Sanitation in ancient Rome

• 1. Introduction

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  Sanitation in ancient Rome drew praise even from Roman writers themselves. The naturalist Pliny, in his Natural History, called the city's sewers 'the most noteworthy things of all' that Rome had built. Yet the very sources that record this pride also record a plainer truth. Despite the sewers, the public latrines, and the baths, disease was still rampant across the city. By the time Pliny wrote, that system had grown into one of the largest networks of its kind in the ancient world. A city that engineered such an elaborate way of moving clean water in and dirty water out should, in theory, have been healthy. It was not always one. What went wrong between the aqueduct and the gutter? Why did a civilization so proud of its sewers still struggle with disease?

• 2. The Great Sewer

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  The first Roman sewers are estimated to date to around 500 BC, built in imitation of methods the Etruscans had already used. These early channels ran underground and were designed mainly to drain rainwater before it could wash away valuable topsoil. Engineers also cut ditches to dry out swamps such as the Pontine Marshes, and dug subterranean channels through other marshy ground. For a long stretch of Roman history, these drains served one purpose: carrying off storm runoff and shallow groundwater.

  The system changed with the arrival of the Cloaca Maxima, an open channel that was later covered over and became one of the best known sanitation structures from the ancient world. Most sources place its construction in the sixth century BC, under the reign of the three Etruscan kings. It was built specifically to drain the low, marshy ground around the Forum. Scholars disagree sharply about how well it actually worked. Some argue there is not enough evidence to judge the Cloaca Maxima's effectiveness at all. Others estimate that it carried away as much as one million pounds of human waste and water.

  Alongside the Cloaca Maxima, the Romans built and linked many smaller sewers across the city. A law eventually punished anyone whose thrown waste struck and injured a passerby in the street, forcing the offender to pay damages. That law applied only during daylight hours, since darkness was presumed to excuse the mistake of hitting someone unseen.

  In 33 BC, while serving as Aedile, Agrippa oversaw a large-scale reconstruction of the Cloaca Maxima. The Greek writer Strabo lived from about 60 BC to AD 24 and praised this engineering in his Geographica. He described sewers covered by a vault of tightly fitted stones, roomy enough in places for a hay wagon to pass through. Strabo also marveled that Rome's aqueducts brought in so much water that it was as if rivers flowed through the city and its sewers alike. He wrote that 'almost every house' had its own water tanks, service pipes, and steady streams of water. Romans, he added, cared little for the outward beauty of their city, since they were 'occupied with other, greater and more necessary matters.'

  By around AD 100, homes in Rome began connecting directly to the sewer network, completing most of its infrastructure. Wealthier households were usually the ones granted a direct outlet, running beneath an extension of their latrine into the system below. Poorer homes, left without that connection, had to solve the problem of moving water into the city in the first place.

• 3. Water From The Hills

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  Eleven aqueducts supplied Rome with water, and not all of it was equal. The best water was reserved for drinking, while poorer-quality water went to the public baths and the latrines. The first of these aqueducts, the Aqua Appia, was built in 312 BC by the censor Appius. Before Appius acted, Rome had relied on the Tiber for its water for 441 years since the city's founding, according to Lord Amulree. In 312 BC, Appius Claudius Crassus began bringing water instead from the springs of the Alban hills. Amulree connects this shift to the teachings of Hippocrates, who taught that stagnant water should be refused in favor of spring water or rain water.

  The Aqua Marcia followed, built between 144 and 140 BC, bringing large amounts of high-quality water into the city. Centuries later, the Traiana aqueduct drew from clear springs on the northern and western slopes above Lake Bracciano. Of Rome's eleven aqueducts, eight entered the city close together on the Esquiline Hill.

  Toward the end of the first century AD, the emperor Nerva appointed a general named Frontinus as water commissioner. Frontinus described his work in a text called De aquaeductu, published at the end of that century. On taking the post, he surveyed and mapped the entire aqueduct system and investigated widespread abuses, including people illegally tapping into pipes. He organized gangs of specially trained workmen to keep the aqueducts maintained. Frontinus also tried to separate the water supply by quality. The best water went to drinking and cooking, while lesser water flowed to fountains, baths, and eventually the sewers.

