How Did Ancient Greeks Stay Clean With No Soap?

How Did Ancient Greeks Stay Clean With No Soap? There is no soap in a classical Athenian house not because anyone was poor, but because in the Greek world soap was not a thing you washed with. This video goes into what they used instead: olive oil rubbed into the skin and dragged off with a curved bronze blade, the recut pottery shards that did the job of toilet paper, the law that told Athens' waste collectors exactly how far past the city wall they had to walk before they could put anything down, and the reason a hot bath was thought to be bad for a young man's character. It ends with the part nobody mentions, what happened to the grey paste that came off the blade, and the Greek city that leased out the right to sell it. ⏱ CHAPTERS: The blade, and the jar The thing that is not in your house You washed with olive oil The part of the day nobody put on a vase The men who carried Athens out through the gate Hot water made you soft The man who got it wrong What they did with the jar What clean actually meant 💬 An Athenian would look at the cabinet in your bathroom and be certain that you were the strange one. Which thing in there would you have the hardest time explaining to him? 🔔 Subscribe for the parts of ancient Greece that never make it into the textbooks. 📚 Sources touched in this episode: Pliny the Elder, Natural History · the Constitution of the Athenians · Theophrastus, Characters and On Odours · Charlier et al., British Medical Journal (2012) · the gymnasiarchal law of Beroia · excavation reports from the Athenian Agora #AncientGreece #AncientGreeks #History #DailyLife #Athens #AncientHistory #Archaeology #HistoryDocumentary