'Vomitorium' and Other Lovely Words

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I was reading an essay on gluttony the other day (I should explain at this point that gluttony is not a subject I necessarily have an interest in, it just happened to be one of the pieces in a collection of essays from an author I enjoy reading). Now that we have that settled, let's go back to my point.

Within the essay the author made reference to the ancient Romans, who often engaged in shall we say, a bit of overeating from time to time, inferring that is why they devised the institution of the vomitorium.

Vomitorium. Now there is a word one doesn't utter, let alone hear, every day (or even every month or year). I'm pretty sure I've heard the term at some point in my life, but I couldn't tell you in what context.

The word stopped me cold in the middle of enjoying an interesting and humorous essay, and I had to think about it for a moment. The images it conveys are repulsive. You imagine all these toga clad men, after having gorged themselves on mutton legs, sow's utters, stuffed dormice, bull's testicles, and whatever else they could stuff into their gullet, ever so slowly waddling over to the vomitorium to relive themselves. Presumably so they might go back and have seconds.

In my wide range of knowledge, accumulated over eight decades of life, I found myself devoid of even a smidgen of information on the subject of vomitorium. So I did a bit of reference seeking. Surprisingly, vomitorium is not the disgusting place you may think it is, so erase those repulsive images out of your mind.

Wikipedia says the following: "A vomitorium is a passage situated below or behind a tier of seats in an amphitheatre or a stadium through which large crowds can exit rapidly at the end of an event. They can also be pathways for actors to enter and leave the stage. The Latin word vomitorium, plural vomitoria, derives from the verb vom?, vomere, "to spew forth." In ancient Roman architecture, vomitoria were designed to provide rapid egress for large crowds at amphitheaters and stadia, as they do in modern sports stadia and large theatres."

Well, there you go, however never stopping at one source, I continued to investigate. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is "an entrance or exit passage in an ancient Roman amphitheater or theater." So far so good. BUT WAIT A MINUTE! That was only definition number 1. Definition number 2 goes on to say, "a place in which the ancient Romans are supposed to have vomited during feasts to make room for more food." Okay, you can return to your disgusting repulsive images of stinking, stained togas on fat Italian guys with really bad breath.

If the second definition is true, then the all-time winner of the worst job in the world was awarded to the dimwit who had to clean out the vomitorium. Did he do it every day or was it once a week? They didn't have Hazmat outfits in those days, nor gasmasks. I don't know if they even had gloves yet. We know they didn't have pants, so the poor wretch was down there on his filthy toga. I hope they had mops and rags.

Why didn't the Romans simply vomit in the toilet? Did they even have toilets? And if not, then where did they go when they had to go? Did they have special defecatoriums? Maybe they called them excrementoriums. Did they have urinarytoriums? And were there separate vomitoria for women? Or, like the famous Roman baths, did everyone partake in one big vomitorium?

These are questions that keep me up at night. See what you can learn by reading intellectual essays?

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