  Provincial towns, cities, and even private villas that could afford the plumbing copied Rome's system. The Roman army, wherever it was stationed, kept its own latrines and bathhouses, known as thermae. Many of those provincial aqueducts, modernized since, still carry water today. But every aqueduct that reached Rome eventually answered to the same downstream fixture: the latrine.

• 4. The Public Latrine

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  At Housesteads, a Roman fort on Hadrian's Wall, the latrines are the best-preserved feature of the entire site. Soldiers sat on wooden boards with holes cut into them, positioned over one large trench, while water ran through a ditch at their feet. Similar flushing latrine systems have turned up at Pompeii, Herculaneum, and other Roman sites.

  Public latrines date back to the 2nd century BC. Poorer residents who lacked a private connection either used a pot emptied into the sewer, or visited a public latrine instead. Long bench-like seats, cut with keyhole-shaped openings, ran in rows and offered little privacy. Some latrines cost nothing to use, while others charged a small fee. Whether by design or accident, these shared spaces became places to socialize.

  According to Lord Amulree, the Hall of Curia in the Theatre of Pompey was where Julius Caesar was assassinated. It was later turned into a public latrine because of the dishonor that event had brought. A sewer ran beneath it like a small stream, carrying waste away to the Cloaca Maxima.

  Terra cotta piping carried wastewater away from private homes. The Romans were the first to seal pipes in concrete strong enough to resist the high water pressure found in siphons. They also recycled used bathwater, directing it into the flow that flushed the latrines. Beginning around the 5th century BC, officials called aediles took on responsibility for the sanitary system. Their duties included keeping drains and sewers efficient, cleaning the streets, controlling foul odors, and overseeing the baths.

  After using the latrine, Romans reached for a xylospongium to clean themselves. Newer research, though, suggests it may actually have been a toilet brush. What that tool touched next, and how it was cleaned between uses, turns out to matter a great deal for public health.

• 5. Streets Of Rubbish

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  In the poorer districts of Rome, rubbish was often left to pile up in the alleys between buildings. It sometimes grew so thick that stepping stones were needed just to cross from one side to the other. There was, as one description put it, no 'house-to-house garbage collection,' and residents dumped their refuse indiscriminately. Roman satirists complained that people regularly tossed trash straight out of their windows into the street below. As a direct result, the street level of the city itself rose over time. New buildings simply went up on top of layers of rubble and rubbish. That rising ground, one layer of trash at a time, sat only a short walk from the baths where Romans went to get clean.

• 6. The Hygiene Paradox

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  In Roman apartment blocks known as insulae, only the ground floor might have a latrine and a fountain shared by the whole building. Most homes across the city, in fact, were not connected to the street drains or sewers at all. That arrangement did nothing to stop residents on the upper floors from simply dumping their waste into the street below. Rome, after all, had no street cleaning service to deal with the mess.

  The baths, meanwhile, are known to symbolize the 'great hygiene of Rome,' and doctors commonly prescribed a bath to their patients. That habit meant the sick and the healthy often bathed together in the same water. Sick Romans generally tried to visit the baths in the afternoon or at night, hoping to avoid the healthy crowd. The baths, though, were not constantly cleaned. Someone bathing the next day could still catch an illness left behind by a sick bather from the day before.

  Latrines turned up in baths, forts, and even the Colosseum. After using one, Romans commonly wiped themselves with a sea sponge on a stick called a tersorium. Some latrines let users share a single sponge, while others expected people to bring their own. Between uses, the sponge was washed in a bucket of water mixed with salt or vinegar. That cleaning process, instead of solving the problem, turned the sponge into a breeding ground for bacteria and helped spread disease inside the latrine.

  Several types of helminths, or intestinal worms, were also widespread among Romans, and they were responsible for cases of dysentery across the population. It is commonly believed that Romans dipped these sponges in vinegar specifically for hygiene after defecating. Yet that particular detail, vinegar and all, is only attested to once in the historical record.