Ancient Romans Had A Genius Solution For Managing Waste – But They Made Some Big Mistakes

The history of Rome takes us back to the early eighth century B.C., when it was little more than a tiny town. The people who called it home in those days could surely never have imagined what lay ahead for their culture. After all, over the centuries it would develop far beyond any borders they might have recognized. Rome would become a vast empire, one that stretched through much of Europe and into parts of Asia and Africa.

Rome didn’t become an empire overnight, of course, and it actually spent almost half a millennium as a republic. But when Julis Caesar showed up during the first century B.C., he set the scene for the establishment of such a system of rule. Rome would rise to become a mighty empire, before crumbling around the fifth century A.D.

After the Roman Empire’s demise, its influence was still felt keenly throughout its former territories. The languages spoken in the countries we now know as Italy, Spain, France, Portugal, and Romania all evolved from the Roman tongue of Latin. And of course lots of English has Latinate roots, and the West uses an essentially Roman alphabet. Christianity took root all over the world, and Roman systems for understanding the passing of time came to serve as the basis for the calendar we use today.

And all this is to say nothing of the architectural legacy left behind by the Romans. They were great builders, as evidenced by the many ruins that have survived throughout the centuries. But while the Colosseum and other such marvels take all the plaudits, less attention is given to things like the Roman methods for dealing with human waste. But despite the gross subject matter, it’s worth having a think about.

We can’t talk about Roman sanitation without first discussing their ingenious construction of aqueducts. They started developing these things early in their history, around 312 B.C. With that, the people were able to get water from one place to another over tremendous distances. The societal benefits of such a technology cannot be overstated.

The Romans weren’t responsible for inventing aqueducts: they had existed long ago in Babylon, Egypt, and Assyria. The Romans did, though, hone the water-carrying structures’ design. Their ingenious grasp of engineering was vital in the development of the aqueduct, and before long they were in use throughout the empire.

In fact, Roman aqueducts were so thoroughly well-designed that some of them are still being used today, many centuries after they were constructed. The Trevi Fountain that sits in the city center of modern Rome today, for example, uses water from the Aqua Virgo. This structure traces back to the year 19 B.C., albeit with restorative works having taken place since then.

One major reason that ancient Roman structures like various aqueducts and the Colosseum are still standing is because of the culture’s innovations in concrete and cement. The Romans started using these materials about 2,100 years ago, before utilizing it all throughout their empire. Without these inventions, the civilization may never have thrived in quite the way it did.

The concrete used by the Romans wasn’t as strong as anything we’d find today, but it was still extremely sturdy. They made it with volcanic ash and rock, among other materials, and even when poured underwater, it retained its structural integrity. That was useful for building facilities such as piers or baths.

The cement was also useful for laying down roads, which the Romans did in abundance. As per website History.com, more than 50,000 miles of these lanes had been constructed by circa 200 B.C. These routes were an essential means of maintaining the empire, as they connected its most important locations to one another.

The ingenuity of Roman roads didn’t just rely on the concrete, though. The way they were designed was vital, too. The roads were straight, but they were also fashioned to have curves at the edges, which was important for drainage. If the Romans hadn’t come up with innovations like that, who knows what our world would look like now?

Beyond solid developments like roads and buildings, the Romans made more intellectual contributions to the world. Before their civilization came along, for instance, literature was expressed through more rudimentary media such as tablets or scrolls. The Romans, though, introduced us to the codex, which was a bunch of pages bound together. It was basically the precursor to books as we know them today.

The codex didn’t come into being at the snap of a finger. Prototypes were initially composed of wax tablets, but over time animal skin was employed. This looked more like a modern book. This new information technology was notably taken up by the Christian community, which used it to produce and spread the Bible.

The Romans were also pivotal in creating the calendar we use nowadays. While it’s not exactly the same as the present-day Gregorian calendar, the version brought in by Julius Caesar was pretty close. It almost aligned with the amount of time it takes the Earth to orbit the Sun — but not quite.

The so-called Julian calendar was slightly off from correctly measuring the solar year by a mere 11 minutes. It was so close to being accurate, but it did require some new calculations when the modern Gregorian calendar was being formulated. But without the work of the Romans, this couldn’t have been done.

Meanwhile, many of the functions of government that we’d recognize today can trace their roots back to ancient Rome. As per History.com, welfare programs were rolled out in the empire, such as providing citizens with a set amount of affordable grain. Other initiatives saw the government provide items of clothing and education to poor or parentless kids.

More luxurious items such as wine, pork, oil, and bread later came to be placed under price controls by the Roman government. The aim was to keep such products affordable for the public at large. The benefit for the ruling elite was that it would have helped secure their continued popularity in the eyes of those less privileged than themselves.

Our modern system of rules and regulations also owes a lot to the Romans. If you’ve ever heard of terms such as “pro bono,” “habeas corpus,” “subpoena,” or “affidavit,” then you have the Romans to thank. Their legal system was originally premised on a code known as the Twelve Tables, which was really important during the time of the Roman Republic.

Instigated circa 450 B.C. the Twelve Tables set out rules relating to topics including religion, possession of property, and even divorce. It also included punitive measures to be taken against law-breakers. It was later developed into the Corpus Juris Civilis, a legal doctrine with a distinct relevance to the present era.

The Corpus Juris Civilis serves as the foundation for many of our contemporary ideas about the law. Even after the Roman Empire had collapsed, many of the doctrines it laid out survived in some form. We can see elements of it in action today in the legal systems of several countries in Europe.

