Saturday, September 6, 2014

The debate is over!

“Thanks to the excellent CGP Grey, I have learned that the notion that the Romans had rooms called vomitoria, where they could vomit out their meals so they could go back to eat more, is a myth. Some Romans apparently did engage in this practice, but there was no separate room devoted to it. Aldous Huxley, it seems, is generally credited — or debited? — with providing the first echo of this myth in a prominent English book, though the term must have been in the air for Huxley to have used it.

“A vomitorium was, rather (in the words of the Oxford English Dictionary), a ‘passage or opening in an ancient amphitheatre or theatre, leading to or from the seats’ (see, e.g., this reference http://books.google.com/books?id=ZPoKAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA357&dq=vomitorium+%7C+vomitoria&hl=en&sa=X&ei=eWcDVIuMKoK_igKj0IGQDg&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=vomitorium%20%7C%20vomitoria&f=false

). This dysphemism presumably stemmed from the analogy between people spewing forth through the openings and, well, …. Learn something new every day.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/09/02/vomitoria-were-apparently-not-rooms-
the-romans-devoted-to-vomiting-after-dinner/


Link at maggiesfarm.

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