Farting in Ancient Rome: Banquets, Edicts, and the Goddess of the Sewers
The Romans built roads, aqueducts, and an empire, but they also held strong and surprisingly candid opinions about breaking wind. From imperial edicts to a goddess who watched over the sewers, flatulence left a real mark on Roman life.
Roman Attitudes Toward Flatulence
Roman culture was remarkably frank about the body, and flatulence was no exception. At the crowded public latrines that dotted every city, citizens sat side by side on long stone benches, chatting and relieving themselves with little sense of shame. Passing gas in these communal spaces was simply part of daily life. Wealthy Romans, however, cultivated a more refined image, and holding in wind at an elegant banquet was considered a mark of self-control. The tension between natural bodily function and social decorum runs through Roman writing on the subject. Physicians warned that suppressing flatulence could harm the body, while moralists fretted over the vulgarity of an ill-timed release. This mix of medical pragmatism and social anxiety produced some of antiquity's most memorable and most quotable commentary on the humble fart.
Claudius and the Banquet Edict
The most famous Roman anecdote about flatulence involves the emperor Claudius. According to the historian Suetonius, Claudius heard a story about a man who had nearly died from the strain of politely holding in his wind at dinner. Alarmed, the emperor reportedly considered issuing an edict granting everyone the right to break wind freely at banquets, so that no guest would endanger his health for the sake of manners. Whether Claudius ever formally passed such a decree is uncertain, and many scholars treat the tale as satire or exaggeration. Nevertheless, the story reveals a genuine Roman belief: that suppressing flatulence was medically dangerous. The anecdote circulated widely in antiquity and has been retold for two thousand years as proof that even emperors took the perils of a held-in fart seriously. It remains one of history's most quoted flatulence stories.
Cloacina, Goddess of the Sewers
Rome's obsession with sanitation gave rise to one of the ancient world's more unusual deities: Cloacina, the goddess who presided over the Cloaca Maxima, the great sewer that drained the city. Her name derives from the Latin cloaca, meaning drain or sewer, and she later fused with Venus as Venus Cloacina, patroness of purification. A small shrine to her stood in the Roman Forum, marking the spot where the sewer passed beneath. While Cloacina governed waste and drainage rather than flatulence specifically, her cult reflects how seriously Romans took the management of the body's less glamorous outputs. The Cloaca Maxima itself was an engineering marvel, carrying away sewage and, no doubt, plenty of methane. To honor a goddess of the sewers was to acknowledge that a healthy city, like a healthy body, had to let things out.
Flatulence in Roman Satire and Medicine
Roman writers mined flatulence for both humor and health advice. The satirist Martial filled his epigrams with jokes about noisy digestion, mocking pretentious dinner guests and their betraying bellies. Petronius's Satyricon, a rollicking novel of excess, features the vulgar freedman Trimalchio, who cheerfully encourages his guests to relieve any gaseous pressure at the table rather than suffer in silence, a comic echo of the Claudius edict. On the medical side, Roman physicians influenced by Greek theory regarded trapped wind as a genuine cause of illness. They prescribed warming foods, spiced wine, and herbal remedies such as cumin and fennel to ease the belly and promote healthy release. Galen and others wrote at length about digestion and the movement of pneuma, or air, through the body. In Rome, then, the fart was at once a punchline, a medical concern, and a small but telling window onto how a great civilization understood the human body.
Did You Know?
- The historian Suetonius records that Emperor Claudius considered an edict allowing banquet guests to break wind freely, for the sake of their health.
- Cloacina, a goddess with Etruscan roots, presided over Rome's great sewer, the Cloaca Maxima.
- Roman public latrines were communal, with rows of open stone seats and no partitions for privacy.
- Roman doctors prescribed cumin and fennel, still used today, to relieve trapped intestinal gas.
Fun Fact
The Cloaca Maxima, Rome's main sewer built more than 2,500 years ago, still functions as part of the modern city's drainage system, making it one of the world's oldest working monuments to letting things out.
Sources
- Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars (Life of Claudius), c. 121 AD
- Petronius, Satyricon, 1st century AD
- Gowers E, The Loaded Table: Representations of Food in Roman Literature, Oxford University Press, 1993