon in the Toilet. You might think the Romans were silly and superstitious to believe there were demons in the loos. But in her forthcoming book, Roman Toilets: their Archaeology and Cultural History, Dr Gemma Jansen, a Dutch archaeologist, suggests that demons were the ancient Roman equivalent of bacteria. I think that is a brilliant idea. Like demons, bacteria are virtually invisible, but frightening because of what they can do to you… If a demon possessed you, he could make you sick or even kill you. Just like bad bacteria, germs or viruses.

don't worry; it's fake

There may not be pigs, alligators or demons in the loo, but there are germs. We know what the poor Romans didn't know: to wash our hands after doing a poo or a pee!

P.S. Thanks to everyone at the British Museum, and to all the kids who brought their parents to my talk, and to all of you brave enough to touch my fake dog poo. It was "sticky and stretchy"... Ewww!

P.P.S. If you want to know which of my Roman Mysteries has the highest 'yuk' factor it is probably The Enemies of Jupiter, now available as ebook and audio, as well as in the old fashioned format!

[The 17 books in the Roman Mysteries series are perfect for children 9+ studying Romans as a topic in Key Stage 2. The Roman Mystery Scrolls series is aimed at kids aged 7+ and the Roman Quests series, set in Roman Britain, is a follow on for kids 9+]