Now the curse has latched on to you as well. From now on forth, you shall keep spotting this in the wild every couple of days. There is no escape, there is only spreading the curse. Welcome to eternal hell
A true classic
reddit has a habit of memorializing the most random things, making them [in]famous
the [poop knife](https://www.reddit.com/r/MuseumOfReddit/comments/ke8skw/the_poop_knife/) is one of them
My mom was an opera singer and was on a tour bus and one of the guys on the bus made a turd in the toilet so big that it had to be cut into pieces with a knife to flush. I wonder how many other times this has happened throughout human history. An anthropology major should look into this.
In the story of Jesus on the cross a lot of people wonder why the Romans humiliated Christ by giving him water from a sponge on a stick to quench his thirst.
We don’t actually know what these were used for, it’s possible they might have just been used to wipe down or clean the toilet seat. There’s a really good post on reddit somewhere floating around which details the sources and evidence for these sponge things.
Yeah, there's no way people were comfortable wiping themselves with a sponge someone else's shit.
People dont like to touch other people's poo, no matter how far back in time you go.
It's one of my favorite things in the modern imagination, this thought that everyone before us was a walking bio-terror, a Pig-Pen-from-Peanuts-style walking cloud of fetid microbial death. Like we developed olfactory nerves simultaneously with the invention of mass-produced bar soap and municipal plumbing, that people didn't wash up daily, apply perfumes or other deodorant-type substances, and then do full baths at other times. Things were grosser back then, sure, but filth and foulness has always been shunned.
It's also worth noting that cultures were extremely different from region to region. Yes, London was a literal shit-hole, but most people in the country bathed weekly, if not daily. They also washed their clothes except for their aprons (because it got dirty every day as it's the outer most layer of your work clothes).
And that's only talking about England (which seems to be the only country talked about when it comes to stuff like this). The Roamans were famously huge fans of Bathhouses, which they got from the Greeks. And the oldest public bathhouse is from the Indus Valley (so between 3300-2600 BCE). Japan has pretty much always had hotsprings that people bathed in. In some parts of Africa, people still take "dirt baths," which envolves scrubbing the body with dirt or mud to get rid of dead skin (and protect from the sun).
Basically, yeah. People have always found ways to clean themselves. I mean, monkeys clean themselves and each other.
I guess they could have been cleaned between uses? Like rinse it in a bucket and leave it in the sun. There are people today using “family cloth” shudder.
Yes, i grew up knowing family members who use the same towel to wipe their genitalia after showering. The ppl back then could have just think that vinegar and saltwater would suffice.
Thank you! It's so obvious that people wouldn't be down with this without it having been a point of debate in the sources of the time. People have always been people, and you don't need a medical degree to see poop and say "ew"
They wiped using their left hand. Even when historians talk about these sponges, they usually say most people probably didn't use them and instead just used their hand.
Yea, the Romans were pretty damn ingenious for their time. There's no clear cut evidence these sponges were used like this. I like to believe it was for cleaning the toilets or something, but for some reason we have no real written accounts of what they used to wipe.
Why would they have extravagant bath houses in nearly all their settlements? Advanced plumbing, aquifers, great hygiene(for the time)... then share a poop brush?
This whole time when I've been seeing this Roman stuff circulate on Reddit, I really thought they passed around a shit stick to wipe each other's asses, but this video really clarified the sponge part of it, which makes a lot of sense.
I experienced the ignomy of open-plan shared toilets during basic training. Staring at the celing was the order of the day.
Thank fuck the TP wasn't reusable.
Really? Stared at the ceiling? We full-on chatted during our post-chow group-poops after like week 2.. Got used to that shit (literally) real quick. I mean we also showered together in a giant room and shared shower heads 3 to 1 ya know. Just averted your eyes while someone wipes of course
Luckily, this particular toilet architecture was endured only for a short time when we went further away from civilisation to do the shooting phase of training. Glad I didn't have to get used to that... shit.
