From Messy Nessy Chic:
What we know as the famous Roman “Colosseum” might have been paid for with pee, more specifically poor people’s pee. Built under the rule of Emperor Vespasian of the Flavian dynasty, he is one of the only known rulers in history to have imposed a urine tax on the sale and distribution of urine from the city’s public toilets, which in the time of Ancient Rome, apparently had very good resale value. Let us explain…
Roman Emperors had controversial lifestyles, but the Emperor that preceded Vespasian – Nero – trumped them all and bankrupted the empire with reckless spending. The senate declared him a public enemy, he committed suicide and a civil-war broke out. Rising from this chaos was Vespasian, a commoner and civil servant known for his fiscal responsibility and military campaigns. Basically, the opposite of Nero. His peers nicknamed Vespasian “Mulio,” or mule-breeder, because he sold mules to get to finance the North African Province he governed rather than exploiting the local resources.
Now Emperor, Vespasian found the imperial treasury depleted and needed to generate funds. He did this by raising taxes. Most of his taxes targeted the rich. He even extorted nobles by promoting them, only to then imprison them and make them pay fines for their freedom. People said he used these men as “sponges” – soaking them when they were dry and squeezing them when wet.
However, his most infamous tax targeted the commoners. Most Romans were generally “too poor to have a pot to piss in” as the saying goes, and had to go to local public latrines to relieve themselves. Landlords would collect and sell the peasants’ pee. Buyers paid the tax. Why would anyone buy urine, you ask? Tanners, wool producers and launderers coveted piddle for its high ammonia content and some Romans even believed it could be used it for whitening their teeth.....
....MUCH MORE
That's it for Messy Nessy for this week. I had been feeling as though I was depriving our readers of that cyber cabinet of curiosities but it's August in Paris and posting will be light.
We on the other hand, despite a few hundred posts on the topic, have barely scratched the surface in our review of nitrogen: Money, Power, Glory, Guano!
There is a concerted effort to decrease meat consumption, with or without the concurrence of the citoyens, and the focus recently has been on what makes protein, protein, nitrogen. From the decrees in Canada and The Netherlands to article's such as this in Scientific American, July 27: "Nitrogen Emissions: "Eating Too Much Protein Makes Pee a Problem Pollutant in the U.S.""
The biggest problem with moving too fast on this stuff:
Three Billion People Eat Food Grown With Natural Gas Derived Nitrogen Fertilizer
It would be best if we had an alternative in place before going all command-and-control and recreating in food what is being done in energy.
