20 Wild Facts That Will Make You Glad You Weren't Born In Ancient Rome

Not only did ancient Romans have to make due without the invention of toilet paper, but people in public bathrooms had to share a communal sponge on a stick. That's right, Romans had to clean their bums with a sponge that every other Roman had also used.

Rats, snakes, other sorts of unwanted creatures often lurked inside the public toilets. Sitting on one could easily result in a painful and potentially deadly bite. Not to mention that they often had a buildup of methane gases that would occasionally ignite.

Urine actually had a multitude of uses in ancient Rome from tanning leather hides to yes, teeth whitening. The bodily fluid was so practical that the government had a special tax for it so that people could bottle and sell the urine. Gross!

Gatorade came around about 2,000 years too late for ancient Rome. Instead, Romans dried out goat dung and then ground it into a powder and mixed it with vinegar to make an energy drink for soldiers and athletes.

Some testimonies of royal Roman feasts describe people eating until they became sick and vomited. Only instead of going to the bathroom, buckets were kept at the tables so that people could vomit without getting up. A slave would then empty the bucket while the dinner guests continued their gluttonous meal.

Hygiene was shale we say, lacking in ancient Rome. Archaeologists have been able to examine fossilized poo specimens of ancient Romans and found all sorts of nasties, ranging from roundworm to dysentery. This is largely because human excrement was often in the streets and used as a crop fertilizer.

Rome wasn't built in a day, but it was built by slaves. Some historians believe that up to three-fifths of Italy's ancient population was made up of slaves.

The ancient Romans liked to eat, and the menu was pretty different from what one might find in a modern Italian restaurant. The womb and brains from pigs were commonly dined on by ancient Romans.

The first emperor of Rome, Augustus, did establish a legal age for marriage in the empire. Unfortunately, it was just 12 for girls and 14 for boys.

Because it was pretty common for children to be sold into marriage, there was quite a bit of sexual abuse happening -- especially among the royal elite. Emperor Caligula was said to have orgies with his own family members while Tiberius was said to sexually abuse young boys.

Crucifixion was just one of the ways ancient Romans used to carry out executions. Priests who broke their vows might be buried alive. And if you killed a relative... well, you would be sewn into a sack with a monkey and dog and then tossed into the river!

Eating a meal that you didn't prepare yourself was pretty dangerous in ancient Rome. Because acquiring poison was so easy and left the killer with little chance of being caught, poison was often the go-to method of murder for unhappy spouses and political rivals.

It wasn't just outsiders who feared the Roman army, but Roman citizens too. The emperor Tiberius killed more than 35,000 of his own people during his reign, and the emperor Maxentius killed thousands of his senators so that he could take their property.

Rome didn't look up to its athletes the way the modern world does. Instead it murdered them by the thousands. Some historians believe that in a single year, nearly 10,000 gladiators were killed by each other or by the starved animals who were tossed into the ring with them.

A spa day in ancient Rome meant heading to a bathhouse that likely had water filled with human urine and excrement. If that wasn't gross enough, Romans would coat their bodies with oil before a slave would use a brush to scrap off the dead skin. As for the oil? It was reused for the next guest.

Women who were lucky enough to survive to adulthood often had as many as 10 children, this is because most of them died before even hitting their teenage years. Historians estimate that as many as 75% of people born in ancient Rome died before the age of 10.

Ancient Rome was an incredibly dangerous place, especially after dark. Most Roman citizens preferred to stay inside once night came. If you were wealthy enough you might opt to go out at night, but only if your bodyguard was coming along to protect you.

If you were born left-handed in ancient Rome, it would be wise to learn to use your right hand. That's because left-handed people were thought to be unlucky, untrustworthy, and possibly even evil.

Romans believed that the blood of gladiators had special powers that could cure ailments and restore beauty. Just one more reason why you did NOT want to be a gladiator in ancient Rome.

Assaulting a free-woman in Rome was against the law, but that's pretty much where the law ends. Roman soldiers were permitted to do whatever they wanted with prisoners without fear of consequence.