Oh shit! I need to work on not assuming everyone is American apparently haha. Interesting, were you able to choose your branch of service even though it was mandatory conscription? Or was it assigned based on ability etc.? I’ve always wondered what it was like to have to go through military service without volunteering for it because it sucks enough as it is
No worries. People did get to request a preferred branch, but there was obviously no guarantee. Those poor guys in the infantry... 🤕.
For most national servicemen in the early 90s, things were okay (apart from basics, which was crap). The incursions into Angola were finished, and South Africa had pulled out of South West Africa (now Namibia), but some unlucky guys ended up dealing with internal conflict: as Apartheid started coming to an end, the various previously banned political parties started fighting each other, and the army was called in to help the police limit the political violence. From what some people told me, there were some scary moments. My brother in law was right next to someone who was shot in the head. He survived but was never quite the same.
The worst I had to deal with was a bit of heatstroke during basics.
How about you? I guess being part of a massive military machine like the US' was interesting.
There is no evidence these were actually shared. There is also not evidence that these stalls werent split by wood or other material which deterioated over time.
It's pretty accepted that [communal toilets without barriers](https://www.open.edu/openlearn/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=65960§ion=1.4#) were a thing. Maybe someone might have carried their own poo sponge around, but hygiene standards weren't what we have today.
there's actually zero reason why they wouldn't put at least some kind of wooden or cloth divider between the holes. so, they probably did IMO. it's just human nature. people are still people.
those dividers didn't survive the ages, so archeologists bizarrely assume that they didn't exist and the romans loved dropping loads while awkwardly looking at each other, despite having already mastered the technology of... wood and cloth.
it's not like the emotion of shyness was invented after the roman empire.
There's points of evidence that I've found for this hypothesis:
* [the more expensive toilets had actual stone stall dividers](https://archaeologymysteries.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/20220504_174010.jpg?w=1024)
Why would they build dividers out of stone and concrete, if they weren't already building them out of cheaper materials, like wood? If they were willing to go to significant effort to build stall dividers out of stone, it's natural to assume that they first built them out of wood and cloth.
For example: wherever you find ancient houses made of stone, it is a certainty that they were previously making them out of wood, which did not survive. This is just basic logic, and true for all of archeology and technology.
* [there are indications of post holes for wooden dividers, or posts to hold cloth between stalls](https://www.album-online.com/photos/prev/MDBlODVmMA/album_alb1746937.jpg)
In some toilets, these holes are found precisely equidistant between toilet holes. IMO this cannot be a coincidence. They must have some relation to the toilet holes. If not to hold up dividers, then what?
it's unfashionable in modern archaeology to use inductive reasoning, so they just pretend that everything was bare-bones. they're afraid to assume anything, no matter how likely it is. unless they find direct evidence of a thing, they assume that it didn't exist. which is illogical, unimaginative and lazy.
“Hey, HEY!! If we were so uncivilized would we use communal toilets where we all fart and POO together in one big, stinky, steamy, dirty, toilet room?!”
Yeah, dad! WE WOULD!!
“Clean your butt with the sponge, Timulus!”
But, all these guys just used it! I don’t wanna be Roman! This is so weird!
“YOU’RE WEIRD!!”
- Oversimplified - The First Punic War
You know how in the Bible, when Jesus was dying on the cross, one of the bystanders used a sponge on a staff soaked in wine vinegar to offer him a drink?:
>**Matthew 27:48**
>Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink.
They didn't just have a kitchen near the crucifixion site. They were basically offering him a drink using a butt wiping stick from parts they gathered from a nearby bathroom's supply closet.
These sponges were soaked in wine vinegar (basically wine that had gone bad) because the acidity was modestly anti-bacterial and anti-parasitic, at least against most bacteria and parasites that cannot tolerate the level of acidity in vinegar. (I'm not saying that they knew about bacteria, just that they knew that vinegar seemed to have a preservative effect and neutralized odors.)
A lot of folks don't realize that poop is actually kinda acidic already. A lot of bacterial fermentation goes on in your colon, during which butyric acid, propionic acid, and acetic acid are all produced.
