The economy of ordure

ｾ ､＠ ＮＬＺﾷｾ Ｚｾｽ＠ ｌ＠ xr]J ;$ ｩ Ｍｾ :-! Ｍ The Economy of Ordure 10.1!NTRODUCTION (Andrew Wilson) Human waste, like animal manure, has value in certain contexts - the solid waste, as a fertilizer or fuel, and liquid, as a chemical agent in sorne industrial processes. Despite the natural hturum disgust for our own excreta,1 therefore, many societies make use of human excrement, and the ancient world was no different. This chapter examines the extent to which solid and liquid waste from latrines was collected and used, how this was organized, and how this activity functioned economically. A final section looks at the costs of building and the operation of public latrines. 10.2 THE USES AND VALUE OF EXCREMENT The main use of human faeces in antiquity was as a fertilizer, like animal manure. There is no evidence, so far as we are aware, of the use of human (as opposed to animal) waste as a fuel in the Graeco-Roman world, although this does occur in sorne societies. Varro (RR 1.38.2-3) says that Cassius rated human excrement the second best (after pigeon dung) for manuring, ahead of the dung of goats, sheep and asses. As the Cassius concerned is evidently Cassius Dionysius of Utica, the translator into Greek of Mago the Carthaginian's treatise on agriculture, whom Varro lists as one of his sources (RR 1.1.10), this information presumably goes back to Mago and therefore also reflects Punie practice of the 2nd century BC. Columella confirms the use in horticulture of human excrement from latrines as well as animal manure as a fertilizer (de Re Rustica 10.80-85), but advises that human ordure, although generally thought to be excellent for the purpose of manuring, should not necessarily be used except for sandy or gravelly soils with little strength or nutrients of their own (de Re Rustica 11.3.12). Human faeces are useful as fertilizer largely because they contain organic matter which acts as a soil modifier to increase the water-holding abilities of soils. Because urine and excreta are normally mixed, the fertilizer is also rich in nitrates, phosphorus and potassium. Human faeces, however, also contain billions of viruses and millions of bacteria as well as the eggs and cysts of many types of parasite such ascaris and hookworm. The removal of human faecal material from the living environrn.ent where it can come into contact with children, foods, flies, and fluids is thus a priority for public health. Wastes that are removed from hotiseholds become a health problem for those who have contact with them, whether stercorarii (dung collectors) or farmers, and for those who consume products that have been fertilized with excreta, a practice which increases the risk of passing on intestinal parasites.2 Such fertilizer might be used for manuring private gardens, perhaps within a town house- this has been suggested at Pompeü for the waste from the baths and latrines in the Praedia of Iulia Felix,3 and for a latrine drain leading to a cesspit in the garden in the House of the Silver Wedding.4 In such cases, its use remains a part of the internai household economy and entails no financial transaction or complex organization. The same is true for the use of cesspit contents from a villa on that villa's estate; in discussing the construction of manure pits at a farm, Varro notes that sorne people site the latrines for the slaves over the manure pit (RR 1.13.4). But many houses without extensive gardens will not have required this fertilizer ali the time or even at ali, and conversely, sorne farmers and market gardeners will have had a use for much larger quantities of fertilizer than their own households could provide. This imbalance of needs sets up the potential for a market exchange in human waste, which provided the business madel for a group of professional cesspit emptiers and dung collectors, known as koprologoi in Greek, stercorarii in Latin. These provided a service to householders, whom they charged for emptying their cesspits, and then sold the excrement as fertilizer to farmers.s A graffita from Herculaneum records the emptying of a cesspit at a cost of 11 asses: exemta 1 ste(r)cora / a(ssibus) Xl (CIL IV, 10606). In classical Athens koprologoi seem to have been private entrepreneurs rather than public slaves or employees, though subject to the authority of the astynomoi or city magistrates, who enf()rced regulations stipulating that the koprologoi must deposit the kopros (manure) at least ten stades outside the city.6 The same is likely to have been true for the Roman world; the relevant evidence refers chiefly to the economie transactions. In modern India cesspit-emptiers are so despised they fall outside the caste system;7 in Africa the work is often done by outsiders to the community. We have no such evidence for comparable caste or social exclusion 147 of stercorarii or koprologoi in the classical world, although it is likely that much of the foul work was done by slaves. The necessity of the stercorarii to the life of major urban centers was recognized by legislation such as the Lex Julia municipalis, which excepted their carts (plostra stercoris exportandei causa) from the general ban on wheeled traffic entering Rome during the day (CIL F 596.66-67).8 While the dumping of manure or refuse was prohibited in certain areas within towns or within a set distance of the city walls, there is nothing to suggest that these regulations were specifically or primarily aimed at stercorarii rather than casual polluters and defecators.9 If such prohibitions ｷ･ｲｾ＠ partly aimed at professional stercorarii, they might suggest that sorne could not find customers for their excrement within a cast-effective distance of the collection site, and that to sorne stercorarii, at ieast, the charges for emptying cesspits were a.more important element of their revenues than the sale of excrement as fertilizer. Even the one text which does explicitly use the term stercorarius (rather than just stercus), h owever, is proba:bly addressing casual foulers of the street: a graffito from Insula V 6 at Pompeii, only one black from the city walls, tells stercorarii to proceed to the w all, presumably to commit