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The Anatomy of Rome from Capitol to Cloaca*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2012
Extract
‘Can I fix Rome for you on this poor sheet of paper?’ Something like Petrarch's lament must precede any attempt to sum up Rome in words; only an Atlas could do justice to the vast weight of such a city. But there is at least one compensation: we are describing a city that we all know, or think we know. For Montaigne, it was the first city that entered his consciousness: ‘I have had knowledge of the affairs of Rome long time before I had knowledge of those of my own house. I knew the Capitol and its platform before I knew Louvre, the palace of our kings in Paris; the river Tiber before Seine’. And for him it remained the ultimate city: ‘And therefore can I not look so often into the situation of their streets and houses, and those wondrous-strange ruins, that may be said to reach down to the Antipodes, but so often must I amuse myself on them. Is it nature or by the error of fantasy, that the seeing of places we know to have been frequented or inhabited by men whose memory is esteemed or mentioned in stories doth in some sort move and stir us up as much or more than the hearing of their noble deeds or reading of their compositions?’ For Freud, the city provided the best analogy for the human consciousness itself, an overlayering of past and present events, all capable of being experienced simultaneously. He asks us, in a flight of fancy, to ‘suppose that Rome is not a human habitation but a psychical entity with a similarly long and copious past — an entity, that is to say, in which nothing that has once come into being will have passed away and all the earlier phases of development continue to exist alongside the latest one’.
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References
1 Petrarch, Letters VI. 2, in M. Bishop (ed.), Letters from Petrarch (1966), 65.
2 One of the best accounts of attempts to summarize Rome is Purcell, N., ‘The City of Rome’, in Jenkyns, R. (ed.), The Legacy of Rome (1992), 422–53Google Scholar. See also Thompson, D. (ed.), The Idea of Rome from Antiquity to the Renaissance (1971)Google Scholar; Vance, J., America's Rome. I. Classical Rome (1989)Google Scholar; Tucker, G. H., The Poet's Odyssey: Joachim du Bellay and the Antiquity of Rome (1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Montaigne, M., Essays, 3·9, Of Vanitie (trans. J. Florio, 1965), 246, 247.Google Scholar
4 Freud, S. in Strachey, J. (ed.), Civilization and its Discontents. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (1953–1974), vol. 21, 70Google Scholar. See also Price, S. R. F., ‘Freud and Antiquities’, Austrian Studies 3 (1992), 132–7Google Scholar.
5 See Vance, op. cit. ( n. 2), 9.
6 Cicero, de Fin. v.2: ‘tanta vis admonitionis inest in locis: et id quidem in hac urbe infinitum; quacumque enim ingredimur, in hac aliqua historia vestigium ponimus’; Plin., NH XXXVI.24.101: ‘universitate vero acervata et in quendam unum cumulum coiecta non alia magnitudo exurget quam si mundus alius quidam in uno loco narretur’; SHA Elag. 26.6: ‘dicens et hinc intellegendum quam magna esset Roma’.
7 Athen. 1.20b; cf. also Galen 18.1 p. 347K. The epigram (ἐπιτομὴ τῆς οἰϰουμένης) goes back to the sophist Polemo (A.D. 88–144); see RE (Pauly-Wissowa) XXIa p. 1339 s.v. Polemo (Sophist).
8 Dio LXII.29.
9 See Nicolet, C., L'Inventaire du monde. Géographie et politique aux origines de l'empire romain (1988)Google Scholar, translated as Space, Geography, and Politics in the Early Roman Empire (1991), on the Romans' obsession with cataloguing the contents of their Empire; with the review article by Purcell, N., ‘Maps, lists, money, order and power’, JRS 80 (1990), 178–82Google Scholar; now also T. P. Wiseman, ‘Julius Caesar and the Mappa Mundi’, in Talking to Virgil (1992), 22–42.
10 Juv. 3.195: ‘veteris rimae cum texit hiatum’; 3.7–8: ‘lapsus/ tectorum adsiduos’; 3.193: ‘urbem… tenuitibicine fultam’. Tac., Ann. xv.43: ‘erant tamen quicrederent veterem illam formam salubritati magis conduxisse, quoniam angustiae itinerum et altitudo tectorum non perinde solis vapore perumperentur: at nunc patulam latitudinem et nulla umbra defensam graviore aestu ardescere’. Prop. IV.I. Mart, VII.61.8: ‘nigra popina’.
