Sanitation and Public Toilets in Ancient Rome

Introduction

Sanitation was a cornerstone of urban life in ancient Rome, woven into the fabric of the city’s infrastructure. As Rome’s population swelled to nearly a million at its peak, managing water and waste became essential to keep the metropolis habitable. The Romans engineered extensive aqueducts to supply clean water and built grand sewers like the Cloaca Maxima to carry away runoff and effluent.

The naturalist Pliny the Elder hailed the sewer system as “the most noteworthy” of Rome’s achievements, marveling that its channels ran like subterranean rivers beneath the city. These conduits, initially excavated in the time of the kings, were so large that the Greek geographer Strabo noted hay wagons could pass inside.

Emperors and engineers alike took pride in this infrastructure: Frontinus, appointed water commissioner under Nerva, organized dedicated maintenance crews and allocated second-grade aqueduct water to flush public baths, fountains, and latrines.

Even a minor goddess, Cloacina, personified the main drain’s purifying force, underscoring the quasi-sacred status of Rome’s sanitation network. In the 1st century A.D., Emperor Vespasian famously imposed a tax on urine collected from public urinals – a pragmatic move that led to the proverb “money does not stink,” symbolizing how even waste could be turned to the public good.

Overall, the Roman state’s investment in sanitation infrastructure—from sewers and aqueducts to public toilets—reflected a recognition that clean water and waste removal were vital for urban living and the health of the empire’s populace.

Roman Attitudes Toward Cleanliness

Roman sanitation was not “sanitation” in the modern sense, and their attitudes toward cleanliness differed from today’s standards. The primary aim was to remove excess water and nuisances from streets rather than to eliminate microscopic pathogens, which were unknown to them. Drainage and practicality guided their efforts.

Nonetheless, by the standards of antiquity, Rome’s sanitary provisions were remarkably advanced. Aqueducts channeled fresh spring water into cities, enabling public baths, street basins, and latrines to function continuously.

The integration of these systems into imperial urban planning set Roman cities apart from their predecessors. Achievements such as public baths, flush toilets, and covered sewers would not be equaled again until modern times.

In this way, Roman engineering laid a foundational concept: that a civilized city should provide water for its people and convey waste away from living areas. This legacy would echo through later ages, influencing urban infrastructure long after the fall of Rome.

Engineering and Infrastructure

Roman public toilets (latrinae or foricae) and sewers were feats of practical engineering. A typical public latrine was a room lined with a continuous bench of stone or marble, perforated by keyhole-shaped openings at short intervals. Underneath the seats ran a constant flow of water to carry waste into the sewer, usually fed by excess water from baths or aqueducts.

In front of the bench, a shallow water trough served for washing—a necessity given that Romans used sponges on sticks (tersoria) instead of toilet paper. These sponge sticks were rinsed in water (often salted or vinegar-infused for minimal disinfection) and reused communally. Vitruvius, the 1st-century B.C. architect, even recommended placing charcoal in drains to absorb odors, indicating an awareness of sanitation in architectural design.

The result was a rudimentary but effective flush system: continuously running water kept the latrines wet and helped move waste out. Latrine rooms often had raised thresholds or even revolving doors at the entrance to contain sights and smells; one well-designed facility at Ostia Antica featured a turnstile-style door and a central water basin for hand-cleaning. The engineering was simple in concept yet robust enough that many latrine drains still function millennia later.

The Sewer System

Beneath the streets, Rome’s sewer system formed an extensive lattice of covered channels (cloacae). Initially built to drain stormwater from low-lying areas (the Cloaca Maxima was first constructed in the 6th century B.C. to reclaim the marshy Forum valley), the sewers expanded to receive outflow from public baths, fountains, and latrines.

They were typically vaulted tunnels of stone or concrete, large enough in Rome that maintenance crews could walk inside. The Cloaca Maxima itself reached dimensions of roughly 4 meters high by 3 meters wide and stretched several kilometers. Roman engineers laid many sewer lines with terracotta pipes and cemented them securely, an innovation to withstand high water pressure and prevent leakage.

Aqueduct overflow and rainwater provided the flushing force: Frontinus reported that pure water was reserved for drinking while “second-rate” water was channeled to the sewers and baths. This constant supply created what Strabo described as rivers flowing under the city.

Still, the system required human intervention. Heavy sediment and garbage could accumulate in the sewers, necessitating regular cleaning by laborers (often slaves or convicts conscripted for the task). Ancient writers noted that men had to descend to clear blockages when the flow stagnated.