their nuisance thete: stercorari 1 ad murum 1 progredere si 1 pre(n)sus fueris poena(m) 1 patiare necesse 1 est cave (' Dumper, proceed to the wall; if you are caught you'll have to pay the penalty. Beware!').lO This is not an official inscription, however; it specifies no legal penalty, but rather a vague, generic retribution, and the second sentence is a hexameter, probably a common catchphrase. As such it falls into the general category of Pompeian graffiti telling w ould-be defecators to move on, and may have very little to do with professional stercorarii at ail. The market value of human excrement will have been determined by the factors of supp ly and demand. Supply was directly related to the size of cities, and whether or not their latrine arrangements were predominantly based around cesspits, from which material could be collected manually, or discharged into running sewers, in which case u se as fertilizer seems to have been less common, although there are instances of sewage being deliberately run onto agriculturalland (below). Demand was a function both of the land-use regime around a town, and of the perceived utility to the farmer of human excrement in comparison with animal manure, although bath are equally useful in providing organic matter to improve soil quality. The natural fertility of local soils will also have affected 148 demand- e.g. human excrement is not reused in the humid South of Vietnam today, but is on the poorer soils of the dryer N orth.11 These factors in combination probably meant that the stercorarii found their greatest market among smallholders in the immediate surroundings of towns,12 since the further the stercorarii had to transport the excrement from the city, the higher their costs; and the owners of large villa estates were more likely to have owned enough draft animais and other livestock to provide manure. The main drain or sewer at Athens discharges into a tank from which ran terracotta pipes branching in severa! different directions to spread the liquid waste onto fields for irrigation; the tank was presumably emptied periodically of solid matter for use as fertilizer. The complete system in its present form dates from the Roman period, but many p arts are much older. 13 Two sites in North Africa suggest comparab le arrangements: at Sufasar (Dolfusville, Algeria) waste from a set of shower baths ran to a circular basin and seerns then to have been used to irrigate an area below the town where the French colonists later estabJ ished irrigated gardens.14 At Zilil (Dchar Jdid, Morocco) the main drain from a set of public baths outside and below the town walls appears to discharge onto the hillside below the baths; as the baths included a set of latrines, the drain will have been a foul sewer carrying excreta. Although the area downslope has n ot been excavated, no remains are visible downhill, in contrast to the urban area uphill, and the ground is good agricultural land.15 This site is a possible candidate for the use of sewage as fertilizer. The frequency with which private cesspits were emptied was presumably a matter for the householders who summoned the stercorarii as necessary, but clearly there is a relationship between the size of container and frequency of collection smaller cesspits would need to be emptied more frequently, given a similar level of usage, than larger ones. In houses with toilets the cesspits must have been emptied periodically; in any houses lacking toilets, chamberpots must have been emptied daily. In Strasbourg in the lOth century AD cesspits were emp tied weekly. 16 10.3 THE UsES AND VALUE OF URINE (Miko Flohr) Greek and Roman authors mention various application s of urine. This section discusses the practical aspects of such applications: in what way was the urine used and what was the intended effect? Are the medical or veterinary treatments mentioned likely to have been effective or are we to see the practice as sorne form of superstition? How was the urine collected and stored? Is there evidence for any trade in urine? The focus will be on practices where urine was used as sorne kind of agent in an economie context; other aspects, such as the role of urine in medical diagnosis, and its medicinal u ses, of which there is ample evidence, will not be considered here. 17 The section will start with a short overview of the chemical qualities of urine and continue with an assessm ent of the u ses of urine attested in GrecoRoman literature. Then follows a discussion of what we know about urine collection, including a reassessment of the written and archaeological evidence. The final section focuses on the famous urine tax introduced by Vespasian and its implications for the existence of a urine trade. Chemical Qualifies of Urine Under normal circumstances, adult humans produce about 1-1.5 l. of 1Uine each day, which contains a dry matter of 50-70 g. Urine contains a wide variety of substances, of which nitrates and phosphates are the most relevant here. An important element in urine is carbanùde or urea ((NH2 ) 2CO), not only because it makes up a large part of the dry matter of urine, but also because it is a very unstable compound. With ｴｨｾ＠ aïd of urease, an enzyme produced by bacteria, it decomposes into ammonia and carbonic acid. This process is called urea decomposition, and its consequence is that urine, which on leaving the human body has a neutral pH value of about 6.5, transforms into a strongly alkaline substance with a pH that may rise to 9.2 or even higher. Recent tests h ave revealed that, without the addition of other agents, the process may take about 40 days.18 While it must be stressed that the amount of nitrates and phosphates in urine varies according to diet, the basic properties of urine are not susceptible to change. The urine of other mammals shares the most important basic qualities with human urine. ·In antiquity, there obviously was a very limited theoretical understanding of chemical processes and the details of urea decomposition, of course, were unknown, but there is evidence that people were aware of the graduai transformation of urine into something else: Roman authors like Columella