Ancient Roman Explitives

[WotWotius]

Urine was collected - you can still see the containers in the streets of Pompeii - and used in laundry.

 

Gaius (I think) taxed the income of whores.

 

Phil

 

...and effectively turned his house on the Palatine into a brothel - That if we are to believe what is written.

[CiceroD]

Yes Lost Warrior,

 

Its hard to believe but there was a tax on laundry urine.

Remember that this was before the invention of soap and they needed the ammonia in urine to clean clothes. Of course after the "cleaning" they rinsed their tunics very very well.

 

well hopefully they did

[Andrew Dalby]

Gaius (I think) taxed the income of whores.

 

At our local market there's a small man with a moustache and a peaked cap who goes from stall to stall selling tickets which (I imagine) prove that you have paid your tax contribution to the town council for the week. He often gets into long discussions with the stallholders he likes best, and no doubt gets a tasting of the best goat's milk cheese, foie gras de canard, or whatever. Presumably Gaius must have appointed men with moustaches and peaked caps to do a similar job.

[Pertinax]

Gaius (I think) taxed the income of whores.

 

At our local market there's a small man with a moustache and a peaked cap who goes from stall to stall selling tickets which (I imagine) prove that you have paid your tax contribution to the town council for the week. He often gets into long discussions with the stallholders he likes best, and no doubt gets a tasting of the best goat's milk cheese, foie gras de canard, or whatever. Presumably Gaius must have appointed men with moustaches and peaked caps to do a similar job.

 

 

This is perhaps more "Whoring for Tax" then?

[CiceroD]

One of my High School history teachers once told me that the Ancient Romans were THE most practical people on Earth

 

Its funny to realize that the Romans wouldnt have batted an eye at the previously described arrangement.

Even so since taxes were collected privately

Vespasian could easily loftily ignore it hahaha

[The Augusta]

Back to the naughty words -

 

CiceroD, you might also dip into any parallel text translation of Catullus for a variety of gems describing the ruder parts of our anatomy. But as a lot of our modern vulgarities are taken from a Latin original, many of them won't surprise you. And anyone who has a working knowledge of modern Italian will see even more of a connection.

[quo-vadis50]

Original quote by WotWotius:

 

Natives of Pairs refer to urinals as vespasiennes; the name derived from Emperor Vespasian, who famously imposed a tax on urine.

 

Hmmm. And exactly how did they determine how much tax you owed? And where would that go on your return? Just curious.

[Callaecus]

For "dirtier" words you might want to look out "The Latin Sexual Vocabulary" by JN Adams - Duckworth, London 1982.

 

Yes, Adams is an excellent source. There is a not bad Wikipedia article on bad words Latin profanity which I noticed by chance the other day.

Hey, this is amazing. Most of the words mentioned in the Wiki article are still routinelly used in Portuguese and one of them - merda ($hit) - is exactly the same. Maybe because it is the most routinely used explitive, thus the reason it didn't suffer any change after thousands of years.

[Lost_Warrior]

Its hard to believe but there was a tax on laundry urine.

Remember that this was before the invention of soap and they needed the ammonia in urine to clean clothes. Of course after the "cleaning" they rinsed their tunics very very well

 

Well now THAT I can understand. I was just thinking that there was a tax on how many times you went to the bathroom or something.