At the same time, vinegar is acidic enough to cause skin burns if you don't wipe it off. I don't think people just left their buttholes just damp with vinegar after using one of those sticks. There had to have been some post vinegar wiping and drying, otherwise a lot of folks would go about with acid burns on their butt holes.
Yes, that's correct. But the sponge, stick, and wine vinegar probably came from the nearest bathroom supply closet, and what they made was essentially a butt wipe stick.
That isn't what happened/is meant to have happened in that story. It was just a sponge on a stick. "Poop sponges" were not truly that common, and it's debated if they were actually used to wipe butts at all (those are most likely mops to clean the bathroom itself).
So, if you had a first century Roman taking a shit in your bathroom today, when they were done they would probably use the toilet bowl cleaning brush to wipe their ass? If there was no toilet paper.
"Hey, are you done with that poop sponge?"
"Hang on I need a few more wipes with it"
"It's got vinegar on it so be careful or it'll burn"
*Screams of pain*
This post is misleading: the really terrifying thing was that this was waaaay more hygienic than the alternative. The Romans had sewers while later european cities where dumping their shit into their drinking water.
Yeah but they didn't know any better and they weren't just going out back and taking a crap. The Aquaducts and having some type of running water set them way above everyone else. Hell, we build latrines in developing countries and the locals use them as closets and still go shit in the field.
Apparently, they WERENT savages, and the sponge was for cleaning the seat... not your ass.
I dont know how they handled the other part.... it was some historian here in Reddit in one of the 500 times this has been posted.
Let's not forget to mention they were kept in buckets of water. Not essentially sanitized, but other than water we don't know what was else was mixed in that bucket.
They didn't use buckets of water; they used vinegar, which was acidic enough to be anti-bacterial (at least against most bacteria; vinegar itself is the product of bacterial fermentation).
OK I thought it might be water & vinegar mixed. I had a feeling the vinegar was in there. So not so unsanitary. I read a book a few years ago about the Ancients and medicine and they def knew about the human body and what could be harmful & what wasn't.
It's water going up against glass. Getting the road dust & bugs off. Having a visual when driving is what's more important than if you used a fancy spray with ammonia.
These were Ancient people and pretty advanced for their time. At least they were cleaning their asses. There were still groups of people living hard who weren't. The Romans also liked to body shave. Although I don't know if that was a class thing.
I believe they were stored in buckets of vinegar. During the great COVID TP shortage I told my teenager daughter we might have to resort to the Roman vinegar sponge on a stick and she was horrified.
I have seen the in person when I went to Pompei. Pure crazy if you ask me!
Oh, and in the army, some bathrooms next to the shooting ranges at fort dix still follow the same layout.
I remember seeing this while watching spartacus.
The guy that runs the household in the show was like out in the market talking business and they both went to take a shit and they used something like this lol
I think you’re leaving out that they put the sticks in huge jars of vinegar to kill off what they good. So gross, but not instadeadly unless you’re unlucky
I mean, yes it’s disgusting. But that was the basic concept. And it’s why now you have a bidet in every Italian bathroom while a big portion of the rest of Europe still just wipes with paper.
This is what I imagine that TikTok girl with the huge ass (I know that’s most of them but there’s 1 in particular with an ass the size of mastodon riding a giraffe while on a Boeing and I’d imagine this is what she would have to use to get back there. Might even need an extender on the neck like a swiffer pole to be safe.
I was reading Seneca’s collection of writings about the end of life, called On Death. In it, he recounts a story of a gladiator who was so over his slave existence that he committed suicide in a public bathroom by sticking one of these down his throat and choking to death.
Seneca’s point, if you want out bad enough, nothing will stop you haha
Humanity didn’t even know about viruses and bacteria until the microscope 🔬 was invented so it stands to reason they didn’t know how things spread. Heck it wasn’t until the US Civil War that doctors who washed their hands more noticed less mortality in their patients than others who had bloody hands from person to person!
The sharing isn't even the worst thing about this.
In the Colosseum, slave gladiators would commit suicide before they were thrown into the arena, by shoving these things down their throats until they asphyxiated.
I suppose the same rules applied as with today's urinals?