11 Bauer, H., ‘Die Cloaca Maxima in Rom’, Mitteilungen des Leichtweiss-Institutes für Wasserbau der Technischen Universität Braunschweig 103 (1989), 45–67Google Scholar. Other recent surveys of the sewers include: Reimers, P., ‘“Opus omnium dictu maximum”: literary sources for the knowledge of Roman city drainage’, Opuscula Romana 17:10 (1989), 137–41Google Scholar; Scobie, A., ‘Slums, sanitation, and mortality in the Roman world’, Klio 68.2 (1986), 399–433Google Scholar; Grassnich, M., Gestalt und Konstruction des Abortes im römischen Privathaus (1982)Google Scholar. Preliminary explorations of the Cloaca are discussed by Picozzi, S., ‘L'esplorazione della cloaca Maxima’, Capitolium 50 (1975), 2–10Google Scholar. See now also Bauer's, H. article s.v. ‘cloaca, Cloaca Maxima’ in Steinby, E. M. (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae (1993), vol. 1Google Scholar, A–C, with further bibliography; Robinson, O., Ancient Rome. City Planning and Administration (1992), 117–19Google Scholar; Hodge, A. T., Roman Aqueducts and Water Supply (1992), 332–43Google Scholar. Previous surveys include Lanciani, R., Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries (1889), 49–73Google Scholar; Platner, S. and Ashby, T., A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (1929), 126–7Google Scholar. On Pompeian drains, see Adam, J.-P., La construction romaine (1984), 283–6.Google Scholar
12 Cic., Caecin. 13.36: the praetor urbanus makes decrees ‘de fossis, de cloacis, de minimis aquarum itinerumque controversiis’.
13 Studies of the symbolic aspects of other sewer systems include: Stallybrass, P.White, A., ‘The sewer, the gaze and the contaminating touch’, in The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (1986), 125–48Google Scholar, on sewers in nineteenth century London and Paris; Reid, D., Paris Sewers and Sewermen (1991)Google Scholar. Reimers, op. cit. (n. 11), 137 n. 6, announced that a discussion of the symbolic aspects would form part of his planned monograph on Roman sewers. See also Lesser, W., The Life Below the Ground: A Study of the Subterranean in Literature (1987)Google Scholar; Williams, R., Notes on the Underground (1990)Google Scholar.
14 Plin., NH XXXVI.24.106 records this as a memorabile exemplum.
15 Plin., NH XXXVI.24.105: ‘aliquando Tiberis retro infusus recipitur, pugnantque diversi aquarum impetus intus, et tamen obnixa firmitas resistat. trahuntur moles superne tantae non succumbentibus cavis operis, pulsavi truinae sponte praecipites aut impactae incendiis, quatitur solum terrae motibus, durant tamen a Tarquinio Prisco annis DCC prope inexpugnabiles’. Despite this, a sewage contractor asked Aemilius Scaurus to give him security against damage to the drains when he had marble columns for his house hauled lip to the Palatine (Plin., NH XXXVI.2.6).
16 Liv. v.55.5: ‘forma… urbis sit occupatae magis quam divisae similis’. The sewers in Livy's time ran under private houses, although they had originally been built under public ground. In fact, this most permanent of fixtures was constantly changing. The number of water courses siphoned into the main channel was frequently extended; the durable main fabric had to be patched and repaired; blockages were ostentatiously removed: see Bauer, op. cit. (n. 11).
17 Plin., NH XXXVI.24.106.
18 Suet., gramm. 2: ‘cum regione Palatii prolapsus in cloacae foramen eras fregisset…’
19 Dion. Hal., Rom. Ant. 111.67.5:
20 Cassiod., Var. III.30.1–2: ‘propter splendidas Romanae cloacas civitatis, quae tandem visentibus conferunt stuporem, ut aliarum civitatum possint miracula superare. videas illic fluvios quasi montibus concavis clausos per ingentia signina decurrere: videas structis navibus per aquas rapidas non minima sollicitudine navigari, ne praecipitato torrent i marina possint naufragia sustinere. hinc, Roma, singularis quanta in te sit potest colligi magnitudo. quae enim urbium audeat tuis culminibus contendere, quando nec ima tua possunt similitudinem reperire?’
21 Plin., NH XXXVI.24.105: ‘permeant conrivati septem amnes’.
22 Plin., NH XXXVI.24.104: ‘subfossis montibus atque… urbe pensili subterque navigata M. Agrippae in aedilitate post consulatum’.