and Pliny the Eider regularly advise using old instead of fresh urine for the treatment of land.19 There also were ideas about the duratian of the process: Columella recommends an aging period of six months.20 lt is hard to trace the origins of such ideas in terms of where and when. Probably, Columella and Pliny just wrote clown what was common and successful practice in their own times. The practice of aging urine itself most likely was invented in prehistoric times. Attested Applications of Urine in the Greco-Roman World Agriculture and Horticulture The most frequently mentioned application of urine was as a fertilizer in agriculture and horticulture, particularly for certain fruit trees and vines. Both human and animal urine could be used, either with or without faeces. For example, Cato advises adding the urine or dung of swine to the roots of pomegranates.21 Columella gives a similar recommendation, though he prefers the use of stale human urine. He adds that the purpose of the treatment is to make the tree more fertile and to improve the taste of the fruit. 22 Urine is an excellent nutrient for plants as it contains two of the most important elements that plants need for growing. One of these is nitrogen, which is essenfiai for the synthesis of proteins and is particularly necessary for the development of leaves and seeds. The other is phosphorus, which plays a central role in many biological processes. Of both elements, the quantifies normally available in natural sail are not sufficient for agricultural production.23 Compared to faeces, urine has the advantage that humans produce it in larger quantities, that it contains fewer enteric and potentially damaging microorganisms and that its application is technically very simple.24 Generally, it seems that aged urine was used: authors often add the adjective vetus.zs The reason was not that aged urine was more fertile than fresh urine: the most important effect of ageing emphasized in modern studies about agricultural uses of urine is sterilization. Fresh urine is usually sterile, but may contain bacteria, if the urinator has a urinary tract infection. The increase in pH caused by urea decomposition makes it impossible for these microorganisms to survive and makes the urine safer to use. The fact that Romans preferred to use old urine may suggest that they appreciated the effects, even if they did not understand the cause. Veterinary Uses The chemical qualifies of urine were also explored in stockbreeding. As the process of urea decom- 149 position makes aged urine hostile to microorganisms, aged urine can be an efficacious antiseptic in the case of open wounds. Columella's handbook on Roman farming gives several examples of treatments that employed thls quality of aged urine, especially for curing oxen and sheep. For oxen, Columella argues that aged bovine urine is useful for curing wounds caused by burns, whereas for cuts, pitch and oil are better suited.26 li the animals suffer from suppuration (festering wounds) or scabies, the sores are to be eut away and the resulting wounds were to be washed thoroughly with aged bovine urine.27 In the case of suppuration 'the use of tepid urine is recommended and the wottnds afterwards are bound up with linen soaked in pitch and oil. 28 For sheep, similar applications of urine are discussed, but Columella also refers to sorne treatments in which urine was used intemally.29 The reader is told that problems with the bile are solved by having the animais drink aged human urine and, in the case of lung disease the shepherd is advised to administer a certain quantity of stale urine through the nose.30 Here, Columella's emphatic advice to bring in the urine through the left nostril reminds the modem reader of the thin line between veterinary practice and ritual in the Roman world. An interesting aspect is the provenance of the u rine to be used for curing cattle. Whereas for oxen Columella explicitly tells his reader to use bovine urine, he advises aged human urine in the case of sheep. He does not explain why, but as there are no fundamental differences in the chemical qualities of human and bovine urine, the reason s for this distinction m ay be practical. One possibility is that Romans found it hard to collect ovine urine, as flocks often were on the move and only seldom stayed in permanent facilities that allowed for the collection of liquid excreta. It m ay also be imagined that most shepherds generally did not have large quantities of bovine urine at their disposai. A remarkable use of urine was by bee-keepers. This is attested in the work of two authors. Varro has one of his characters say thaf, when bees are sick in early spring, they are cured by having them drink urine.31 Columella men tions that sorne beekeepers in case of illness follow the advice of Hyginus and bring urine, bovine or human, into the hives.32 Urine was also used by poultry-keepers, in case their birds suffered from bird flu. According to Columella, the beaks of the birds had to be wetted with tepid human urine, the bitterness of which helped to drive out the parasites causing the disease.33 150 Industry The chemical properties of old urine proved usefui for sorne craftsmen too. The most important industrial applications of urine mentioned by ancient authors include those in leather production, in fulling and in d yeing.34 For leather production, the evidence is limited to a single attestation. Pliny the Eider remarks that mulberry leaves soaked in urine were used to remove haïr from animal hides. 35 Though no fttrther information is given, it is generally assumed that Pliny refers to hides that were being prepared for tanning.36 For the process of tanning itself other chemical agents were u sed. Urine use by fullers is better attested. Fulling is the finishing or maintenance of woolen clothing by removing stains and animal fats by means of a detergent. Discussing the medical applications of animal and human urines, Pliny notes that the urine of camels could be very useful for fullers. 