Clearly, the Roman Empire left a profound mark on the world as we know it today. But not all of the civilization’s contributions were quite so lofty and high-brow as its lawmaking and architecture. After all, the Romans also made toilets. And as the historian Pliny the Elder has suggested, this was arguably their “most noteworthy” accomplishment of all.

The Romans owed their sanitation system to one of their other clever innovations: their aqueducts. Like today, water was necessary to wash any human waste away from where it was deposited. Without the aqueducts, that wouldn’t have been possible — at least not at scale.

The Roman sanitation system definitely had some similarities to what we’d recognize today. But there were also some pretty enormous differences. Most glaringly, perhaps, is the communal nature of many toilets throughout the empire. Some lucky folk had access to their own toilets, but others had to use public facilities — and they afforded a lot less privacy than any of us today could handle.

A public toilet in ancient Rome was basically a room containing benches made of stone or wood. These would’ve had several holes in them, over which people would sit down and do what they had to do. But if you were to sit over one of these gaps — which led to a sewer below — there’d be nothing to divide you from the person sitting beside you.

And that’s not the worst of it. When you were finished up, you wouldn’t have access to toilet paper to clean yourself. Romans instead used a “tersorium,” which was basically a stick with a sponge attached to the end. You’d have to then clean this thing in a gutter filled with water, which passed through the space.

On the plus side, privacy wasn’t totally out of the question, as anthropologist Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow explained to Smithsonian magazine. She said, “Today, you pull down your pants and expose yourself, but when you had your toga wrapped around you, it provided a natural protection. The clothes [the Romans] wore would provide a barricade so you actually could do your business in relative privacy, get up and go. And hopefully your toga wasn’t too dirty after that.”

If you’re still not convinced by the prospect of Roman public latrines, you wouldn’t be the only one. Not everyone in the civilization itself used them, especially if they were wealthy. As per website of journal Nature, richer people had private toilets, which they filled up and later emptied onto outdoor spaces. Only rarely would a private toilet be hooked up to a proper sewage system.

Historians once believed that the sewers of the Roman Empire were commonplace, but it now seems they were somewhat rare. On top of that, it turns out they likely weren’t all that hygienic. Compared to the standards we’d expect now, the quality of the sewage system in ancient Rome really was lacking.

A recent investigation of a vast ancient sewer underneath modern Rome has found how bad the situation really must have been. Nature reported how the study had concluded that it apparently would have taken only a year or less before this thing became clogged up, which isn’t especially good going. It would therefore have needed to be cleaned very often, which would’ve been both unpleasant and dangerous.

Another major issue with the Roman sanitary system was that they never figured out the usefulness of pipes shaped like the letter “s.” Such a design helps to stop flies from getting in and out of sewers, which is important. Otherwise the buzzy insects are liable to spread some nasty diseases.

According to the palaeopathologist Piers Mitchell, the population of ancient Rome wasn’t exactly healthy. Having conducted some research on the matter, Mitchell found that many of the civilization’s people were riddled with parasites. In fact, such infections appeared to be more common during Roman times than in some eras that came before.

One might presume that having a sanitation system within a society would help to keep parasites at bay, at least compared to places that don’t have such systems. According to Dr. Mitchell, though, that doesn’t appear to be the case. As he explained to Nature, “Toilets and sewers and things didn’t seem to improve the intestinal health of the Roman population.”

And when we think about it for just a moment, it’s clear to see why Roman toilets and sewers might not have helped. They were, after all, incredibly unhygienic. At the time, the public toilets might well have seemed like the height of luxury. In reality, though, they were really quite foul.

Roman latrines were likely very dirty and very smelly. The people using them might sometimes miss the hole in the bench, and then what? Speaking to Smithsonian magazine, Dr. Koloski-Ostrow put it in fairly simple terms. She said, “Think about it — how often does someone come and wipe off that marble?” The answer is probably “not very often at all.”

The more affluent Romans would apparently only ever venture into a public toilet facility when the situation was dire. Otherwise, they’d avoid it at all costs. Even those who funded their construction didn’t want their name to be sullied by association. As Dr. Koloski-Ostrow has pointed out, if a rich Roman paid for something like a public bath, they’d have their name chiseled onto the building so their contribution would be noted. That doesn’t seem to have been the case when it came to public toilets.

These same rich people probably used personal toilets when they were at home, but this wasn’t terribly pleasant either. These commodes weren’t usually connected to sewers, so they therefore had to be emptied outside. That job was often forced onto slaves, who would remove the waste and dump it outdoors.

Despite all the amazing innovations the Romans brought to the world, their sewage system just wasn’t up to scratch by modern standards. It may have been a good idea in theory, but the reality was extremely problematic. They just couldn’t deal with waste in large quantities, which was a problem for such a vast civilization.

As per Smithsonian, the sewage system ultimately led to pretty horrendous pollution, which was extremely damaging for people. So, while it meant they weren’t faced with human waste directly on their streets, it was also spreading unseen diseases. Plus, it proved very expensive for the Romans to keep their system up and running.

Despite its health hazards, the Roman sewage system did get some things right, though. It was really useful for dealing with floods, as excess liquid on the streets would get drained away into the subterranean chambers below. So, even when they weren’t getting things totally correct, the Romans’ ingenuity still managed to shine through. And they certainly shaped the world we live in nowadays.