23 Front., de aquis 1.16: ‘tot aquarum tarn multis necessariis molibus pyramidas videlicet otiosas compares aut cetera inertia sed fama celebrata opera Graecorum’.
24 The figure is Scobie's, op. cit. (n. 11), 413.
25 Juv. 5.106: ‘mediae cryptam… Suburae’.
26 On the body as a political metaphor, see Turner, B. S., The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory (1984)Google Scholar; on the ancient history of the metaphor, see Pease's commentary on Cic., ND 11.56.141–2.
27 Xen., Mem. 1.4.5: ,
. Cf. Reid, op. cit. (n. 13), 29, on Haussmann's use of a bodily analogy for the Parisian sewers: ‘The underground galleries, organs of the large city, would function like those of the human body, without revealing themselves to the light of day’ (G. E. Haussmann, Mémoire sur les eaux de Paris (1854), 52–3).
28 Plat., Tim. 70E: . A different account of the role of the stomach (though still in contrast to other bodily parts) is given in the fable of Menenius Agrippa (Liv. 11.32.9): he reproached the plebs for their rebellion against the Senate, on the grounds that it was like an intestina corporis seditio; the stomach, while appearing to be idle, was in fact what fed the rest of the body (the story is retold in Plut., Coriolanus 6.2–4). Cf. Cato's description of Rome as a ‘belly without ears’ (Plut., Mor. 198d).
29 Cic., ND 11.56.141: ‘atque ut in aedificiis architecti avertunt ab oculis naribusque dominorum ea quae profluentia necessario taetri essent aliquid habitura, sic natura res similis procul amandavit a sensibus’. Cf. Palladio, A., The Four Books of Architecture (trans. I. Ware, 1738) (1965), 2.2Google Scholar: ‘But as our blessed creator has ordered these our members in such a manner that the most beautiful are in places most exposed to view and the less comely more hidden; so in building also we ought to put the principal and considerable parts in places the most seen, and the less beautiful in places as much hidden from the eye as possible; that in them may be lodged all the foulness of the house…’
30 Strab. v.3.8: οὖτοι [the Romans] [the Greeks],
.
31 Liv. 1.55. Livy (praef. 4) refers to the inmensum opus that his own history involves.
32 Liv. 1.55.5–6: ‘caput humanum integra facie aperientibus fundamenta templi dicitur apparuisse. quae visa species haud per ambages arcem eam imperii caputque rerum fore portendabat’.
33 Plut., Mor. 289E–F.
34 Cic., Tusc. Disp. 1.10.20.
35 Liv. 1.56.2: ‘vix nova haec magnificentia quicquam adaequare potuit’.
36 Cic., Planc. 40.95: ‘arcem/ arcum facere e cloaca’. Cf. Wallace-Hadrill, A., ‘Roman arches and Greek honours: the language of power at Rome’, PCPhS 216 n.s. 36 (1990), 143–81Google Scholar, esp. 145–6 on the double meaning of Latin fornix, ‘arch’ or ‘brothel’, which caused the first meaning to become obsolete during the Principate. Cf. Tertullian, Spect. 20.2: ‘sol et in cloacam radios suos defert nec inquinatur’.
37 Presumably the metaphor is drawn from sewers, rather than the other way round: OED s.v.
38 Plaut., Curc. 476: canalem.
39 Plaut., Curc. 470–83; 124 (121 OCT): ‘effunde hoc in barathrum, propere prolue cloacam’.
40 Varro fr. 290 (Astbury): ‘sensus portae; venae hydragogiae; clavaca [cloaca] intestini’. See Cébe, J.-C., Varron, Satires Ménipées: édition, traduction et commentaire, Collection de l'école francaise de Rome IX (1987), 1297Google Scholar: ‘Varron établit un parallèle entre la structure rationelle d'une cité et la constitution du corps humain’. Plotinus called Plato's Republic ‘Platonopolis’. See also Norden, E., kleine Schriften zum klassischen Altertum (1966), 11–12, for a list of parallels.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
41 The categorization of city sites is based on Plato's division of his citizens according to the divisions of the soul at Rep. 11.368E.