37 Further on, he also refers to medical possibilities of urina fuUonia and explains that menstrual stains can only be removed from clothing by means of urine from the same woman.38 Besicles Pliny, there are three short references to fullers using urine in the vast medical corpus of Galen and one in Athenaeus' Deipnosophistae.39 In the comic genres sorne allusions to urine use by fullers may be found. The fructus fullonius ('fuller's fruit juice'?) that the slave boy of the pimp Ballio fears to be obliged to drink in Plautus' Pseudolus must be interpreted as urine.40 lt may be imagined that the stinking old amphora of the avaricious fuller, to which the girl Thaïs is compared in one of the epigrruns of Martial, stank so badly because, before breaking in the middle of the street, it had contained urine (see below).41 The importance of urine for fullers and tanners must not be overstated: we have no reliable information about the quantities that were needed or about its dominance in the production process. Urine was used by fullers in the first stage of the fulling process. In this phase, clothes were soaped in urine by trampling on them, scouring them, and wringing them out. This happened in tubs situated in small niches surrounded by low walls ('fulling s talls'), examples of w hich have been preserved at excavated fulling workshop s at Delos, Pompeü, and Ostia. 1t is important to note that urine was used in combination with or as an alternative to several other chemical agents, including fullers' earth. In many fulleries, the surrounding walls of the fulling stalls contained built-in storage jars that som etimes contain a whitish deposit. The deposits found in a jar (rom a fullonica discovered at Barcelona were chem.ically analyzed by the excavators and tumed out to contain not only traces of urine, but also of ash, which suggests that a mixture was used. 42 Remarkably, the only literary representation of this part of the fulling process makes no mention of urine at ali, but only refers to water and fullers' earth: Terra istaec est, non aqua, ubi tu solitu's argutarier Pedibus, cretam dum compescis, vestimenta qui laves That is earth, not water, in which you usuaily slosh around with your feet, while you compact the clay, you, who wash clothes (Titinius, Fullones, fr. 10). Similarly, Pliny's description of the fulling process does not make any reference to urine, but suggests that it began with clothes being washed with the aid of fullers' earth (terra umbrica).43 The fragment of Titinius also points to another issue: it seems to suggest that the usual amount of liquid under the feet of the fuller was rather limited. This is not contrary to logic. Fullers used urine and fullers' earth because their alkaline properties dissolved fats. Such agents work b est without large quantities of added water. Sorne modem fulling machines emplox a sprinkler to apply the fulling liquid to the textile, which is more moist than wet. In other cases, the cloth is soaked separately before being treated by the machine.44 Moreover, the fullers' physicallabor of trampling, kneading, and scrubbing the cloth did as much work as the chemical agents. Thus, even though there is evidence that Roman fullers used urine and were associated with it by severa! Roman authors, the image of a fuller standing ail day long in a fulling tub filled with water and urine must be seen as a modern - and false - construct.45 The third craft in which mine was used as a chemical agent was the dyeing of wool. This application of urine is only explicitly attested in a rather obscure papyrus text from later antiquity. The Stockholm Papyrus describes a variety of chemical and alchemical procedures. Many of the recipes figuring urine are alchemical procedures for the production of silver or pearls.46 Sorne, however, are seemingly realistic recipes for the dyeing of wool. In many of these recipes, urine was used as a mordant in the preparatory phases of the dyeing process.47 This is likely to reflect common practice in late imperial Egypt, and it is not tuùikely that similar procedures were cornmon ail over the Roman world. The use of mordants for such purposes is also known from early · modern and industrial wool preparation.48 Its use in w.ool preparation, however, is not the only application of urine by wool-dyers mentioned in the p apyrus. Urine was also used to dissolve natural dyestuffs, so that they could be applied to the wool. 49 For example, alkanet is said to b e dissolved by oil, water, and nuts, but it is emphasized that the best of ali dissolving media is camel urine, because it would make the dye fast and durable.so The use of alkaline agents for the preparation of dyestuffs is also known from later periods.st Urine Collection The fact that farmers, shepherds and craftsmen used aged human and animal urine on a systematic basis meant that there must have been institutionalized systems of urine collection. The question is how and by whom this was organized. Unfortunately, Roman authors generally do not tell us from where cornes the urine that they advise to use, so any account about urine collection necessarily will remain highly speculative. Especially for users in rural contexts, it is hard to get an idea about their sources of urine. It may be imagined that urine used by farmers was collected on the farms where it was used and that it aged there, but it is completely unclear whether the urine produced annuaily by the humans and animais on one farm was enough to satisfy the needs there or whether it was necessary to have urine brought in from elsewhere. An important complication concerns the collection of bovine urine: it is not h ard to make a man or a woman micturate into some receptacle, but oxen will urinate where and whenever they feellike it, so that it is either necessary to equip their stables with a system that automaticaily collects ail urine or tq ｯ｢ｳ･ｲｶｾ＠ the animais closely and wait for the right moment. In fact, ali we know is that the Romans made systematic use of bovine urine, and that they, as a consequence, must h ave had some way of collecting it. Our insight into the provenance of urine used in urban contexts, at first sight, seems to be a little bit better. There is a vociferous tradition claiming that fullers, w ho are the most prominent urban