One late Roman writer tells a particularly exciting story about such a demon. A certain Dexianos was sitting on the privy in the middle of the night, the text tells us, when a demon raised itself in front of him with savage ferocity. As soon as Dexianos saw the “hellish and insane” demon, he “became stunned, seized with fear and trembling, and covered with sweat.” Such superstition would provide another good reason for avoiding sewer connections in private house toilets.
Goddess Fortuna on the wall of a the Suburban Baths in Pompeii.
Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow, CC BY-ND
Going to a public toilet was definitely a dangerous business, so it is no wonder that the Goddess Fortuna often appears as a kind of “guardian angel” on the walls of toilets. We don’t tend to put religious shrines in our toilets, but we find them again and again in both public and private toilets in the Roman world.
One graffito on a side street in Pompeii directs a warning at a toilet-user himself: “Crapper Beware the Evil”… of crapping on the street? Of putting your bare bottom on an open toilet hole for fear of biting demons? Of the ill health you will feel if you do not move your bowels well? We’ll never know for sure, but these are likely possibilities, I think.
When we look at the evidence for Roman sanitary practices, both textual and archaeological, it becomes obvious that their perspectives were quite different from ours. Gaining a better understanding of Roman life on their streets, in their public spaces, and in their private dwellings shows us that they were in the early stages of developing systems that we’ve adopted – with upgrades – for our own problems with sanitation and clean water today.
Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow, Professor of Classical Studies, Brandeis University
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Featured Image Credit: Fr Lawrence Lew, OP, CC BY-NC-ND