42 In the Church Fathers, cloaca stood for the ‘gutter’, a site of sin and depravity from which the soul had to be redeemed. E.g. Cyprianus, Epist. 55.26: ‘lupanar aliquis ingressus ad cloacam et caenosam voraginem vulgi’; Commodianus, Instr. 11.20.1: ‘iustus ego non sum… de cloaca levatus’; Augustine, C. Iul. Op. 2.12: ‘in odiosae arrogantiae cloacam deformiter fluere’; Ps. Augustine, Serm. 288.3: ‘si vir cum multis ancillis in libidinis cloaca volutetur’; ibid., 294.6: ‘de cloaca ebrietatis… consurgere’. Cf. also Tertullian on the womb as a cloaca: adv. Marc. III. 11.394: ‘cloacam voca uterum, tanti animalis, id est hominis, producendi officinam’; ibid., IV.2. 491: ‘Christus cum tanti temporis caeno per corporis cloacam effusus’.
43 On Zola's ‘stomach of Paris’, see Brown, J., Fictional Meals and Their Function in the French Novel, 1780–1848 (1984)Google Scholar.
44 Anth. Pal. 9. 642. Cf. G. Chaucer, The Pardoner's Tale, 534–40: ‘O wombe! O bely! O stynking cod, / Fulfilled of dong and of corrupcioun! At either end of thee foul is the soun./ How greet labour and cost is thee to fynde!/ Thise cookes, how they stampe, and streyne, and grynde,/ And turnen substance into accident,/ To fulfille al thy likerous talent!’
45 Scobie, op. cit. (n. 11), 413–17; Robinson, op. cit. (n. 11), 117–20. Lanciani, op. cit. (n. 11), 31 had found no evidence of connections between private latrines and public drains.
46 See e.g. Robinson, op. cit. (n. 11), 120: ‘slaves will have emptied [chamberpots or commodes] down the drain, or perhaps loaded [them] on the wagons taking out the night-soil’; ibid., 122: ‘The disposal of excrement not washed down the sewers must have been a problem. The quantity must have been very considerable…’ Hodge, op. cit. (n. 11), 236–7, does tackle the question, suggesting a combination of the following: pipes linked from houses to cesspits and drains, public latrines, dungheaps, night-soil collectors, and the streets themselves. It is also possible that inhabitants simply dumped their waste directly in the river.
47 Col. x.85: ‘nec pudeat pabula praebere novali/immundis quaecumque vomit latrina cloacis’.
48 See Scobie, op. cit. (n. 11), 408 n. 76; OLD s.v. stercus.
49 Suet., Nero 26: ‘redeuntis a cena verberare ac repugnantes vulnerare cloacisque demergere assuerat’; ibid., 24: ‘subverti et unco trahi abicique in latrinas omnium statuas et imagines imperavit’. SHA Elag. 33. Myths of finding unexpected treasures among the sewer debris have an element of paradox: Hor., Sat. 11.3.242: throwing pearls into the sewers as a sign of madness; Fronto p. 157.2N = Haines (Loeb) vol.2, 104: silver found in the sewers: ‘etiam laminae interdum argentiolae cloacis inveniuntur; eane re cloacas purgandas redimemus?’
50 Cic., pro Sest. 77: ‘corporibus civium Tiberim compleri, cloacas refarciri, ex foro spongiis ef fingi sanguinem’.
51 On sponges, see Scobie, op. cit. (n. 11), 411. Mul.Chir. 229: ‘cum haec tamen causa evenerit, per anum farciminalis sero venire solet’; see J. N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (1982), 234–7.
52 Sen., Ep. 70.20: ‘ibi lignum id, quod ad emundanda obscena adhaerente spongia positum est, totum in gulam farsit et interclusis faucibus spiritum elisit. hoc fuit morti contumeliam facere. ita prorsus; parum munde et parum decenter; quid est stultius quam fastidiose mori ?’ There is perhaps significance in the fact that the hero of this story was a gladiator, in Rome the disposable body par excellence; Cicero's story, too, has the colour of the blood-filled arena. Cf. Augustus on the fate of his only attempt at tragedy-writing: his Ajax ‘fell on his sponge’ (Suet., Aug.85.2: here, primarily, an eraser).
53 Mart. XII.48.7: ‘damnatae spongea virgae’.
54 Plin., Ep. x.98: ‘nomine quidem flumen, re vera cloaca foedissima, ac sicut turpis immundissimo aspectu, ita pestilens odore taeterrimo. quibus ex causis non minus salubritatis quam decoris interest earn contegi’. Pliny here uses the pairing of salubritas and amoenitas so frequent in civic rhetoric (see A. J. Woodman (ed.), Velleius Paterculus (1983), ad Veil. 81.2: cf. e.g. Cic, de Leg. 11.3, Suet., Tib. 11.1, Quint, III.7.27, Plin., Ep. x.90.2). Cf. Ulpian, Dig. XLIII.23.1, on the upkeep of sewers:‘quorum utrumque et ad salubritatem civitatium et ad tutelam pertinet: nam et caelum pestilens et ruinas minantur immunditiae cloacarum’.