users of urine, had their stuff collected by means of jars that were positioned in front of their shop s in the street. This idea can be traced back as far as the late 19th century, when it appears promi- 151 nently in the dictionaries and handbooks that were produced in that period, and figures as an unquestioned fact in recent literature.52 The generally accepted notion of urine collection by means of amphorae has made archaeologists identify the remains of amphorae in or near excavated fulling workshops as 'collection vessels'.53 Apart from the fact that, without residue analysis (rarely performed), however, it is almost impossible for an archaeologist to d etermine w hether one specifie vessel was used for urine collection or not, there may be reason to have sorne doubts about the practice itself, as the evidence on which it is based seems to be very thin. The standard body of references given as evidence for urine collection in vessels on the street consists of the same three texts: epigrams 6.93 and 12.48 of Martial and a passage in Macrobius (3.16.15). Epigram 6.93 of Martial is a not-so-subtle character assassination of a woman named Thaïs. With several metaphors, the poet explains to his public how badly the woman in question usually smells. The fust metaphor compares her body odor with the smell coming from an old testa (crack) of a p arsimonious fuller 'recently broken in the middle of the road'. While it may be argued that the broken vessel smells because it u sed to contain urine, it cannot be deduced from the text that it used to be at the disposai of male passers-by who needed to empty their bladders. Rather, the specifie location referred to - 'in the middle of the raad' - seems to suggest that the vessel feil on the ground during transportation and broke into pieces. The second epigram, 12.48, is a critique of the absurd favors sometimes expected in retum for a copious dinner. The argument is that no matter how fine the dinner is, as soon as the food is consUIIled, it is worthless, quod sciat infelix damnatae spongea virgae vel quicumque canis iunctaque testa viae: mullorum leporumque et suminis exitus hic est, ... ... a matter for a luckless sponge on a damned mop stick or sorne dog or other or a crock by the roadside to take care of. This is the end result of mullet and hares and sow's udder. Here, Martial does not refer to fulling at ali. Moreover, while the references to a sponge stick, a dog, and a crock may invoke an atmosphere of waste and excreta, it does not follow that the crock by the roadside is meant to be filled with urine. 152 Given the consumed products mentioned in the following line, it is very possible that Martial refers to faeces or, possibly, to vomit (which is what dogs are notorious for eating). The passage in Macrobius' Saturnalia, however, does refer to crocks in the street being filled with urine by passers-by: Dum eunt, nulla est in angiporto amphora quam non inpleant, quippe qui vesicam plenam vini habeant While they go (around the city), there is no amphora in an ailey which they do not fill, those men who have a badder full of wine. The text is p art of a quote from the 2nd..century BC orator Caïus Titius that is a long rant about the decadence of sorne judges who spend their day gambling and drinking before stumbling to the place of assembly only to avoid a charge of absence from duty. While Titius' account may be taken as an indication that amphorae were a regular element in Roman alleys, it does not follow that these functioned as intended urine collectors, nor that they belonged to fullers. If there is no literary evidence for public urine collection, it may also be worthwhile reconsidering sorne of the archaeologically identified urine collectors. The best known of these is in the east part of the baths of Mithras at Ostia Acmrding to Schieler and Nielsen, the urine left by the visitors was transported by a lead pipe and collected in an amphora. It was to be used in the fullonicae in the basement of the baths. A significant problem w ith the theory of Schi0ler and Nielsen, however, is that the establishments they daim are fullonicae do not satisfy any of the criteria used to identify workshops of this type. Moreover, there w as no evidence for either a lead pipe or an amphora undemeath the supposed urinal, and there is no underground through-route between the location of the amphora and the presumed workshops. It may even be questioned whether the so-called urinal actually was a urinaC as the only reason behind its identification is that there is a rectangular travertine plaque w ith a hole in it in the floor of the room parallel to the wall. There are no traces of wear and the room in question is much longer than the travertine plaque, which is in directly next to the entrance, an awkward position if it w as meant as a urinal. Moreover, there are no parallel situations elsewhere in the Roman world suggesting that urinais of this type existed. The urine collectors identified by Walter Moeller at Pompeü h ave recently been discussed by Mark Bradley, who concludes that in ail cases, there is no reason to assume that the vases in question were used for urine collection.54 Laurence Brissaud's recent identification of a urine jar in Saint-Romainen-Gal is equally doubtful.55 The vase in question was at a distance of more than one house block from the nearest fullonica and was found between the street and the sidewalk with its highest rerrurins 30 cm under the level of the present pavement. While this difference may be due to a hypothetical raising of the street level postdating the installation of the crack, the idea of a urine collector with a narrow neck fixed in the ground more than 100 meters away from the nearest fullery does not seem to make much sense. A series of jars in an ailey at Berenice (Sidi Khrebish, Benghazi) have been identified as possible urinais, but have no necessary connection with a fullonica.56 Thus, on doser inspection, none of the material and written sources that have been presented as evidence tums out to give any substantial indication that fullers collected their urine through vessels in front of their workshops. This