The Romans lacked U-bend traps or gratings in their plumbing, so sewer gases and pests were persistent issues. Despite these shortcomings, the infrastructure was durable and intelligently planned. Sewer inlets were placed along streets to catch runoff, and many private buildings that could afford it were eventually connected to the network.

By the late imperial era, the city of Rome purportedly housed 144 public latrines around its neighborhoods, though not all were directly plumbed into the mains. Maintenance of these facilities fell to the aediles (magistrates responsible for city upkeep) and to imperial officers like the curators of the water supply.

The fact that parts of Rome’s sewer system (including the Cloaca Maxima) still function today attests to the engineering skill involved. Roman sanitary infrastructure was a marriage of utilitas (utility) and ingenium (ingenuity), enabling their cities to flourish on a scale otherwise unimaginable in the ancient world.

Social and Cultural Norms

Using a Roman public toilet was a communal—and often uneasy—experience. Unlike modern restrooms, privacy was entirely absent: there were no partitions between the waist-high seats, and 10 to 20 people might sit elbow-to-elbow tending to nature’s call together.

To modern eyes this arrangement seems awkward, but Romans were accustomed to group settings in many aspects of daily life (from public baths to dining), and defecating side by side was generally tolerated. Tunics and togas afforded some modesty, since a user could drape their garment to cover their lap while seated.

Still, contemporary accounts and archaeological findings suggest that public latrines were not places to linger or socialize at length. They were often dim, malodorous chambers that people used out of necessity rather than comfort.

In fact, significantly less graffiti is found in latrines compared to other public spaces, possibly because patrons wished to finish their business quickly and leave. In Roman satire, the unpleasantness of these facilities was a source of humor and caution.

The poet Martial joked about the foul smells, and Juvenal warned unwary pedestrians about the danger of chamber pots being emptied from above – one was considered lucky if only the contents (and not the pot itself) rained down upon them while walking at night. Such quips underscore that even in a culture with generally relaxed attitudes toward bodily functions, public hygiene left much to be desired.

Class, Gender, and Private Alternatives

Social class and gender influenced how Romans approached sanitation. Public latrines were open to all classes, and there was usually no fee to use them, but elite citizens often avoided them. Wealthy Romans typically had private latrines in their homes or apartments – a simple bench over a cesspit – and many aristocrats (especially women of status) preferred to use chamber pots rather than venture into public foricae.

One ancient observer noted that respectable women rarely entered these latrines, which were infested with vermin and associated with the lower classes. Chamber pots were routinely kept in bedrooms or kitchens; household slaves (or stercorarii, “manure removers”) would empty them, either into the local cesspit or onto refuse heaps.

The contents (termed “night soil”) were often collected by farmers to be used as fertilizer, an economically practical if unsavory arrangement. In insulae (tenement buildings), shared privies or pots were the norm for tenants, and residents might simply dump waste out of upper-story windows.

Roman law actually penalized injury caused by falling waste, reflecting how common the problem was. The satirist Juvenal vividly described the nightly peril in Rome’s streets, implying that a person might be foolish to go out to dinner without making a will, so great was the risk of being struck by filth tumbling from above.

Hygiene, Health, and Superstition

Notions of cleanliness and hygiene in Roman culture were shaped by different understandings of disease. Bad odors and miasmas were thought to pose health risks, so the smell of latrines was a concern even if germs were unknown.

We know that public latrines were periodically cleansed by flushing water, but there was no routine disinfecting regimen beyond rinsing the shared sponges in salt or vinegar water. This practice, combined with the lack of soap or true sanitizer, meant that parasites and bacteria could spread easily.

Modern analysis of latrine deposits has revealed copious parasite eggs (whipworm, roundworm, etc.), indicating intestinal parasites were widespread among Romans despite their sanitation systems. Episodes of dysentery and other waterborne illnesses must have been common.

Roman medical writers like Galen acknowledged that cesspits and stagnant sewage bred unhealthy air, even if they could not see the microbes involved. To mitigate the perceived dangers, the Romans intertwined superstition and religion with their sanitary habits.

Many latrines featured small shrines or frescoes invoking Fortuna, the goddess of luck, as a protector of toilet-goers. It appears people would say a quick prayer for a safe and undisturbed visit. Archaeologists have even found magic spells like abracadabra scratched on lavatory walls as charms against evil.

A late anecdote recounts a man on a privy who was terrified by a sudden apparition—interpreted as a latrine demon—causing him to break into a sweat. Such tales of supernatural menace, along with the very real threats of methane gas explosions and biting rats coming up through the openings, gave public toilets a fearful reputation.