55 Agrippa's voyage: Dio XLIX.31; Plin., NH XXXVI.28.104, with Reimer, op. cit. (n. 11), 140, n. 33. Sen., Apoc. 7 uses the word purgare in connection with sewers: ‘cloacas Augeae purgare’. Cf. Columella's use of vomire to describe a latrine (x. 85).
56 See Lugli, G., Monumenti antichi di Roma e suburbio II (1934), 231ff.Google Scholar, for a list of floods.
57 Sidon., Ep. III.13.2–6: ‘est enim hic gurges de sutoribus fabularum, de concinnatoribus criminum, de sinistrarum opinionum duplicatoribus… faeculentiae omnino par cloacali, quae quo plus commota, plus faetida est… mephiticus odor, quern supercumulat esculenta ructatio de dapibus hesternis et redundantium sentina cenarum’. Cf. Claud. Mam., Anim. 2.9 p. 137: ‘situ fetidinarum turpium ex olenticetis suis ac tenebris cloacam ventris… inhalare’.
58 cf. Sail., Hist. fr. 4.50 (McGushin): ‘redundantibus cloacis adverso aestu maris’. McGushin thinks the town referred to in this case is Heraclea Pontica.
59 Scobie, op. cit. (n. 11), 413–17; Robinson, op. cit. (n. 11), 119–22.
60 Paul. Fest. p. 55: ‘cloacae a conluendo dictae’; p. 66: ‘cloacare inquinare, unde et cloacae dictae’.
61 See Reid, op. cit. (n. 13),passim, esp. 49, and Stallybrass and White, op. cit. (n. 13), 125–48, esp. 145: the bourgeoisie of nineteenth-century Europe became more obsessed with the dirt of the city as a metaphorical and imaginative concept as it became, in reality, increasingly separated from their own bodies. See also Corbin, A., The Foul and the Fragrant. Odor and the French Social Imagination (1982), esp. 89–135, 222–8Google Scholar.
62 See Reid, op. cit. (n. 13), 15.
63 ibid., 48. The Chevalier de Jaucourt, author of the entry for ‘cloaque’ in the Encyclopédie, transformed the Roman sewer goddess Venus Cloacina (ridiculed by Augustine, Civ. Dei 2.28) into a symbol of Roman civic spirit.
64 V. Hugo, Oeuvres Complètes (1969), vol 11/2, 878: ‘Par moments, cet estomac de la civilization digérait mal, le cloaque refluait dans le gosier de la ville, et Paris avait l'arrière-gout de sa fange’.
65 Reid, op. cit. (n. 13), 19.
66 Cic., ad Q. F. 11.5.3; Liv. III.6.3; Sail., Cat. 37.5: ‘ei Romam sicut in sentinam confluxerant’ (with McGushin's commentary: 'sentina is strictly the place at the bottom of a ship where bilgewater collects; but it is often used as an alternative to colluvies, to mean filth or dregs: e.g. at Cic., Cat. 1.12, 2.7; Leg.Agr. 2.70; Att. 1.19.4: Liv. 24.29.3’).
67 Suet., Vita Lucani: ‘adeo ut quondam in latrinis publicis clariore cum strepitu ventris emissi hemistichium Neronis magna consessorum fuga pronuntiat: “Sub terris tonuisse putes”’.
68 Aelian, HA XIII.6. See R. Daley, The World Beneath the City (1959), 187–9; T. Boyle, Black Swine in the Sewers of Hampstead: Beneath the Surface of Victorian Sensationalism (1990).
69 Cic., de Rep. 11.4.7.
70 Cic., Att. 11.1.8: ‘dici t enim tamquam in Platonis πολιεία, non tamquam in Romuli faece’.
71 Dio XLIL.43.5. See Henderson, J., ‘Satire writes “woman”: gendersong’, PCPhs 215 n.s. 35 (1989), 50–80Google Scholar, at 62.
