THE PUBLIC ROMAN LATRINE
The public Roman latrine consisted of a large space,
usually square (fig. 499) but often trapezoidal or semicircular
(fig. 500A), or a combination of such shapes (fig.
500B). The seats were ranged along the walls all around
the periphery of the building, leaving everyone fully
exposed to the view of the others, with sufficient floor
space in between for people to congregate in amicable
conversation. Channels beneath the seats, flushed by running
water diverted from the aqueducts, drained into the
public sewer system. The seating capacity of these buildings
could attain substantial proportions. The gymnasium of the
city of Philippi had a latrine with fifty seats. In the market
of Miletus there was one with forty (fig. 499A-B); in the
Agora of Athens, one with sixty-four.
[656]
The Romans seemingly
had settled this public need with the same flair with
which they engineered a world-wide system of roads, constructed
their aqueducts, and installed grandiose systems
for metropolitan sewage disposal—engineering feats so
great and new in concept that the Greek philosopher
Strabo (b. 63 B.C.) could remark that "if the Greeks had the
repute of aiming most happily in the founding of cities, in
that they aimed at beauty, strength of position, and the
availability of harbours and productive soil, the Romans
had the best foresight in . . . the construction of roads and
aqueducts, and of sewers that could wash out the filth of the
city into the Tiber."
[657]
Yet as magnificent as all this appears on first sight, in
terms of effective environmental hygiene, it was far from
providing a satisfactory solution to the sewage disposal
needed in the larger Roman cities. Besides the public
latrines, only the houses of the patricians were linked to the
metropolitan water system. The inhabitants of the tenements,
where the remaining two million Romans lived, had
to carry their domestic ordure in pots to a sewage vat under
the stairwell, bring it to nearby cesspits (with which Rome
was riddled), or take recourse to the even more primitive
method of simply dumping their offal from the windows
into the street. Much of Rome wallowed in filth.[658]