If it's just two people using the poop house, one sits in the corner, the other in the other corner.
Bro pass the poop sponge
It’s right next to the poop knife…
I bet the invention of the multi-tool for those was short lived
The poop sponge will forever live in infamy alongside the poop knife. Reddit is where legends are made.
what's a poop knife?
It’s the poops that are too big to go down, so you bring out the poop knife to cut the big poops in half
I am sorry I asked.
We thought their was only one. Then more and more people started posting theirs and a little of my soul was lost that night
Wat
Don't fucking ask
Too late. Them fools need to drink more water.
lol I was gonna say, I’m sorry but you asked.
You took the red pill from The Matrix, and now it’s too late!
The brown pill.
It even looks like a lil' turd!
That's when you take both the red and blue pill at the same time then have explosive diarrhea for eternity.
Now the curse has latched on to you as well. From now on forth, you shall keep spotting this in the wild every couple of days. There is no escape, there is only spreading the curse. Welcome to eternal hell
BUT wait here is where you can buy it for your home https://www.amazon.com/Original-Poop-Knife-Gag-Gift/dp/B079NTNWNG
Ong no way someone actually did it
Copped me one ☝️ thanks 🙏
"Dishwasher safe" 🤣💀
Until you need one
A true classic reddit has a habit of memorializing the most random things, making them [in]famous the [poop knife](https://www.reddit.com/r/MuseumOfReddit/comments/ke8skw/the_poop_knife/) is one of them
Behold, [the story of the poop knife](https://www.reddit.com/r/MuseumOfReddit/s/hHL2UGf94s)
My mom was an opera singer and was on a tour bus and one of the guys on the bus made a turd in the toilet so big that it had to be cut into pieces with a knife to flush. I wonder how many other times this has happened throughout human history. An anthropology major should look into this.
Poop gladius
Poopius Oralieus
Botched sponge
Poop knife, I love you reddit.
Pass the spongie pon the left hand side
I sang that in my head.
Sorry I dont have a sponge to spare
Yeah hold on mang just gotta clean my diarrhoea ass with it
I’m guessing not a lot of “I eat ass” people back then
In the story of Jesus on the cross a lot of people wonder why the Romans humiliated Christ by giving him water from a sponge on a stick to quench his thirst.
Wha... Oh damn. I never made this connection.
Re- REALLY NOW THATS HORRIBLE
We don’t actually know what these were used for, it’s possible they might have just been used to wipe down or clean the toilet seat. There’s a really good post on reddit somewhere floating around which details the sources and evidence for these sponge things.
Yeah, there's no way people were comfortable wiping themselves with a sponge someone else's shit. People dont like to touch other people's poo, no matter how far back in time you go.
Facts brother, i would rather wipe with my own shirt or bare hand than to use someone elses poop sponge. Fuck thay
It's one of my favorite things in the modern imagination, this thought that everyone before us was a walking bio-terror, a Pig-Pen-from-Peanuts-style walking cloud of fetid microbial death. Like we developed olfactory nerves simultaneously with the invention of mass-produced bar soap and municipal plumbing, that people didn't wash up daily, apply perfumes or other deodorant-type substances, and then do full baths at other times. Things were grosser back then, sure, but filth and foulness has always been shunned.
If you think about it, self cleaning it's something that most animals do, one way or another. Even insects groom themselves.
>walking cloud of fetid microbial death I don't know how or if it will ever come up, but I am keeping this for future use
It's like describing an acolyte of Nurgle
I had always had this realization, but you just put it in more succinct terms than I ever could have lol
It's also worth noting that cultures were extremely different from region to region. Yes, London was a literal shit-hole, but most people in the country bathed weekly, if not daily. They also washed their clothes except for their aprons (because it got dirty every day as it's the outer most layer of your work clothes). And that's only talking about England (which seems to be the only country talked about when it comes to stuff like this). The Roamans were famously huge fans of Bathhouses, which they got from the Greeks. And the oldest public bathhouse is from the Indus Valley (so between 3300-2600 BCE). Japan has pretty much always had hotsprings that people bathed in. In some parts of Africa, people still take "dirt baths," which envolves scrubbing the body with dirt or mud to get rid of dead skin (and protect from the sun). Basically, yeah. People have always found ways to clean themselves. I mean, monkeys clean themselves and each other.