Thus, while bodily functions were a mundane fact of life, the Romans imbued them with a mix of practicality, resignation, and ritual. To use a latrine in ancient Rome was to partake in a necessary social routine—one that bridged class divides in practice, yet was fraught with nuisances and anxieties that all users could appreciate.

Archaeological Evidence

Physical remains of Roman sanitation infrastructure abound, offering vivid insights into how these systems worked. Ostia Antica, Rome’s ancient port city, provides some of the best-preserved examples of public latrines.

At Ostia’s Forum Baths, for instance, a large communal latrine still survives: a rectangular room with marble seats lining three walls and a central drain below. This facility could accommodate over twenty users simultaneously and was ingeniously equipped with a semicircular stone basin at the entrance for washing up.

Traces of the original wooden doors suggest the latrine had a revolving entrance door, perhaps to limit the view from outside while allowing continuous access. Excavations at Ostia have revealed how latrine waste was connected to the broader sewer network. One sewer line under the sidewalks collected the outflow and channeled it directly to the Tiber River, demonstrating the standard Roman practice of discharging urban effluent into the nearest waterway.

In Ostia and elsewhere, latrines were commonly situated adjacent to public baths or marketplaces – high-traffic areas where people might need them and where a water source was readily available to flush the system. Architecturally, latrines varied in plan: some were U-shaped or L-shaped rooms, others nearly square or even apsidal (curved ends), depending on space available.

The construction materials also varied. In Italy, many urban latrines used sturdy marble or limestone for the bench seats (some Ostia seats were repurposed slabs, even an old sarcophagus in one case), whereas wooden seats have been found at military outposts and in smaller installations, indicating a cheaper build. The endurance of these structures is evident – at sites like Ostia, one can still sit on the very benches used in antiquity and observe the wear patterns left by ancient users.

Provincial and Domestic Latrines

Elsewhere in the Roman world, toilets have been uncovered in a range of contexts. Pompeii and Herculaneum, the cities buried by Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D., offer a snapshot of sanitation frozen in time.

In Pompeii, dozens of private one-seater latrines have been identified inside houses, shops, and taverns. These are typically small closet-like niches, often located in or near the kitchen of a house. The choice to place toilets by kitchen hearths strikes modern observers as unhygienic, but it was practical for the Romans: the kitchen provided access to water and drains, and it meant refuse from food preparation could be swept directly into the toilet.

Interestingly, despite Pompeii’s underground sewer lines, archaeologists found that virtually none of the private latrines in the city were connected to a sewer main. Instead, each toilet emptied into a cesspit beneath or behind the building. Homeowners evidently preferred enclosed cesspits which could be cleaned out periodically, rather than direct sewer hookups that might allow pests or noxious fumes into the house.

Ancient legal texts (such as Ulpian’s Digest) confirm that connecting to the public sewer was legal, so it was personal choice or cost that deterred many from doing so. The fear of creatures crawling up the pipes was not unfounded – one colorful story by the writer Aelian tells of an enormous octopus that supposedly swam up a sewer in the coastal town of Puteoli and raided a merchant’s pantry.

Whether fact or fable, this tale highlights the perceived risks of the plumbing. Thus, in Pompeii most latrine pits were sealed off and later had to be emptied by sanitation workers. Excavations have found piles of human waste mixed with trash in these cesspools, sometimes hardened into coprolite masses.

By examining such deposits, researchers have identified seeds, fruit stones, fish bones, and parasite eggs – revealing details of the ancient diet and prevalent diseases. Herculaneum’s sewer system, buried under volcanic material, was found clogged with a 1.3-meter layer of compacted sewage, illustrating that even a continuous water flow could not flush everything away.

This sludge contained food remnants and even personal items dropped into drains, offering an unprecedented look at daily life in A.D. 79. The sheer volume of waste indicates that sewers had to be manually dredged; ancient sources corroborate that gangs of slaves or prisoners were sent underground to shovel out the filth when needed.

Latrines Across the Empire

Public latrines, being communal, have left their mark in the archaeological record as well. Besides Ostia’s examples, notable remains include the large latrines at Dougga in North Africa and at the far-flung military forts of the empire.

At Hadrian’s Wall in Britain, the fort of Housesteads preserves a well-designed latrine block: a square stone room where soldiers once sat along facing benches, with a central water channel and an ingenious system for diverting stream water to flush the drains. Such discoveries confirm that the Roman latrine model was replicated across provinces.