method of urine collection also seems contrary to logic. If urine is going to be used for cleaning clothes, it is important that it be collected in the purest form possible: any pollution would need to be removed afterwards as it might influence the process of urea decomposition or have other negative sideeffects on the quality and color of the clothing. Obviously, this means that the usual seated latrines known from the archaeological record, where urine and faeces are collected in the same sewer, are unfit for urine collection. Public urinais, if they existed, are unfit as weil, even if the liquids are collected in an accessible basin or trough: without someone watching over the space, a urinal can easily be abused for depositing wastewater, old wine, or even vomit. Further, once collected, it is necessary to keep the urine free from pollution and prevent it from being diluted by rainwater or from evaporation because of exposure to the sun. Both problems are likely to occur with urine collected in vessels along the street. For all these reasons, public collection without surveillance does not seem practical at all. In the absence of strong evidence, the theory must be seen as a scholarly fiction. Jhis, rather disappointingly, means that we do not know how Roman fullers got the urine they used. It is clear, however, that the urine must have been collected in sorne way or another. In early modem times, urine could be collected by the workers themselves in a vessel at home. This might have been a usual practice in antiquity too, even though there is no clear evidence for it. Vespasian's Tax an Urine An important problem with the above scepticism is that there is literary evidence that the imperial govemment drew taxes from sorne form of activity related to urine. According to severa! writers, Vespasian introduced a vectigal (tax) on urine. The classic reference is in the work of Suetonius and is part of a list of examples illustrating Vespasian's wit: Vespasianus reprehendenti filio Tito, quod etiam urinae vectigal commentus esset, pecuniam ex prima pensione admovit ad nares, sciscitans num adore offenderetur, et illo negante, atqui, inquit, e lotio est. When his son Titus displayed his disapproval that even for urine a tax was invented, Vespasian brought money from the fust payment to his nose, asking whether the odor was offensive, and when Titus denied it, he said: 'Yet it cornes from urine.'s7 The same story, in similar words, can be found in the work of Cassius Dio, though here, the context is slightly different and the urine tax ('tep toü OUQO'U tÉÀEL) is mentioned to illustrate Vespasian's keen interest in gathering money.ss Unfortunately, neither Suetonius nor Cassius Dio reveals what kind of tax the urinae vectigal actually was. This has led to a certain variety in the interpretation of the nature of the regulation. There is a long tradition assuming it to be a tax paid by the users or owners of public latrines or urinais. This is based on a metonymical reading of the ancient sources that takes 'urine' to stand for 'urinal' or 'urinating'. Thus, when ClaudePhilibert de Rambuteau, prefect of the Seine province from 1833 to 1848, had to invent a name for the public urinais he was locating in the streets of Paris (in arder to prevent their being named after him), he chose to name them colonnes vespasiennes after the Roman emperor whom he thought to have made urinais part of his politics.s9 The term has also passed into Italian as a word for urinal: vespasiano (fig. 10.1). J.C. Rolfe, in the 1914 Loeb edition of Suetonius, translates uri60 nae vectigal as 'a tax on public ｣ｯｮｶ･ｩｳｾＮ＠ Sirnilarly, Cary's 1927 Loeb translation of Cassius Dio refers to a 'tax upon public latrines,' though the Greek text reads 'tep wu o'ÜQO'l.l 'tÉÀEL.61 It must be emphasized that the origins of this metonymical reading of urinae and oVQOV are unclear. 153 around between customs districts), so that anyone " importing urine into a certain area had to pay a 'c;, certain part of its value in money. The other is tha:t ,,, commercial transactions involving urine within a i> certain area were taxed and that a certain part of the profit had to be transferred to the government. More important than ascertaining which of these: o: scenarios is more likely (which is impossible); /;: however, is the realization that the basic idea. L behind the measure must have been that collecte&<:>' urine was, more than 'waste', a commodity that )i could be transported and traded and that in tlus' )'! sense it was not fundamentally different from /5, other commodities, such as oil, wine, animais and, \\ indeed, slaves. 10.4 THE Fl:NANCil\IG OF PUBUC LATRINES Fig. 10.1. Palazzo Massimo (Rome), Vespasian's legacy: urinais ('Vespasiani') (photo A. Wilson). Moreover, there are no strong arguments why this interpretation should be preferred over a literai reading. It is not even specified in our sources whether the urine in question was of human or animal provenance. H ence, there also are commentators who take the text more literally and assume that the tax was related to urine. Sorne of these have come to believe that the urine referred to was used by fullers, so that, effectively, it was a ' fullers' tax'.62 This also has been linked with the idea of fullers placing vessels for urine collection on the public sidewalks (see above): in his commentary on the work of Suetonius, Mooney argues that the tax was p aid by fullers and tanners for the right to place these vessels and to empty them.63 This seems overly determinative: none of the literary sources refers to any craftsmen orto the purposes for which the urine was used. A key to a better understanding of the urine tax m ay lie in the fiscal terminology used in the sources. Though vectigal and 'tÉÀoç were loosely defined terms that could be used for a variety of tax types, they both seem to belong to the realm of economy, trade, and commerce. Vectigal was the common term for almost every indirect tax related to the use of public space, including eustoms dues, auction taxes, and taxes on transactions in the slave market, but also the use of public land by farmers.64 The Greek 'tÉÀ.oç seems to have been the common way of translating the Latin vectigal.65 In any case, it was used by Greek au thors in similar ways.66 In the case of the urinae vectigal, there seems to be room for two scenarios. One is that urine became subject to a portorium (a toll paid on goods imported, exported, or moved , (Andrew Wilson) <,\ '\,· \! Public latrines, or foricae, w ere a part of the reper+( taire of public buildings that any self-respecting/, Ｌ ｾ＠ city in the Roman empire needed to have, yet ｷ･ ｻ［ｾ Ｌ＠ have remarkably little evidence about who ｰ｡