What do you think of this fact?
Ancient Rome had no laundry detergent aisle. If you wanted your toga clean and bright again, you relied on something every human produces daily: urine. Sounds gross, but it was chemistry with a plan.
Ammonia instead of detergent
Urine is a source of ammonia, which is alkaline and cleans. It was collected from public urinals and sold to tanners and launderers. Some of the best customers were the fullers, or fullones in Latin. In their workshops, called fullonicae, they cleaned and finished cloth.
Here’s how it worked: the fuller stood with his feet in a tub of water and an alkaline mix, which sometimes included ammonia from urine. Then he trampled the cloth, scrubbed it and wrung it out. Doing laundry was a full-on foot workout. In Pompeii alone, 11 of these workshops are known so far.
An emperor smells an opportunity
Wherever there’s trade, the taxman isn’t far behind. Emperor Vespasian, who ruled from AD 69 to 79, needed to refill the empty treasury. So he put a tax on the urine collected from Rome’s public urinals.
His son Titus found that pretty disgusting. According to the historian Suetonius, Vespasian held up a gold coin from the first revenues and asked whether its smell offended him. Titus said no. The emperor’s reply: “Yet it comes from urine.” That’s where the famous phrase comes from: “Pecunia non olet,” money doesn’t stink.
Public urinals in France are still called “vespasiennes,” and in Italy “vespasiani.” They’re named after the emperor with the urine tax.
The phrase lives on
People still say “pecunia non olet” when money comes from a questionable source and nobody really minds. One emperor, one bathroom tax and a line that has survived almost two thousand years. Not many taxes get that kind of legacy.