Wherein the Romans went where the in-crowd went…and shared a butt-sponge afterward.

One of the most notable trends of 2020 was hoarding toilet paper; you could wander empty aisles at the supermarket where the best you might hope to find would be a particularly large dust bunny you could sock away for a “rainy day.” Unfortunately, this trend is continuing as we stagger from 2020 into 2021.
The Romans didn’t worry about toilet paper shortages, or even about luxuries like private lavatories. For them, the noble Roman virtues included hanging out with your friends in a public potty and then wiping down with a communal sponge-on-a-stick.
I Go Where the In-Crowd Goes
Relieving oneself in ancient Rome was generally a communal activity. Everyone, from rich to poor, utilized public latrines—both for “doing business” and socializing (although, as Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow notes, public toilets “must have been pretty dirty places—excrement and urine on the seats and floor, poor lighting…Surely, not someplace one would want to spend much time”).
Surviving Roman latrines, such as the “Baths of the Seven Sages” in Ostia, Italy, and Housesteads Roman fort in Northumberland, England, show stone benches with a row of open seats upon which people would sit to relieve themselves (the benches were situated over sewers through which flowing water would carry away the waste). While these were not the most glamorous facilities in town, latrines sometimes provided artwork (and graffiti) to entertain the occupants (these, unlike the phones we use to piddle away the time, could not be dropped into the toilet). For example, the walls in Ostia livened up the room with paintings of Greek luminaries letting it rip—the fresco of Solon showed above includes the text, “ut bene cacaret, ventrem pupanit Solon” (“Solon rubbed his belly to poop well”).
Most Roman homes did not have toilets emptying into the sewers, not only because such a facility was too expensive for most citizens, but also because widespread access to the sewer provided two significant dangers. First, because sewer-accessible toilets were simply holes built over the sewer line, it was possible for parasites and animals to invade the home; the 2nd–3rd century writer Aelian even describes an octopus that would raid a home’s pantry each night through a toilet in Puteoli. Secondly, the buildup of methane gas in the sewers sometimes caused flames to shoot from toilet openings, and occasionally caused latrines themselves to explode (many latrines displayed spells or images of the goddess Fortuna to protect users). Roman homes therefore—if they had any facilities at all—simply used a chamberpot or cesspit, frequently located in the kitchen (giving an entirely new dimension to the comforting smell of home cooking, although perhaps we could look at a particularly ferocious use of these facilities after a meal as an early precursor of a bad review on Yelp).
Getting the Short End of the Stick
As terrifying as toilet octopi and explosive flames might be, they are hardly less appalling to modern people than the process of cleaning up after eliminating waste. The Romans faced two personal hygiene issues with their latrines: wiping excrement and washing hands.
The Romans didn’t need to hoard toilet paper because each latrine had at least one (but sometimes no more than one) tersorium, a sea-sponge attached to the end of a stick. The sponge was used to wipe one’s bum, with the stick as a handle, and then was placed into a basin of water or vinegar for cleansing. Hands were then washed in a trench of water flowing in front of the toilet bench; tersoria were also sometimes rinsed in the trench, therefore making the whole hand-washing enterprise suspiciously unproductive.
Putting aside the health issues of a public sponge for wiping (which are believed to have spread typhoid and cholera), we must wonder what the etiquette for passing the tersorium would have been: stick pointing to the recipient, or straight up? In either case, I assume anyone wanting to practice juggling would have been stuffed down a flaming toilet hole.
Image: Fresco of Solon in the Baths of the Seven Sages in Ostia, Italy. (Source)