ｬ､ ＧｪＦｾ＠ for their construction. In contrast to temples, thêi.'/ié aters, marke ts, basilicae, baths, aqueducts, anq\èX\ fountains, and a whole range of other buildings '''] for which there is abundant epigraphie evidence,cA0 about who Hnanced their construction and, ofterti ft·§ how much it cost, there are very few ｩｮｳ｣ｲｰｴｯｓＺ ［Ｂｴｾ＠ recording the building of latrines. Since ｰｵ｢ｬｩ ￩ ｜Ａｾ＠ latrines were evidently common, we must sur+ ii mise that they were seen by potential benefa.ctors [\! as a less d esirable building type to be associatet{'j,J with, and the lack of inscriptions is thereforejii_if" function of p articular features of the practice Otit1" euergetism and of the epigraphie habit that ｣ ｯ ｮｩ ｓ ｩｴｾ＠ memorated it. Furthermore, many public la:trines i2 formed part of larger complexes (e.g. the two ｳ･ｴｓ ｣ｾ＠ of latrines in the market building at Pu teoli arr#'}:? the numerous latrines forming part of publiÉ ;·,f7 baths), and so may h ave been subsumed ｵｮ､ￇ ｊｩ ｔｻｦｾ＠ their building dedications. Of the two ｳ ｵｲｶｩｮ ｧＧ ｜Ｒｾ＠ texts tecording the construction of latrines, ｾ ｦｩ＠ Ephesus and Smyma, one is ambiguous- the ･ｰＱ Ｑ ｀ｾ＠ gram in the Greek Anthology relating to latrinê§:;@; at Smyrna seems possibly to commemorate ｴｨ･ ｾ ｩ＠ conversion into something else, rather than ｴｨ･ ＡｦＮ Ａｦｾ＠ renovation as latrines: <,f;, .• ｓｃｾＬ＠ X&eoc; èyw û> nelv ｾＭｴ￨ｶ＠ éTJv <Jtuyegwno%j(@ tôÉo9ai;{), Ｓｴｬｊ￀ｏ￴ＶｾＮｌￇ＠ 'tOLX,OLÇ ￠ｾＭｴ＼ｰｌＡｊＮＺｑｏｖￇ＠ ＰＭＺｾ＠ Èv8aôe ÔÈ sdvwv "tt: xat ÈvÔO.JtLWV xal àyQobtoJ\1 );ill VTJÔÙÇ èrceyôourtEL À.uf.Lata ｘＮｅｴｊｏｾ￩ｖｔ＠ ·?,ji· àÀ.f..à ｲ｣｡ＮＭｾ･＠ !LE n 6ÀTJoç èva.Hasac; 'Ayaetaçyi Ｌ Ｍ Ｚ Ｚ ｾ ﾷＮ Ｚ［＠ 154 il ElijxEV UQU;,l]À.OV 'tOV :Tt(;JtV atq..Lo'ta'tOV. 1 am a place formerly hldeous to behold, divided by brick walls, and here the bellies of strangers, natives, and countrymen thunderously relieved themselves. But Agathias, the father of the city, transformed me and made me distinguished instead of most ignoble. (Anth. Pal. 9.662, tr. Paton) The second text, from Ephesus, is reconstructed from fragments of an architrave found in the public toilets near the Baths of Scholastikia. The inscription, dated by letter forms to the late lst or fust half of the znd century AD, seems to refer to bath a latrine and a brothel: tov Elaxov aùv -co'Lç xat' aùwü EmXEL!J.évoLÇ :rtaLÔLoxt)mç xat ｸｯ｡ＡＭｌｾｏ￧＠ :rta[... ]. The latrine with the associated brothel and dec- oration[ ... ] The inscription was not found in situ in a primary context, and while it is simplest to assume an association between the latrine it mentions and the public latrine in which it was found, this is not wholly certain.67 The mention of a brothel in a momunental inscription is as rare as the mention of a latrine, but, unfortunately, the fragmentary text does not preserve the name of the person(s) or body who paid for or erected these civic amenities. Although it is an argument from silence, it seems plausible that public latrines were seen as ignoble, if necessary, and therefore less desirable targets for private benefaction; the costs of their provision, where this was separate from bath buildings, may therefore have been met from municipal funds, and such projects are less likely to have been commemorated epigraphlcally. If we are poorly informed about their construction, we are almost as badly informed about their operation. There is one text, however, whlch certainly shows that public latrines iforicae) were rented out to contractors, and another that possibly alludes to the same practice. The fust is from the Digest (22.1.17.5):68 Paulus l.S. de usura. Fiscus ex suis contractibus usuras non dat, sed ipse accipit: ut solet a foricariis, qui tardius pecuniam inferunt, item ex vectigalibus. cum autem in loco privati successit, etiam dare solet. The Treasury does not give interest on its con- tracts, but it does accept it: as it is used to do from the latrine operators, who pay the money later, also from the vectigals. But when it happens in a private instance, it is used to pay interest. Less informative is a passage in Juvenal, which mentions contracting for latrines in the context of other base activities, but is unclear whether the contracts meant are for constructing or managing latrines.69 This textual evidence shows two things: that the ongoing costs and trouble of operation were contracted out by civic authorities to individuals, and that such individuals must therefore have had reason to believe that they could obtain an income from the operation of latrines sufficient to cover their costs and to turn a profit. The services and costs of operation will have included the provision of water supply and payrnent of the charge for this; the provision of sponge sticks or other cleansing materials, induding jugs, and presumably, the periodic cleaning of the facilities. Since the public foricae almost universally are multiseater latrines set over a running sewer, the solid excrement was washed away immediate!y and so was not available for sale to stercorarii. There is no provision in foricae for urinais or collecting urine, so this could not have been a source of incarne either. The only remaining solution is to assume that the foricae operators charged users for the service they provided - in other words, that people had to pay to use public latrines. The evidence is indirect, but this conclusion appears inescapable - and there are, of course, abundant parallels in other societies, including much of the modern world. If this is accepted, at least one other observation follows - there must have been attendants to receive the payment. Such attendants could also have ensured the supply of