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  For the lower class Romans, sanitation facilities were a problem. Often, the lower class Romans who lived in higher floors of crowded apartment simply dumped their waste into the streets. People walking on the road below were some times very unlucky . . . The Romans laid down to eat their dinner. And when they feasted, they often practiced vomiting everything they ate only to begin all over again. Phallic symbols were aphrotrophaic (protection from evil) in Rome as well as a must of the ancient world. In fact, the Romans had a god called Priapus whose phallus is about the same size of as his body. He was the god of male sexuality and seen often in art. Propaganda as well as graffiti were found all over the walls of Pompey. If you think the modern politicians use smear campaigns, you should check out the stuff on Pompey . . . Archeologists found that at one bathhouse in Pompey there was a continuous sex scene with at first one person, then two, then three and eventually twelve people engaged in group sex. Apparently these paintings were then covered and then made into a bathhouse. One of the houses discovered in Pompey is called the House of the Chaste Lovers. The story behind this is that when the archeologists were working on the house they found a wall painting with a woman on top of a man. They assumed that they were engaged in less than virtuous behavior. However when the entire painting was uncovered, it was discovered that she was sitting on top of him with their clothes on. Thus the name the House of the Chaste Lovers . . . Ancient Rome reeked because there were so much wastes and animal dung on the streets. Various writers commented on this fact. The Romans loved to bathe. Bath Houses were constructed all over Rome. There were usually separate houses for women and men, or there are different hours for men and women. People did not simply come to the baths to bathe, it was an important meeting place where people discussed politics and business.(There is an interesting scene in Spartacus where Gaius Gracchus and Julius Caesar were doing just that . . .) |