In Rome itself, a massive multi-seater latrine was excavated on the Palatine Hill, believed to be the restroom for imperial palace staff during Nero’s reign. It contained a curved bench that could host around fifty users at once, with no dividers between them. Evidence of this facility – from its plumbing to the drain outlet – shows how the emperors provided even for their servants’ sanitary needs within palace grounds.

Toilet Artifacts and Sacred Spaces

Artifacts and inscriptions associated with toilets are relatively rare (a sign, perhaps, that the subject was not often commemorated in writing), but a few survive.

A famous graffiti from Pompeii warns “Cacator cave malum,” loosely meaning “Toilet-user, beware of evil,” scratched presumably by a local wit or concerned neighbor. Whether it was cautioning against soiling the street or invoking a curse on an inconsiderate defecator is unclear, but it illustrates how defecation figured in street humor.

In Rome, small votive shrines to the “toilet gods” have been found – for example, images of Fortuna and Mercury in or near latrines, and the Goddess Cloacina was venerated at a minor shrine near the Forum’s main sewer outlet.

According to one legend, the Sabine king Titus Tatius even dedicated an altar to Cloacina in his personal privy, symbolically sanctifying the act of sewage disposal. Such findings blur the line between the mundane and the sacred, showing the extent to which Romans integrated their sanitation with their religious and cultural world.

From large-scale sewer tunnels down to humble chamber pots, the archaeological record of Roman sanitation is rich and continually expanding. Each excavation—from the garbage layers of a rural cesspit to the marble seats of an Ostian latrine—adds detail to our understanding of how Romans managed the universal problem of waste.

Rural vs. Urban Sanitation

Sanitation in ancient Rome exhibited a stark contrast between urban centers and the countryside. In well-developed cities and military camps, the Romans installed communal flush latrines connected (directly or indirectly) to drainage systems. These urban latrines took advantage of aqueduct water and engineered sewers to remove waste continually.

By contrast, in small towns, villages, and rural estates, such elaborate facilities were rare. Simple pit toilets—essentially ancient outhouses—were the norm outside the cities. A pit latrine might be nothing more than a deep hole or cistern lined with stone, with a wooden or masonry seat placed above it. Without a constant water supply, these toilets relied on the slow accumulation and decomposition of waste in situ. When pits filled up, they had to be emptied by hand or abandoned and covered over.

Archaeologists prize these abandoned rural latrines, as their undisturbed contents can be “treasure troves” of ancient debris and biological remains. In some villa latrines, seeds, pollen, and parasite eggs in the compacted waste have informed us about the occupants’ diet (e.g. grains, figs, olives) and common afflictions (chronic intestinal worms). Such evidence paints a less glamorous picture of country life, where sanitary conditions led to widespread health problems despite the bucolic setting.

In cities, wealthier homes might have had a private toilet room, but in rural farmhouses even the elite often made do with more rudimentary solutions. At the grandest Italian rural estates (latifundia), owners sometimes built bath suites and latrines, importing urban comforts to the countryside. Those few examples usually feature a seat over a vaulted cesspit that could be cleaned periodically, and a bucket of water or gutter to flush minimal water.

More commonly, however, rural inhabitants used chamber pots or simply relieved themselves outdoors, away from living quarters. Human waste in the countryside was too valuable to waste: farmers collected it along with animal manure to fertilize fields. Thus, the disposition of waste had an agricultural angle in rural sanitation. One Roman agronomist even advised locating latrines near pigsties or dung heaps, presumably to consolidate all manures for composting. Meanwhile, travelers on Roman roads relied on the natural landscape or roadside tavern privies – essentially the same arrangements as local villagers.

The division also existed within cities between rich and poor districts. In Rome, the poorest residents lived in multi-story tenements (insulae) that seldom had internal latrines. These people used pots or public facilities, meaning their experience was closer to “rural” simplicity despite being in an urban environment.

Stepping-stones found in Pompeii’s streets are a telling detail: they were installed so pedestrians could cross without treading in muck, implying that waste (both animal and human) frequently littered the streets, especially in poorer quarters.

In smaller Roman towns that lacked extensive aqueducts or sewers, even public latrines were uncommon. Waste would accumulate in cesspits or on open ground until heavy rains washed the detritus away or laborers shoveled it out. During downpours, those towns often saw raw sewage flooding along with stormwater – a far cry from the engineered drainage of Rome or Antioch.