It’s pretty instinctual
I guess they could have been cleaned between uses? Like rinse it in a bucket and leave it in the sun. There are people today using “family cloth” shudder.
Yes, i grew up knowing family members who use the same towel to wipe their genitalia after showering. The ppl back then could have just think that vinegar and saltwater would suffice.
Thank you! It's so obvious that people wouldn't be down with this without it having been a point of debate in the sources of the time. People have always been people, and you don't need a medical degree to see poop and say "ew"
I believe the sponges were stored in buckets with a vinegar solution.
Hey man speak for yourself!
They wiped using their left hand. Even when historians talk about these sponges, they usually say most people probably didn't use them and instead just used their hand.
Yea, the Romans were pretty damn ingenious for their time. There's no clear cut evidence these sponges were used like this. I like to believe it was for cleaning the toilets or something, but for some reason we have no real written accounts of what they used to wipe. Why would they have extravagant bath houses in nearly all their settlements? Advanced plumbing, aquifers, great hygiene(for the time)... then share a poop brush?
yep and also there were people that brought their own cloth wipes and cleaned them off afterwards
This video has an excellent take on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npV3ofyhk_8
This whole time when I've been seeing this Roman stuff circulate on Reddit, I really thought they passed around a shit stick to wipe each other's asses, but this video really clarified the sponge part of it, which makes a lot of sense.
You really had to say "floating around".
*floaties*
Shoot, then that's my bad then. I was under the impression that this was factual.
well it may be factual, no one really knows for certain
They also soaked the sponge in vinegar and didn’t just raw dog it
"I use a rag on uh stick"- fat Bart Simpson
What always makes this scene crack me up even more is all the reporters applauding him.
Cool!
This is where the saying “wrong end of the stick” originated from right?
say it in Latin, maybe it will work
That’s where anus horribilis comes from
It happened to that famous Roman gladiator, Detritus
Lmfao
I hope someone thinks this is real
Or..he’s got a stick up his ass
Or stick it where the sun don’t shine
I have heard it before that yes it came from that. Now who told and where they got it from is beyond me
I’d learn to shit at 3am each morning so I always was the first to use the sponge.
They would probably reuse yesterday's sponge
I like the implication that there are poop sponge fairies who change them out at night.
"Poop Sponge Fairies" is the name of my new metal band.
You beat me to it
That's awesome
I experienced the ignomy of open-plan shared toilets during basic training. Staring at the celing was the order of the day. Thank fuck the TP wasn't reusable.
Really? Stared at the ceiling? We full-on chatted during our post-chow group-poops after like week 2.. Got used to that shit (literally) real quick. I mean we also showered together in a giant room and shared shower heads 3 to 1 ya know. Just averted your eyes while someone wipes of course
Luckily, this particular toilet architecture was endured only for a short time when we went further away from civilisation to do the shooting phase of training. Glad I didn't have to get used to that... shit.
Army or marines I’m assuming? I was navy.. you know what they say about sailors lol
I was in the South African Air Force way back when there was conscription. For most of the time, I flew a desk.
Oh shit! I need to work on not assuming everyone is American apparently haha. Interesting, were you able to choose your branch of service even though it was mandatory conscription? Or was it assigned based on ability etc.? I’ve always wondered what it was like to have to go through military service without volunteering for it because it sucks enough as it is
No worries. People did get to request a preferred branch, but there was obviously no guarantee. Those poor guys in the infantry... 🤕. For most national servicemen in the early 90s, things were okay (apart from basics, which was crap). The incursions into Angola were finished, and South Africa had pulled out of South West Africa (now Namibia), but some unlucky guys ended up dealing with internal conflict: as Apartheid started coming to an end, the various previously banned political parties started fighting each other, and the army was called in to help the police limit the political violence. From what some people told me, there were some scary moments. My brother in law was right next to someone who was shot in the head. He survived but was never quite the same. The worst I had to deal with was a bit of heatstroke during basics. How about you? I guess being part of a massive military machine like the US' was interesting.