72 Suet., Aug. 40.3.
73 e.g. Liv. III.6.3: ‘ea conluvio mixtorum omnis generis animantium et odore insolito urbanos et agrestem confertum in arta tecta aestu et vigiliis angebat’ (forced cohabitation of town and country Romans in a time of plague; confertum, ‘stuffed’, recalls Cicero's metaphor refarciri for sewers stuffed with citizen bodies at pro Sest. 77); IV.2.5: ‘colluvionem gentium adferre’ (an explosive mixture of plebs and patricians); XXII.43.2: ‘mixtos ex conluvione omnium gentium’ (Hannibal's soldiers); XXVI.40.17: ‘mixt i ex omni conluvione’ (a mob from Agathyrna); Tac., Hist. 11.16: ‘in multa conluvione rerum maioribus flagitiis permixtos’ (Otho and Vitellius).
74 See Gowers, E., The Loaded Table. Representations of Food in Roman Literature (1993), 22.Google Scholar
75 Sen., Cont. 7 prol. 3: ‘his admixtis sordibus non defendi sed inquinari’.
76 Paul. Fest. p. 59: ‘cloacale flumen dixit Cato pro cloacarum omnium conluvie’. One could compare the modern municipal euphemisms ‘waste disposal centre’ for ‘rubbish tip’ and ‘waste receptacle’ for ‘rubbish bin’.
77 Gell. 1.15.17: ‘quorum lingua tarn prodiga infremisque sit, ut fluat semper et aestuet conluvione verborum taeterrima’.
78 See M. Coffey, Roman Satire (1976), 15; and the discussion by Gowers, op. cit. (n. 74), 110, 112–13.
79 Liv. 1.56.2: ‘receptaculum omnium purgamentorum urbis’.
80 Dion. Hal., Ram. Ant. III.68: censors let out cleaning and repairing of sewers at 1,000 talents. Liv. XXXIX.44: Cato as censor had existing sewers repaired and more built on the Aventine. The responsibility seems to have been taken over in the late Republic and Empire by praetors or aediles: Cic., Caecin. 13.36 (praetorurbanus); Plin., NH XXXVI.24.104 (Agrippa as aedile).
81 Swift, J., The Tale of a Tub, ‘A Digression concerning Critics’CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
82 Reid, op. cit. (n. 13), 60.
83 Reid, op. cit. (n. 13), 49–50. Conversely, the sewers were the true boulevards (Louis Veuillot, Les odeurs de Paris (n.d.), 8: ‘People take boat rides and hunt rats. Meetings are set u p and already more than one dowry has been settled upon there’). There is a similar inversion in a line from Greene, G., The Third Man (1974): ‘They [the sewer police] know this place just as I know the Tottenham Court Road’Google Scholar.
84 Sen., Apoc. 7: ‘cloacas Augeae’. The translation of ‘stables’ into ‘sewers’ is another piece of evidence suggesting that sewers were linked with excrement.
85 Lucil. 1081W: ‘hic in stercore humi fabulisque fimo atque sucerdis’.
86 Lanciani, op. cit. (n. 11), 64ff.
87 Hot., Sat. 1.8.The poem wards off all filthy defilers by inverting the statutory caution against defecation: ‘menior at si quid, merdis caput inquiner albis/ corvorum, atque in me veniat mictum atque cacatum/ Iulius et fragilis Pediatia atque Voranus’ (37–9). Cf. Gordon, A. E., ‘Seven Latin inscriptions in Rome’, G&R 20 (1951), 75–92Google Scholar, at 77–8 on CIL VI.31615: ‘stercus longe aufer ne malum habeas’. Cf. also CIL IV.3782, 3832, 4586, 5438 (‘cacator cave malum’); CIL IV.6641 (‘cacator sic valeas ut tu hoc locum transeas’).
88 Hugo, op. cit. (n. 64), vol. 11/2, 881: ‘il exhale une vague odeur suspecte, comme Tartufe après la confession’.
89 Juv. 15.3: ‘saturam serpentibus ibin’; 5.104–6: ‘+glacie aspersus+ maculis Tiberinus et ipse/ vernula riparum, pinguis torrente cloaca/ et solitus mediae cryptam penetrare Suburae’.
90 Hugo, op. cit. (n. 64), vol. 11/2, 876: ‘Un égout est un cynique. Il dit tout’; ‘L'egout, e'est la conscience de laville’.
91 Sen., Cont. 3, praef. 16: ‘si cloaca esses, maxima esses’. Cassius cannot then resist continuing the hygiene metaphor: ‘ego negavi me de balneo publico exiturum nisi lotus essem’. Cf. the story of Lucan deflating Nero's verse on thunderous earthquakes by imitating its sound in a latrine (see above, n. 67).
92 Quint., Inst. x.1.93.
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