Roman Sewage

A Roman latrine

In larger Roman towns, people often got sick or died from drinking water that had been contaminated with sewage. Sewage is human waste - poop or pee. When people drink water with poop in it, they can get other people's germs and get sick or die. To fix this problem, many Roman towns built aqueducts to bring in fresh water from the hills outside of the towns. They also built public latrines and systems of sewage pipes to carry sewage out of the streets and dump it into the river. This was a big improvement on Greek sewage arrangements, where people just poured their waste into the street however they wanted.

Public latrine at Ostia (Thanks to Lynn Lichtenbaum)

There were also big public toilets that had room for lots of people at the same time (this one is from Ostia):

Street drain in a Roman street

These sewers just dumped raw sewage into the river, which was better than leaving it lying around in the streets, but still did spread germs sometimes. The Romans didn't have any way of treating sewage to kill the germs, as we do today, and they didn't understand the need to do that.

Roman clay drainpipe

Some of these sewers are still being used today.

To find out more about Roman sewage, check out this book from Amazon.com or from your local library:

City, by David Macaulay (1983). A detailed description, lavishly illustrated, of the construction of a Roman town. Incredibly accurate. Highly recommended for anyone young and interested in ancient Rome.

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