this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2024
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The idea that the tersorium was a toilet brush is very much a minority view.
That line ("Use the tersorium") points much more towards the use of the tersorium to wipe than to clean toilets.
Makes much more sense that the use it like we do nowadays with toilet brushes. Especially if there was a mural telling people to use it. Usually you don't have to reminder or care to tell people to wipe their own ass.
Have you met people? We have to remind them to wash their hands even in the modern day, and too many men don't wipe their own fucking ass. There's Roman poetry excoriating men for not grooming themselves in the most basic ways.
A public bathroom reminding people to perform hygiene maintenance on the toilets seems much less likely. Especially considering the small size of Roman latrine holes and the depth of most latrines.
-What should people care if one guy has a scratchy ass? Remember, in Roman time there was no concept of bacteria. -If there were so depth and small, maybe a stick will come in handy, don't you think?
Because it's in the interest of other people that people aren't dragging their shit filled ass around in public, stinking up the place. The Roman concepts of cleanliness and miasma were still very much in play.
Expecting the users of a public bathroom to go elbow-deep in a toilet with a sponge on a stick to blindly poke around in the hopes that they'll do a good job cleaning sounds much less likely to me than expecting them to wipe.
-You are overestimating the amount of shit produced in one siting XD. Also, I you get yourself dirty is YOUR shame, so more interest in keeping yourself clean. -You don't have to go that deep. Also, using a stick to clean your ass is very uncomfortable, one should expect that the romans would have found a better way in all its story.
P.S. I love being able to discus how people in ancient times wiped them selves.
People who don't wipe very often smell - especially if, as in Roman society, you would not have necessarily been taking every shit at a convenient latrine.
Romans were a very communal society, and as mentioned, public cleanliness and the idea of 'foul air' causing illness were important ideas to the Romans.
The hole isn't large and the latrine isn't exactly shallow. How deep are you going to get in that before you have to put your arm in there?
And why should I go that deep? There was running water. You could perfectly clean the dirty areas who could touch the next person using the toilet. And then use running water or other solution to clean yourself. Also, we don't know if there was also wood in the toilets that didn't survive thousands of years.