Posted on 11/06/2018 9:39:09 AM PST by ETL
As men relieved themselves at the public toilets in the coastal city of Antiochia ad Cragum some 1,800 years ago, they probably would have been amused by dirty scenes crafted into floor mosaics, archaeologists have found.
"We were stunned at what we were looking at," said Michael Hoff, an archaeologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
"You have to understand the myths to make it really come alive, but bathroom humor is kind of universal as it turns out."
The two mosaic scenes twist common tropes in Greek and Roman art. Narcissus is typically shown falling in love with his own reflection in water. In the mosaic at Antiochia ad Cragum, which was likely created in the second century, only half of the scene is preserved —but, Hoff told Live Science, "it's the good half."
Narcissus is shown with an uncharacteristically long nose, which would have been considered ugly by the beauty standards of the time. He looks down, presumably admiring the reflection of his conspicuous p____ instead of his face.
In myth, Zeus disguised himself as an eagle to kidnap the Trojan adolescent Ganymede and make him a cupbearer to the gods. (The myth offered a model for relationships between men and adolescent boys in ancient Greece.) In art depicting that abduction, Ganymede is often shown holding a stick and rolling hoop as a toy.
In the image in the latrine, Ganymede instead holds tongs with a sponge, a reference to the sponges that would have been used for wiping the toilet. And Zeus is not an eagle but a heron, with a long beak grasping a sponge and dabbing Ganymede's p____.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Someone had a real blowout on that second one. Taco Tuesday.
I got those for my Dad one year for Fathers day.
Lol!
Thanks ETL.
“Pro tempus bonum VVV-MCVIII”
GEORGE: What did they do for toilet paper in the civil war?
JERRY: What?
GEORGE: I wonder what toilet paper was loike in the 1860’s. Did they carry it in rolls in their duffle bags?
JERRY: Everything with you comes down to toilet paper.
GEORGE: What?
JERRY: That’s always the first question with you. Why is that always your focus?
GEORGE: All right, so what did they do?
JERRY: I don’t know. Maybe they gave out fig leaf clumps to all the soldiers.
GEORGE: Well I think it would be nice if there was some kind of historical record of it.
JERRY: Maybe they should have a toilet paper museum. Would you like that? So we could see all the toilet paper advancements down through the ages. Toilet paper of the Crusades, the development of the perforation, the first six-pack . . .
Where’re the pictures of the vomitorium?
COITO ERGO SUM
It's amazing what three years of Latin can do to you.
Here is one graffiti I read about, found in Pompeii outside a politician’s house. HOC EGO CACAVI. (Here I s—t)
I still have a roll of that left.
The first time I went to Pompeii in my late adolescence was in the mid-60s. I was touring that day with a couple of other “girls.” The docents would not let us into several of the rooms with mosaics because they were “improper” for young ladies back in the day.
I also remember being in an Italian museum on that trip, possibly the Naples Museum, where a museum guard demonstrated why some of the statues of gladiators, centaurs and fauns had a hole in the bronze where the male pee-pee should be. He had detachable bronze “parts” in his desk drawer that could be hooked (erectly) into those openings. He got a big kick out of the thought of embarrassing us, but we were history of art students and not so easily shocked.
Yeah, those stone seats are a luxury compared to the wooden ones at Scout Camp in the 50s. Those would give you splinters in your heinie. And the ancient ones appeared to be over a water flushing system, too—a lot less stinky than dumping lime into the stuffy, windowless scout camp outhouses.
This website says that "Civil war soldiers used leaves, grass, twigs, corncobs, and books for toilet paper."
HOC EGO CACAVI
Broken-hearted;
Tried to poopy
But only farted.
Hah! So THAT's where King Missile got the idea!
As do poorly equipped campers.
I don’t know who or what that is.
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