34. Ancient Greeks and Romans Had Flush Toilets and Public Restrooms
In the second millennium, BC, the Minoans of ancient Crete developed toilets with a capacity to flush waste. For centuries, that remained a luxury available only to the elites, until the first millennium BC, when the spread of prosperity allowed the introduction of flush toilets to middle-class houses. Before long, some ancient Greek cities had built large-scale latrines, that were open to the general public. Those early public restrooms consisted of large rooms with bench seats, connected to a drainage system.
In the ancient world, it was the Romans, however, who made the most use of flush technology and public latrines. By the 1st century BC, many Roman houses had private flush toilets that were connected to the public drainage system, and public restrooms were a common feature in cities and towns. They did not have private stalls, however: the facility consisted of a room lined with stone or wooden bench seats, with toilet openings over a sewer. Everybody – of both sexes – did their business in front of everybody else. To clean themselves, they resorted to reusable sponges on a stick. The sponges were “cleaned” between uses by dipping them into small gutters with running water that flowed in front of the toilet seats.