How Roman fullers did not collect their urine

The latest volume of the Journal of Roman Archaeology provides a long, and rather positive, review of the volume on Roman Toilets by Gemma Jansen, Ann-Olga Koloski Ostrow and Eric Moormann to which I have contributed a section on the economic applications of urine in the Roman world (part of a chapter co-written by me and Andrew Wilson). This section has always been one of my favourite pieces to write (I wrote it back in 2007…). It simply was a lot of fun to look into ways Romans used aged urine (= ammonia) in agriculture and manufacturing, and I was more than happy to debunk the idea that Roman fullers collected their urine by means of vessels placed on the street in front of their shops (on the grounds that the evidence brought forward in favour of this idea was ridiculously weak, and that such a system does not make any sense at all if you want to be sure you collect your urine pure and unpolluted – which is handy if you want to turn it into a chemical agent…). I am therefore very happy to see that the reviewer, Werner Heinz, also has appreciated my attempt to correct this oft-quoted but wrong picture (see for his comments the bottom of this post). I thought this makes a good occasion to share, online, what I wrote back then:

There is a vociferous tradition claiming that fullers, who are the most prominent urban users of urine, had their stuff collected by means of jars that were positioned in front of their shops in the street. This idea can be traced back as far as the late nineteenth century, when it appears prominently in the dictionaries and handbooks that were produced in that period and figures as an unquestioned fact in recent literature.[1] 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’.[2] However, apart from the fact that it is almost impossible for an archaeologist to determine whether one specific vessel was used for urine collection of not, there may be reason to have some 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 Thais. With several metaphors, the poet explains his public how badly the woman in question usually smells. The first metaphor compares her body odor with the smell coming from an old testa (crock) of a parsimonious fuller ‘recently broken in the middle of the road’. While it may be argued that the broken vessel smells because it used to contain urine, it cannot be deduced from the text that it used to be at the disposal for male passers-by that needed to empty their bladder. Rather, the specific location referred to—‘in the middle of the road’—seems to suggest that the vessel fell on the ground during transportation and broke in to pieces.

The second epigram, 12.48, is a critique of the absurd favors sometimes expected in return for a copious dinner. The argument is that no matter how fine the dinner is, as soon as the food is consumed, 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 doomed mop stick

or some dog or other or a crock by the roadside to take care of.

That is what mullet and hares and sow’s udder come to.

Here, Martial does not refer to fulling at all. 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. Given the consumed products mentioned in the following line, it is very well possible that Martial refers to faeces or, possibly, 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

As they go, there is no amphora in the alley that they do not fill, these men with their bladders full of wine. (Macrobius 3.16.15, translation author).

The text is part of a quote from the 2^nd century B.C. orator Caius Titius that is a long rant about the decadence of some judges that 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 urine collectors, nor that they belonged to fullers.

If there is no literary evidence for public urine collection, it may also be worth while reconsidering some of the archaeologically identified urine collectors. The best known of these is in the east part of the baths of Mithras at Ostia. According to Schiøler 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. However, a significant problem with the theory of Schiøler and Nielsen is that the establishments claimed to be fullonicae do not satisfy any of the criteria used to identify workshops of this type. Moreover, there was no evidence for either a lead pipe or an amphora underneath the 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 urinal actually was a urinal, as there the only reason behind its identification as such must be that there is a rectangular travertine plaque with 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 was meant as a urinal. Moreover, there are no parallel situations elsewhere in the Roman world suggesting that urinals of this type existed.

The urine collectors identified by Walter Moeller at Pompeii have recently been discussed by Mark Bradley, who concludes that in all cases, there is no reason to assume that the vases in question were used for urine collection.[3] Laurence Brissaud’s recent identification of an urine jar in Saint-Romain-en-Gal is equally doubtful.[4] 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 remains 30cm 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 crock, 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. Similarly, a series of jars in an alley at Berenice has been identified as possible urinals, but without any necessary connection with a fullonica.[5]

Thus, on closer inspection, none of the material and written sources that have been presented as evidence turns 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 is 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 side-effects 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 basin, are unfit for urine collection. Public urinals, if they existed, are unfit as well, 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 exposition 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.

This, rather disappointingly, means that we do not know how Roman fullers got the urine they used. Yet, it is clear that the urine must have been collected in some way or another. In early modern 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.

Miko Flohr, 04/01/2014