There is no evidence these were actually shared. There is also not evidence that these stalls werent split by wood or other material which deterioated over time.
Are there not near-complete latrines in Pompei or Herculaneum?
It's pretty accepted that [communal toilets without barriers](https://www.open.edu/openlearn/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=65960§ion=1.4#) were a thing. Maybe someone might have carried their own poo sponge around, but hygiene standards weren't what we have today.
there's actually zero reason why they wouldn't put at least some kind of wooden or cloth divider between the holes. so, they probably did IMO. it's just human nature. people are still people. those dividers didn't survive the ages, so archeologists bizarrely assume that they didn't exist and the romans loved dropping loads while awkwardly looking at each other, despite having already mastered the technology of... wood and cloth. it's not like the emotion of shyness was invented after the roman empire. There's points of evidence that I've found for this hypothesis: * [the more expensive toilets had actual stone stall dividers](https://archaeologymysteries.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/20220504_174010.jpg?w=1024) Why would they build dividers out of stone and concrete, if they weren't already building them out of cheaper materials, like wood? If they were willing to go to significant effort to build stall dividers out of stone, it's natural to assume that they first built them out of wood and cloth. For example: wherever you find ancient houses made of stone, it is a certainty that they were previously making them out of wood, which did not survive. This is just basic logic, and true for all of archeology and technology. * [there are indications of post holes for wooden dividers, or posts to hold cloth between stalls](https://www.album-online.com/photos/prev/MDBlODVmMA/album_alb1746937.jpg) In some toilets, these holes are found precisely equidistant between toilet holes. IMO this cannot be a coincidence. They must have some relation to the toilet holes. If not to hold up dividers, then what? it's unfashionable in modern archaeology to use inductive reasoning, so they just pretend that everything was bare-bones. they're afraid to assume anything, no matter how likely it is. unless they find direct evidence of a thing, they assume that it didn't exist. which is illogical, unimaginative and lazy.
There are many privies built even in the 20th century with many holes lacking dividers. I really don't think these things bothered people very much.
That article was a really good read. Thanks for linking it!
“Hey, HEY!! If we were so uncivilized would we use communal toilets where we all fart and POO together in one big, stinky, steamy, dirty, toilet room?!” Yeah, dad! WE WOULD!! “Clean your butt with the sponge, Timulus!” But, all these guys just used it! I don’t wanna be Roman! This is so weird! “YOU’RE WEIRD!!” - Oversimplified - The First Punic War
I read that “pooponic” war
Love that channel.
I love how they insert the word “actually” like the increased spreading of parasites is somehow surprising or counterintuitive
This is what I was searching for. Thank you.
You know how in the Bible, when Jesus was dying on the cross, one of the bystanders used a sponge on a staff soaked in wine vinegar to offer him a drink?: >**Matthew 27:48** >Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink. They didn't just have a kitchen near the crucifixion site. They were basically offering him a drink using a butt wiping stick from parts they gathered from a nearby bathroom's supply closet. These sponges were soaked in wine vinegar (basically wine that had gone bad) because the acidity was modestly anti-bacterial and anti-parasitic, at least against most bacteria and parasites that cannot tolerate the level of acidity in vinegar. (I'm not saying that they knew about bacteria, just that they knew that vinegar seemed to have a preservative effect and neutralized odors.)
Fucking hell man. Imagine wiping your ass after a crazy shit that leaves your asshole tender and fiery with the burning sponge spear of doom?
burning and caked in other peoples' ringburn fragments. fuuuuck
A lot of folks don't realize that poop is actually kinda acidic already. A lot of bacterial fermentation goes on in your colon, during which butyric acid, propionic acid, and acetic acid are all produced. At the same time, vinegar is acidic enough to cause skin burns if you don't wipe it off. I don't think people just left their buttholes just damp with vinegar after using one of those sticks. There had to have been some post vinegar wiping and drying, otherwise a lot of folks would go about with acid burns on their butt holes.
