Archive for 2007
By: The Scribe on June, 2007
While the notion of pay-toilets may seem rather off-putting and a little unfair – after all, why should someone be charged money to conduct a necessary bodily function? – it seems that the ancient Romans were all too familiar with this concept…
In the first century AD, the Roman emperor Nero levied what was known as the vectigal urinae, or simply put, “urine tax”. The tax was placed on the collection of urine, since the lower classes of society had to urinate into small pots that were then emptied into cesspools. Liquid could then be collected from these cesspools, as well as from the public toilets of the upper classes, and recycled for a number of chemical processes: animal skins could be soaked in urine to remove the hair fibers before tanning, and Roman launderers could use urine as a source of ammonia to bleach and clean wool garments.
Although the tax was eventually removed, it was reenacted around 70 AD with the succession of emperor Vespasian. Known for his love of money and ruthless taxation – which, to his credit, eventually brought the Roman empire out of debt and left a surplus in the treasury for the next emperor – Vespasian re-applied the tax to urine collection, and extended it to the use of public toilets.
The Roman historians Dio Cassius and Suetonius wrote about Vespasian’s unpopular tax in their own history books, reporting that when Vespasian’s son Titus expressed his disgust over such a tax, the emperor simply showed his son several gold coins and asked: “See, my son, if these have any smell.” When Titus agreed that they had no odor, Vespasian replied: “…and yet, they come from urine!”
As undignified as Titus may have believed his father’s urine tax to be, in the long run Vespasian’s taxes actually benefited the Roman empire – perhaps the most evident example of this is in his most famous monument: the Roman Colosseum.
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Tomorrow: The magic amulets of Stonehenge
By: The Scribe on June, 2007
While it is well known that the Romans simply borrowed and renamed the Greek gods for their own religious purposes, it is often forgotten that the Romans tended to get creative with these divinities, and created various ‘epithets’ for them – versions of the gods based on certain aspects or characteristics.
So, naturally, the gods would have epithets concerning important buildings or aspects of Roman society that they were supposed to look after – and if there was something that the Romans were very proud of, it was their sewage system that helped to keep the city clean. Thus, why not appoint a goddess to take care of it?
Venus Cloacina, which translates as “Venus of the Sewer”, or more subtly “Venus the Purifier”, was the Roman answer to such an important issue. A fusion of the Roman Venus with the Etruscan water goddess Cloacina, the choice probably came from the placement of a well-known Venus statue near the entrance to the Cloaca Maxima, Rome’s major sewage system.
Since she was originally an Etruscan goddess combined with Venus, she kept some of the characteristics ascribed to these two, in combination with her role as the protector and controller of sewers. She was a protector of the marriage-bed – namely, sexual intercourse in marriage, and she was worshipped in her own small Shrine of Venus Cloacina in the Forum. The shrine was conveniently situated right above the Cloaca Maxima, and it was only a matter of time before the Romans began to mint coins with her image and images of her shrine on one side. Some evidence has also been found for a small poem or prayer that devotees could recite when making an offering at her shrine.
As odd as it may seem, one might consider that in a city the size of Rome, the last thing anyone would ever want was for the sewage system to break down, leak, or overflow. Having a goddess making sure the sewers stayed in proper working order was probably somewhat of a comfort, really…
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Tomorrow: More ancienty goodness!
By: The Scribe on June, 2007
For several centuries in China, a minority group called the Bo people had a very peculiar burial practice: hanging the coffins of the dead on the side of a cliff. Some can be found in cliff caves, others sit on projections in the rock, while the most perplexing coffins are suspended on stakes or boards that protrude from the rock face. Their height along the cliff faces vary anywhere from 10 to 130 meters high, leaving experts baffled as to how some of the coffins were lifted and placed that high!
Although there are at least five sites in China where the hanging coffins have been found, as well as one site in the Philippines, the majority of the coffins were placed around Matangba and Sumawan, where there are over 100 visible coffins.
While not much is known about the Bo people, their hanging coffins have certainly shed some light on their rather different way of doing things: the coffins are unpainted and undecorated except for a few studs, and in many cases the coffins were hewn from one single piece of wood. Inside several of the coffins, archaeologists found blue and white porcelain bowls from the Ming Dynasty, a simple iron knife, and several iron spear points. Some coffins contained small remnants of linen and silk, but nothing that could help historians to determine status, rank, or social organization of these people.
There are rumors that several cliff paintings have been identified near the coffins, however due to concerns over their preservation, they have not yet been discussed or published in reports for the general public. Presumably, these will eventually reveal some small details about the Bo people, perhaps shedding some light on why they felt the need to hang their dead in coffins along the faces of cliffs.
The practice of ‘burying’ the dead along cliffs disappeared at the same time as the mysterious Bo people, leaving many questions behind about why they did this, and why they disappeared seemingly without warning. Their entire culture seems to have disappeared, leaving only a slew of hanging coffins along the Chinese landscape
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Tomorrow: Roman goddess of…sewers?
By: The Scribe on June, 2007
As famous as the Mongol Empire was during the height of its power, if there was one thing the Mongol military knew how to do, it was killing. Everyone, that is. Founded in 1206 AD by Genghis Khan, the Mongol Empire would eventually encompass over 12 million square miles of territory, with a population of over 100 million people, making it the second largest land empire in history.
The key to Mongolian success was easy enough: if a population refused to surrender, they would simply wipe out the entire population, raze their cities, and take over the land. Naturally, word gets around quickly when entire cities get destroyed, so for those cities who were wise enough to choose self-preservation over heroics and submit to Mongol rule, they were spared and treated rather leniently.
The Mongol military was divided into ten-men squads called arban, while a regiment was ten thousand men, called a tumen. Although they weren’t exactly subtle about their art of war, the Mongols knew what to do when it came to a siege, and did it without mercy. They were very skilled in the construction of trebuchets from trees in the surrounding vicinity, and could build great numbers of them very quickly.
What the Mongols tended to do was to destroy a city’s advancing land army with horse archers, lancers, and smoke engineers. The engineers would be responsible for constructing siege engines before and during a battle, using them during the battle to distract enemy forces and provide cover through elements such as smoke and fire, and then repair them in case of a siege against the city. After all, once a city’s entire land army was destroyed, there was no way to defend themselves other than holing up behind their walls.
Unfortunately, for populations that attempt to outlast a siege, food becomes scarce and the close quarters of vast numbers of people becomes a prime breeding ground for plague. And once a plague begins, it generally isn’t wise to keep the bodies of deceased plague victims inside the city walls to rot and spread more disease. Typically, the corpses would either be burnt or thrown over the walls – so the Mongols, seeing this as an opportunity to make the most of their surroundings, had a great fondness for collecting the corpses of these plague victims, setting them inside their trebuchets, and hurling the bodies back into the city.
In some cases, if the siege had just begun but the Mongols had access to plagued corpses from a previous town or the surrounding area, they would launch the diseased bodies into the city to try and start a plague on their own. The city would become infested, and thus easily captured once the disease had spread. Macabre, yes, but highly effective!
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Tomorrow: Hanging coffins!
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