After watching several episodes of Cities of the Underworld on The History Channel, I learned that the Romans apparently had indoor toilets. It's a shame that technology was lost in the Dark Ages.
After watching several episodes of Cities of the Underworld on The History Channel, I learned that the Romans apparently had indoor toilets. It's a shame that technology was lost in the Dark Ages.
Roman indoor toilets were not 'common' place in every house. They were common in the bathhouses though, as the bath houses had water transported to them. The idoor toilets functioned by have many 'latrines' positioned over a channel of flowing water into which ones waste was dropped. They even had 'backside' scrubbers that made use of the water to cleanse oneself after the deed.
Here are some images of the roman latrines:
http://www.englishheritageprints.com...112_440440.jpg
http://www.sewerhistory.org/images/wm/wmj/wmj10.jpg
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I found an interesting vignette about indoor plumbing in "Life in a Medieval City" by Joseph & Frances Gies:
"A woman who keeps a lodging house is summonsed for creating a 'vile nuisance.' She has had a wooden pipe built from the privy chamber of her house to the gutter, rendering it evil-smelling and sometimes blocking it up. The neighbors bring her into court, where she is fined six deniers and ordered to remove the pipe within forty days." (p. 204)
So evidently plumbing crimes were not unheard of, so great was the desire for indoor plumbing in France c. 1250 AD.
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Unlike the movie "Gladiator", the Roman Emperor Commudus was not killed in the arena, rather his imperial guards threw him down the "guarderobe" of the imperial palace.
This is where we get the word "commode" for toilet.
So I guess the romans had something like a guarderobe in certain large buildings.
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A popular tale, but not one that is true. Commodus was strangled in the bath (or possibly his bed, sources differ) by a man named Narcissus (not to be confused with the Narcissus of Greek mythology), after a plot to poison him failed.
Cassius Dio: LXXIII, paragraph 22:5.
Herodian's History of the Roman Empire Since the Death of Marcus Aurelius, 1.17
The two words are related, though:
commodus -a -um [to measure , in full, complete]; hence [proper, fit, appropriate]; of persons, character, etc., [friendly, obliging, pleasant]. N. as subst. commodum -i, [suitable time, opportunity, convenience; use, advantage, interest; remuneration; loan]. N. acc. as adv. commodum, [at the right time, opportunely; just then]. Adv. commode, [rightly, properly, fitly; pleasantly, comfortably, kindly]. http://www.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/l...mmod&ending=us
Commodus' name indicates that he is a proper man--the right man for the time (an obvious misnomer if ever there was one). As the word commode came to English through French, it retained its meaning of something being convenient, or properly placed. Compare our words commodious and accommodate.
/linguistics lesson
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