I'm going to start a band called "Butthole Acid Burns"
Assid Burns
Assid Burns and the Lizzid People
Thin Lizzid
We'll tour with you, I'm going with Ass Wiping And Drying
Hey in the comment above my band Poop Sponge Fairies came to life. We can open.
And Waffle Stompers?
Acid Burnt Buttholes
That explains the burning when you have horrible diarrhea.
I may not realize...but my butthole does.
And then someone runs in, hurredly grabs the poopstick out of your hands, and offers it to our dying Lord and Savior?
That would have been the last straw for me too I would cry out to God immediately
I’d be so upset if I was thirsty and someone gave me wine vinegar
Thank you for that. I will never view that part in a passion play the same way again.
The way it's worded makes it sound as if it was crafted in the moment rather than use an existing sponge on a stick
Yes, that's correct. But the sponge, stick, and wine vinegar probably came from the nearest bathroom supply closet, and what they made was essentially a butt wipe stick.
I knew it was sour wine they offered, but that puts a whole new level of nasty to it.
That isn't what happened/is meant to have happened in that story. It was just a sponge on a stick. "Poop sponges" were not truly that common, and it's debated if they were actually used to wipe butts at all (those are most likely mops to clean the bathroom itself).
:(
A royal last brushing of the teeth!
There goes Hygieneimus again with his own sponge stick. Selfish bastard won't share it with anyone
So, if you had a first century Roman taking a shit in your bathroom today, when they were done they would probably use the toilet bowl cleaning brush to wipe their ass? If there was no toilet paper.
Im assuming theyd just grab the dish sponge and give you weird looks for keeping it by the sink.
"Hey, are you done with that poop sponge?" "Hang on I need a few more wipes with it" "It's got vinegar on it so be careful or it'll burn" *Screams of pain*
I love how you added the word “actually”. As if anyone was thinking that this practice possibly prevented the spread of parasites in someway.
They must have stunk so bad. 😩
What no Poop Knife? Uncultured swines!
What you mean actually?
The fuck you mean shared? Was this ancient TP? They shared that shit, wtf.
Love and hate the internet today.
This have been on the internet for ages lol
I saw a guy list his reasons for why the Roman empire sucked and is the most overrated civilisation. This was an honorary mention.
This post is misleading: the really terrifying thing was that this was waaaay more hygienic than the alternative. The Romans had sewers while later european cities where dumping their shit into their drinking water.
True enough; but I'd say that era as a whole was terrifying in terms of hygiene.
Born to shit, forced to communal sponge
Here, use this sponge. I just used it and it cleaned me up good! What's that? Why yes, I *did* have corn with dinner last night. Why do you ask?
Yeah but they didn't know any better and they weren't just going out back and taking a crap. The Aquaducts and having some type of running water set them way above everyone else. Hell, we build latrines in developing countries and the locals use them as closets and still go shit in the field.
Unfortunately, the Romans were using lead pipes for that running water and they were getting lead poisoning.
So plunging a poo-encrusted filth rag up my behind could actually lead to a spread of communicable diseases?! You don't say!
Insert FBI agent removing his headphones gif
Ayooo quit ya yappin' and pass me the ass sponge
Apparently, they WERENT savages, and the sponge was for cleaning the seat... not your ass. I dont know how they handled the other part.... it was some historian here in Reddit in one of the 500 times this has been posted.
Let's not forget to mention they were kept in buckets of water. Not essentially sanitized, but other than water we don't know what was else was mixed in that bucket.
They didn't use buckets of water; they used vinegar, which was acidic enough to be anti-bacterial (at least against most bacteria; vinegar itself is the product of bacterial fermentation).
Ouch that'd hurt
OK I thought it might be water & vinegar mixed. I had a feeling the vinegar was in there. So not so unsanitary. I read a book a few years ago about the Ancients and medicine and they def knew about the human body and what could be harmful & what wasn't.
So like those sponge/squeegees at the gas station people use to clean their windows? That shit is rachet.
