The Smithsonian’s Smart News today featured a very interesting article: Recently Unearthed Roman Latrine Was Full of Dirty Jokes. Looking around a bit further, I found that AtlasObscura provides marginally better info (shame on you, Smithsonian!) and a couple more pictures in its article, Found: Vulgar Mosaics in a Roman Latrine.
So what’s the bathroom humor? Well, the Antiochia ad Cragum Archaeological Research Project (ACARP), which has been excavating an archaeological site on the southern coast of Turkey (not to be confused with any of the other “Antiochs” that dotted the ancient Middle East), has uncovered two mosaics from around AD 100— somewhat over a century after the Gospels were written— in the remains of the ruin’s public latrine.
One of the mosaics (see above) depicts Ganymede, a beautiful Trojan boy whom Jupiter kidnapped so as to have him as his cupbearer and concubine. Ganymede is today often portrayed as a god, or at least as an example, of gay love. Usually, he’s depicted with a stick and a hoop, which suggest youth and boyish innocence. This game of hoop and stick been popular for a long time and pretty much everywhere. I remember it from Dick and Jane, and saw kids playing it all over Africa.
In the newfound mosaic, though, Ganymede has a stick with a sponge on the tip, and no hoop. The Smithsonian writer opines that this was “possibly so he could clean the latrines”. Meanwhile, Jupiter is depicted in the scene as a heron(?— he should be an eagle), suggestively sponging Ganymede’s derrière with another stick-and-sponge in his long beak.
But why on earth would Ganymede be cleaning a latrine??
Well, the writer apparently wasn’t very familiar with Roman toilet hygiene. The sponge-on-a-stick had the purpose of toilet paper, today.
Just as soldiers today carry toilet paper, every Roman soldier carried a sponge. Put the sponge on a stick, dip it in spoiled wine or vinegar, and use it to wipe oneself. Or, have a slave do it for you. But if you don’t have a slave— well, with a stick, you still don’t have to touch anything. What Jupiter’s intentions were in playing slave to his Ganymede would suggest a topic of ribald humor in every age. But in a latrine, the sponge was likely to have been shared.
I mention this discovery here, and am grateful for it, because it gives us a very important insight into, and even an “icon” of what Mark is referring to when he writes,
’34 . . . . and at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
35 Some of those who stood by, when they heard that, said, “Look, He is calling for Elijah!”
36 Then someone ran and having filled a sponge with vinegar [and] put it on a reed, gave him a drink, saying, “Let it go! Let’s see if Elijah will come to take him down.”’
(Mark 15.35-36)
Ever wonder why there’d be vinegar at the site of the crucifixion?— or why indeed Jesus’ mockers would need a stick to offer the vinegar to him, given that crosses weren’t much taller than the men nailed to them?
Well, here’s why: There had to be guards to watch over a crucifixion until the victim died, and they couldn’t leave until death came, which might take some days. In fact this would have been one of the reasons they crucified Jesus along with two guerrillas— no need to waste manpower on serial crucifixions if you can do them in batches— especially as the presence of a centurion (captain of a hundred) suggests that Jesus’ crucifixion was heavily guarded; after all, both he and the guerrillas had friends! You’ll recall that Pilate asks precisely “the centurion” for confirmation when Joseph of Arimathea requests Jesus’ body (Mk 15.44-45). Now, those guards might need to attend to personal needs during their long watch, so they would bring their toilet kits. Hence the sponge, the stick, and the spoiled wine.
Mark’s clever bystander was not acting out of compassion, as commentaries often say. Mark’s readers would have immediately recognized what the sponge-and-stick combo was for.
A twinge of fear and bad conscience has led another bystander to suggest, nervously, that now, finally, Malachi’s Elijah (Mal 3.22 / 4.5) might just show up. But the guy with the stick says, “Aw, leave it”— and adds yet another insult.
In Mark’s story, this is the final and ultimate act of degradation. There’s nothing worse they can do to Jesus at this point, and so, having drunk the cup to its dregs— compare Mark 10.38–39; 14.23, and of course 14.36— “Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and breathed His last” (Mk 15.37).
And from a Roman town in Turkey, we now have an “icon” of the sponge-and-stick. Very useful in explaining the Passion Narrative in the Gospels!