Random Disgusting Details Of Every Day Life In Ancient Rome (16 items)

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  (#7) Their Graffiti And Poetry Were Really Dirty

  As far as disgusting facts about Rome go, this one isn't so unusual: Romans loved a good dirty joke. The town of Pompeii, in particular, boasted tons of dirty graffiti scrawled on public walls and in private bars alike. You could be strolling down a lane and be confronted with phrases like "Restituta, take off your tunic, please, and show us your privates."  Other drawings featured erect phalloi, images that, while obviously sexual, were also thought to ward off disease and illness (virility penises, get it?).

  And the naughty sayings also appeared in poems. In Catullus's famously dirty "Poem 16," he called his friend Aurelius a phallus-sucker and his pal Furius a "little b**ch."
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  (#12) Roman Soldiers And Emperors Slayed In Bulk

  The Roman army, during both the Republican and Imperial periods, decimated opposing armies and Average Joes alike, removing whoever got in the way of areas they were looking to conquer. And the Romans eliminated in bulk.

  Statistics vary depending on the account, but the second-century sack of Seleucia, a Mesopotamian city, involved "burning down" a community of 300,000. Later, the emperor Maxentius exterminated thousands of his fellow senators in order to take their property and wives, and some estimate that the emperor Tiberius slaying more than 35,000 during his reign. 
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  (#6) Camel Brains And Animal Dung Were Considered Cure-Alls

  Getting sick in imperial Rome? You might well have had to swallow some animal dung. In his Natural History, Pliny writes that "a camel's brain, dried and taken in vinegar, cures epilepsy," while "the ash of the burnt dung makes the hair curl." But not just camel, as goat excrement was proven to be useful. Pliny says that an "application also of she-goat's dung boiled down in vinegar was an approved treatment for snake bite, and so is the ash of fresh dung boiled down in wine." Tortoise dung was excellent for curing abscesses, while holding rabbit dung convinced dogs not to bark at you.
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  (#3) They Washed Their Clothes With Urine

  Here's the ancient version of a dry cleaner: a fuller, who used urine to clean clothes. It sounds disgusting, but ammonia, a key ingredient in human-made water, is great at getting tricky stains out of togas. And, unlike soap, it was easy to acquire. Fullers could just put vessels on street corners, and men who needed to pass water could contribute their services by using into the buckets.

  The first-century Roman emperor Vespasian famously instated a "urine tax," raking in a bunch of cash by taxing the public bins where people dumped urine collected from toilets. And the tax was quite lucrative. Some even credit it with saving the Empire at a particularly precarious time. When Vespasian's son, the future emperor Titus, expressed his displeasure at this governmental initiative, his dad "held a piece of money from the first payment to his son's nose, asking whether its odor was offensive to him," according to Suetonius. Titus, of course, said no, and Vespasian famously replied, "Yet it comes from urine!"
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  (#2) Poor Sanitation Caused Lots Of Illness And Parasites

  Ancient Rome had a pretty sophisticated sewer system, but it's purpose – rather than to remove excrement, and general filth – was to drain standing water from the streets. Ancient Romans had very different cleanliness standards than more contemporary civilizations, and they just weren't that concerned about poop and rotting food in the streets as long as they could walk through them. However, examining Roman excrement has revealed how absolutely awful these standards were for people at the time. In fact, archaeologists have found tons of parasites and infections in fossilized Roman poop, including roundworm and dysentery. 

  In addition, the Romans, frugal people that they were, didn't dispose of a lot of the excrement they had access to. Instead they used it to fertilize their crops, which recycled their bowels back onto their food. And their version of ketchup, a favorite condiment, was an uncooked, fermented fish sauce called garum. This beloved solution might have allowed tapeworm parasites to thrive. 
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  (#4) The Empire Was Built By Millions Of Slaves

  Rome wasn't built in a day, but it was built on the backs – and with the hands of – a magnitude of slaves. In fact, one of the city's foundational myths is the story of the capture of the Sabine women, who were taken from their community and forced to become reproductive machines for the creation and continuance of the Roman population.

  Whether bought in markets, seized from nearby communities, or captured as a result of foreign wars, servi (as the slaves were called in Latin) were estimated to have made up anywhere from one-third to three-fifths of Italy's entire population. That means there were up to four million slaves in Italy alone, which doesn't even count the rest of the Empire!

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