The countryside, lacking any centralized administration of sanitation, depended on individuals’ habits and the absorptive capacity of the earth. Vegetation, soil, and scavenging animals all played a part in breaking down waste. This does not mean rural Romans were entirely indifferent to cleanliness; they knew to site latrines downhill or downwind from living areas when possible, and they used ash or sand to cover excrement at times.

But without infrastructure, rural sanitation remained basic. In summary, urban Romans enjoyed (or endured) an early form of municipal sanitation with collective solutions to waste, whereas rural inhabitants relied on local, ad-hoc methods. The gap between an elaborate stone sewer in Rome and a simple pit toilet on the frontier is a testament to how unevenly advanced Roman sanitation could be, varying with geography, resources, and population density.

Legacy and Influence

Roman achievements in sanitation left an enduring legacy on urban planning and public health, even if the connection was not immediately linear. After the Roman Empire, much of the elaborate water and sewer infrastructure fell into disuse or disrepair in Europe. Medieval cities largely reverted to cesspit systems and street dumping, lacking the large-scale aqueducts and sewers that Rome had pioneered. It would not be until the 19th century that cities again built integrated sewer networks and water supplies on a comparable scale.

In that sense, the Romans were far ahead of their time – their concept of providing public latrines, baths, and sewers prefigured the ideals of modern city planning. Renaissance scholars, fascinated by Roman engineering, studied texts like Frontinus’ De Aquaeductu and Vitruvius’ De Architectura for clues on how to rebuild urban utilities. The very idea that clean water and waste removal were responsibilities of the state traced back to Roman precedent.

When 19th-century Paris installed public urinals on its boulevards, they were nicknamed “Vespasiennes” in honor of Emperor Vespasian’s ancient urine tax, showing the cultural memory of Roman sanitation. The Latin proverb pecunia non olet (“money doesn’t stink”) remains a wry reminder that good public services can be funded in creative ways, as in Vespasian’s time.

Tangible relics of Roman sanitation continued to function or inspire. The Cloaca Maxima, incredibly, still drains the heart of Rome, carrying away rainwater from the Forum as it has for over 2,500 years. Many Roman towns retained usable portions of their sewer systems into late antiquity and beyond. In some cases, medieval towns built over Roman ruins unknowingly benefited from old drains that had survived underground.

The continuity of terms is also telling: words for sewer in Romance languages (Italian cloaca, French cloaque) derive from Latin, as do words for sanitary facilities (latrina, etc.), indicating Rome’s imprint on the language of cleanliness. More directly, the rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum in the 18th century, with their latrines and pipework intact, fascinated engineers and physicians. These finds demonstrated that an ancient civilization had addressed public hygiene in a systematic way.

By the 19th and early 20th centuries, as the field of archaeology grew, researchers like Frontinus’ translator Rondelet and later public health pioneers often cited Roman practices either as a model to emulate or a cautionary tale (for example, noting that simply having sewers didn’t prevent disease if people still contaminated water sources).

The study of Roman sanitation has since blossomed, especially in recent decades, shedding light on daily life and epidemiology of the past. Modern scholars such as Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow and Gemma Jansen have reinterpreted the archaeological evidence, revealing a more nuanced picture of Roman sanitation. Their work shows that Roman cities were not as uniformly sanitary as once assumed – many people still lived amid filth – yet the Romans’ desire to manage waste in an urban context was virtually unique in the pre-modern world.

This concept, that a city could and should be engineered for public health and convenience, is perhaps the greatest legacy of Roman sanitation.

Finally, Roman approaches to sanitation influenced later public health ideas indirectly through example. The Roman understanding of hygiene was rudimentary by modern standards, but they did perceive a link between cleanliness and health. They valued bathing, flowing water, and removing refuse from inhabited areas, all principles that align with modern public health fundamentals.

While diseases like cholera or typhoid were not eradicated in the Roman world (archaeologists find evidence of them in ancient remains), the Romans had lower incidence of some parasitic diseases in areas where latrine use was high, suggesting some beneficial impact. The commitment to public welfare evident in constructions like public baths and toilets set a template that later urban reformers admired.

We continue to find “echoes” of Roman sanitation in contemporary systems. Every time a modern city plans a sewer line or a public toilet facility, it follows a path first charted on a broad scale by the Romans.

In sum, the story of sanitation in ancient Rome is one of innovation, adaptation, and influence: from the grand engineering of aqueducts and sewers to the daily rituals of sponge and bench, the Romans laid groundwork for how cities could grapple with the eternal challenge of waste and cleanliness, a legacy that still underpins urban life today.