22. Pee Was an Important Revenue Source for the Roman Treasury
Today, the use of pee in medicinal remedies comes across as gross. However, considering urine’s sterile properties – or more precisely the sterile properties of the ammonia contained in urine – such medicinal applications might have actually had something going for them. Pee collection and resale was a major business in the Roman world. And as happens with any business that generates revenue, the pee industry did not escape the attention of the government’s tax collectors. In that, the Roman world was not much different from ours.
Tradesmen who specialized in pee collection were granted special licenses for the privilege, and were taxed accordingly. That was when the government did not tax the urine ådonors directly. One of Emperor Vespasian’s revenue schemes involved a tax on public urinals, which was widely ridiculed. When his son argued that to raise money from bodily excreta was beneath imperial dignity, Vespasian held a coin beneath his nose, and asked whether he could smell any urine. He concluded the lesson by remarking: “money does not smell“, a phrase that became a Latin proverb.