sponge sticks and other consumables. Indeed, the widespread use of sponge sticks presupposes an extensive trade in sponges, to enable their use in inland cities.7° 10.5 CONCLUSION The direct evidence presented in this chapter for the economie uses of excrement and urine is limited, but there is enough to show that the use of cesspits generated a trade in the waste emptied from them and sold to farmers by stercorarii, and that urine was somehow collected, traded, and taxed for a variety of purposes related to dyeing, tanning, and other productive processes. Just as in the thriving economy of the Roman world 155 there was a market for even the vilest of substances, so too the provision of public lavatories provided an opportunity to charge users for the service provided, not merely to caver the operating and maintenance costs, but to make a profit for private contractors. n Cato, De agricultura 7.3. Columella, De arboribus 23.1. 22 23 24 25 26 27 NOTES 28 Curtis 2007. Curtis et al. 2000. I am grateful to Valerie Curtis and Jeroen Van Vaerenbergh for tl).e information in this paragraph. 3 Parslow 2001, 207'"208, Cf. Van Vaerenbergh's use of this example in· Ch" 6, p. 84. 4 Scobie ＱＹＸＶｾ＠ 114 n. :116; Mygind 1921, 316. s Scobie 1986, 413-414. 6 Aristotle, Athenaion Politeia 50.2; Owens 1983. 7 Joshi/Ferron 2007. s The plaustra quibus stercus evehatur of illpian, Digestae 33.7.12.10, sometimes discussed in this context (Scobie 1986, 414 n. 115), are not relevant to the question of urban waste disposai. illpian is confirming that they are to be considered as part of the instrumentum of a villa or farm estate. 9 Rome: CIL VI.3823 (p. 3132, 4765, 4771) "' CIL V1.31577 "'CIL 1.591 (p. 833, 915) "'ILS 6082 "'AE 1993, 111 = AE 1998, 24; CIL VI.31614 (p. 3799, 4772) =CIL 1.838 (p. 957) == ILLRP 485a "' ILS 8208a "'AE 1993, 110; CIL V1.31615 (p. 3799, 4772) "' CIL 1.839 (p. 957) = AE 1993, 110 "' ILLRP 485b "'ILS 8208b; CIL Vl.40885"' CIL 1.2981 = AE 1993, 110. Herculaneum: AE 1960, 276 = AE 1962, 234; cf. CIL IV.10488. Cingulum: AE 1985, 358 "'AE 1987, 344 "'AE 1993, 611; AE 1988, 486. Verona: ILS II.2.8207b. Salona: CIL 111.1966. Cf. Bodel1986, esp. pp. 30-38. 10 CIL IV.7038. 11 ThouglJ. this division probably originates in ecology, it is maintained by local cultural norms - so culture might well be a variable too, with potentially differing attitudes to the acceptability or desirability of reusing excrement (Valerie Curtis, persona! comment). 12 On market-oriented horticulture, flower and fruit growing in the suburbium of Rome, see Wilson 2009. 13 Ziller 1877, 117-119; Guillaume 1887; Lang 1968,22-26. For the collection of night sail for manure at Athens, see Owens 1983.ln modem Hyderabad, city drainage waste is supposed to go to a settlement tank, but farmers like the run-off and often break the pipes further up to run untreated wastes onto their fields. Run-off from the settlement tanks is also prized by farmers (Valerie Curtis, persona! comment). H Coste 1902, 35. 15 Persona! observation in 1994. 16 Strasbourg: A. Hervé-Moretti, persona! comment. Daily niglJ.tsoil collection continues in lndian cities such as Lucknow, although officially outlawed. Waste from bucket latrines is collected weekly in many Ghanaian towns. In China cesspits are emptied when full and waste transported to fields (Valerie Curtis, persona! comment). For India, cf. Joshi/Ferron 2007. 17 For an overview of these aspects of urine use see R. Muth, s .v. Urin, RES XI (1956) 1292-1303. 1s Gethke et al. 2006, fig. 1. 19 Cf. Columella, De re rustîca 4.8, 5.9, 5.10, De arboribus 8.5, 23.1. 2o Columella, De re rustica 2.14. 29 1 scabies. 2 156 Heinonen-Tanski/Van Wijk-Sijbesma 2005, 403. Heinonen-Tanski/Van Wijk-Sijbesma 2005, 404. Columella, De re rustica 4.8, 5.9, 5.10, De arboribus 8:5 23.1. , Columella, De re rustica 6.7. Columella, De re rustica 6.11: calida bubula urina eluetur; 6.32: scabies ferro erasa perluatur urina. Columella, De re rustica 6.11; cf. 6.15 (discussing wounds caused by the plouglJ.): calefacta bubula urina. Columella, De re rustica 7.5.9 discusses the treatrnent of Columella, De re rustica 7.5.15 (bile); 7.5.18 (lung disease). 31 V arro, De re rustica 3.16.22. 32 Columella, De re rustîca 9.13.6. 33 Columella, De re rustica 8.5.21. 34 Leather production: Blümner 1912, 266; DarembergSaglio I, 1505-1507; Forbes V (1957), 49; Fulling: Blümner 1912, 175; Daremberg-Saglio ll, 1349-1352. 35 Pliny, Naturalis Historia 23.140. 36 Blürnner 1912, 266. 37 Pliny, Naturalis Historia 28.91. 38 Pliny, Naturalis Historia 28.174, 28.84. 39 Galen. Kühn VI 228; XII 285; XVI 624; Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 284a. 40 Plautus, Pseudolus. 779; cf. Kwintner 1992, 232. 41 Martial, 6.93. 42 Juan-Tresserras 2000, 249. 43 Pliny, Naturalis Historia 35.197. 44 See e.g. US Patent 4419871. 45 Cf. Bradley 2002, 37. 46 Pap. Graec. Holm. 9, 13, 22, 23, 29, 39, 43, 71, 75, 83. 7 4 E.g. Pap. Graec. Holm. 97, 102, 106, 108, 147, 151. 43 Nieto-Galan 2001, 3-8; Fairlie 1965, 493-497. 49 Pap. Graec. Holm. 88, 103, 105, 141. 50 Pap. Graec. Holm. 88. 51 For example, in the preparation of indigo; Schneider 1987,428. 52 Smith 1875, 552; Blümner 1887, 175. More recently, Moeller 1976, 20; Scobie 1986, 414; Stambaugh 1988, 152; Bradley 2002, 30. 53 Brissaud 2003, 61-72. 54 Bradley 2002, 25. ss Brissaud 2003, 61-72. 56 Lloyd 1977, 151-2 and Pl. XIa. 5 7 Suetonius, Vespasianus 23.3. ss Cassius Dio 65.12. 59 Le Clère 1985, 536-539. so Rolfe 1914, 301. 61 Cary 1927, 289. 62 E.g. Geel1828, 360; Aillaud 1957, 65; Bradley 2002, 30. 63 Mooney 1979,459. 64 Rathbone in CAH X2, 314; Femandez Uriel 1995, 168; Cf. OLD, s.v. vectigal. 65 Cf. TGL, VI1998, s .v. "tÉÂ.oç. 66 E.g., Aristophanes, Vespae 658-659 (various taxes), Acharniae 896 (market tax); Plata, Leges 8.847B (toll), 850B (taxes on buying and selling), Politeia 4.425D (market and harbor taxes). 67 Jobst 1976-1977, 61-65. I am grateful to Gemma Jansen for this reference. 68 1 thank Manfred Horstmanhoff and G. Thüry for this reference. See Thüry 2001. 69 Satyra 3.29-40, esp. 38 (conducunt foricas). I thank Barry Hobson for drawing my attention to this passage. 70 Cf. Buckland 1976, 14. 30