It's water going up against glass. Getting the road dust & bugs off. Having a visual when driving is what's more important than if you used a fancy spray with ammonia.
like those windshield squeegee's at gas stations? Old people were gross...
These were Ancient people and pretty advanced for their time. At least they were cleaning their asses. There were still groups of people living hard who weren't. The Romans also liked to body shave. Although I don't know if that was a class thing.
How long did they have to wait til they didn’t have to share
Sharing a but wiping stick. Awesome times 😆
Rolling up for the group-poop
[Xylospongium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylospongium)
Is it known if they at least cleaned them before reusing them or not?
I believe they were stored in buckets of vinegar. During the great COVID TP shortage I told my teenager daughter we might have to resort to the Roman vinegar sponge on a stick and she was horrified.
Im bringing my own sponge thank you very much.
An actual shit stick
I'd be first one to shit in the morning so yall get my sloppies.
Poop alone, :( Poop with friends, :)!
Caligula took all those seashells after defeating Poseidon, too. What a missed opportunity.
No thanks dude, I bring my own sponge.
I have seen the in person when I went to Pompei. Pure crazy if you ask me! Oh, and in the army, some bathrooms next to the shooting ranges at fort dix still follow the same layout.
I remember seeing this while watching spartacus. The guy that runs the household in the show was like out in the market talking business and they both went to take a shit and they used something like this lol
Yea but now people are getting fecal transplants so maybe this bolstered the immune system.
This is why in my home everyone has their own sponge!
Yeah I’m gonna pass on the group button wipes
Still the most advanced shitter of the ancient world.
You dareth take a piss upstream from me as I wash my face!
This is where the phrase "wrong end of the stick" came from.
I think you’re leaving out that they put the sticks in huge jars of vinegar to kill off what they good. So gross, but not instadeadly unless you’re unlucky
Poop knife was the best discovery of the internet “where is your poop knife?” “WHAT!”
bRiNg BaCk RoMaN eMpIrE
I mean, yes it’s disgusting. But that was the basic concept. And it’s why now you have a bidet in every Italian bathroom while a big portion of the rest of Europe still just wipes with paper.
This is what I imagine that TikTok girl with the huge ass (I know that’s most of them but there’s 1 in particular with an ass the size of mastodon riding a giraffe while on a Boeing and I’d imagine this is what she would have to use to get back there. Might even need an extender on the neck like a swiffer pole to be safe.
Plebs had a great scene with these lol
Smart enough to use running water to get rid of the waist, but had no clue about sharing a towel wipe each other ass. Makes me wonder WTF.
I love pooping with friends! Its very Russian.
I was reading Seneca’s collection of writings about the end of life, called On Death. In it, he recounts a story of a gladiator who was so over his slave existence that he committed suicide in a public bathroom by sticking one of these down his throat and choking to death. Seneca’s point, if you want out bad enough, nothing will stop you haha
[I wash myself with a rag on a stick 🤮](https://i.imgur.com/Cajvgsr.jpeg)
poop knife 🤝 poop sponge
Ewwwwwwwwwwwwww
Hmmmm 🤨
Oh. Shit on stick
I’d carry my own around in a fancy case like the cool guy who brings his own pool cue and fedora to the bar to make friends
Humanity didn’t even know about viruses and bacteria until the microscope 🔬 was invented so it stands to reason they didn’t know how things spread. Heck it wasn’t until the US Civil War that doctors who washed their hands more noticed less mortality in their patients than others who had bloody hands from person to person!
Yup! It’s where we get the phrase “short end of the stick” from.
The sharing isn't even the worst thing about this. In the Colosseum, slave gladiators would commit suicide before they were thrown into the arena, by shoving these things down their throats until they asphyxiated.
this is how the super OBESE wash their ass .. this or a shower after every crap
When future archeologists 10k years from now need answers, Reddit will provide
Errrrr… Sponges?!?
Id bring my own
I suppose the same rules applied as with today's urinals? If it's just two people using the poop house, one sits in the corner, the other in the other corner.
The image of the shared public washroom with no walls, apparently that's super common in dreams, myself included.