No, Vomitoria Were Not Places for Vomiting

There is a popular story that has been circulating for a long time that claims that people in ancient Rome would routinely gorge themselves on food and then go to places called vomitoria, where they would deliberately vomit up everything they had eaten so they could gorge themselves some more. This fanciful tale has been referenced in popular culture, repeated on the internet, and even taught in schools. Unfortunately, it is completely false. We have no evidence that gorging and vomiting was ever a common practice in ancient Rome, vomitoria were not really places for vomiting, and the word vomitoria itself is not even attested in Roman sources until very late.

That “gorging and vomiting” thing was never a common practice.

First of all, excessive eating followed by vomiting was never a common practice in ancient Rome or any other ancient civilization. I am sure there were probably some poor souls in ancient Rome who suffered from bulimia nervosa just like there are today, but there are no unambiguous references to those people in any surviving ancient Roman sources and there is certainly no evidence that gorging and vomiting was ever a common practice.

It is worth noting that the vast majority of people who lived in the Roman Empire were not wealthy aristocrats who could afford to gorge themselves repeatedly, but rather ordinary commoners who ate what they could afford. Repeated bouts of gorging and vomiting would have been completely out of the realm of possibility for your average Roman because your average Roman simply could not afford that much food.

Even among the extremely wealthy, though, there is still no evidence that gorging and vomiting was ever a common practice. Judging from our surviving historical sources, it seems that most wealthy Romans simply ate their food like normal people and stopped eating when they were full. Although there are certainly references to people vomiting in Roman sources, there is not a single clear, definitive reference in any ancient Roman source to someone deliberately vomiting in order to eat more food.

Admittedly, there is one very brief, very vague passage from Seneca the Younger that some people have tried to interpret as evidence of people deliberately vomiting in order to eat more food, but, as I shall explain in greater depth in a moment, when read in context, the passage sounds more like it is about people who eat so much that they end up vomiting on accident, not people deliberately vomiting in order to eat more food.

Furthermore, even if the passage in question did refer to this kind of deliberate vomiting (which I very much doubt), the passage is very clearly only describing the eating habits of a very small number of extremely wealthy gluttons and it certainly does not describe anything remotely resembling a common practice.

What were vomitoria really used for, then?

That being said, vomitoria are indeed a real thing. They do exist, but they have never been used for vomiting. A vomitorium is really a passage in a theater through which audience members can leave at the end of the performance. In fairness, the word vomitorium does come from the Latin adjective vomitorius, meaning “vomitory” or “emetic.” This adjective is, in turn, derived from the Latin third-conjugation verb vomo, meaning “I vomit.”

This name, however, is deeply misleading. The reason why vomitoria are called “vomitoria” is not because a vomitorium is a place for people to vomit, but rather because the flood of people streaming out of the theater after the performance was metaphorically compared to the vomit streaming out of a person’s mouth as they vomit. This is, of course, a really gross metaphor, but it is really where the word comes from.

In other words, vomitoria really do not have anything to do with vomiting—except in the metaphorical sense. We have no evidence of anyone in ancient times having ever vomited in a vomitorium. If anyone ever did vomit in a vomitorium, it surely must have been by accident, since these places were certainly not designed for people to vomit in. Here are some photographs of vomit-free Roman vomitoria, which I have retrieved from Wikimedia Commons:

ABOVE: Photograph of a vomitorium from a Roman amphitheater in Trier, Germany

ABOVE: Photograph of people walking out of a theater through a vomitorium

ABOVE: Photograph of a vomitorium from the Amphitheater of El Jem, located in the city of El Jem, Tunisia

We still have vomitoria today in modern theaters and stadiums and we use them for exactly the same purpose the ancient Romans used them for; they serve as convenient entrances and exits for audiences and spectators. There is nothing inherently disgusting, bizarre, or salacious about them.

The word vomitoria—not as ancient as you probably thought

Even the explanation that vomitoria were really passages in ancient Roman theaters through which the audience could exit after a performance, though, is not entirely correct. The word vomitorium is actually a very late Latin coinage that, as far as we know, was never used during the height of the Roman Empire at all.

The earliest known use of the word vomitorium with the meaning of a passage in an theater (or, actually, in this case, an amphitheater) is in Macrobius’s Saturnalia, a dialogue discussing various curiosities and anecdotes that was probably written in around the late fourth or early fifth century AD during the waning years of the western Roman Empire. In Saturnalia Book Six, Chapter Four, Section Three, Macrobius states the following in Latin:

“. . . mane salutantum totis vomit aedibus undam. pulchre ‘vomit undam’—et antique, nam Ennius ait, et Tiberis flumen vomit in mare salsum, unde et nunc vomitoria in spectaculis dicimus, unde homines glomeratim ingredientes in sedilia se fundunt.”

Here is that same passage in English, as translated by Robert A. Kaster for the Loeb Classical Library:

“. . . spews a huge wave of morning callers from every nook and cranny (G. 2.462). ‘Spews [vomit] a wave’ is a nice touch—and ancient, for Ennius says (453 Sk.), and the Tiber spews its stream into the salty sea. That’s the source of the so-called vomitoria we have in venues for shows, which allow people entering in a mass to disperse into their seats.”

This passage is the only place in the entire surviving corpus of ancient literature in which the word vomitorium is ever actually used to refer to a place at all. As I noted previously, Macrobius’s Saturnalia is a very late source from the waning years of the western Roman Empire. We have no evidence that the word vomitorium was used to refer to a place during the height of the Roman Empire, let alone in earlier times.

If you went back to the time of Julius Caesar (lived 100 – 44 BC) and asked him to show you where the “vomitorium” was, he would probably have no idea what you were even talking about. If you went back to the time of the emperor Marcus Aurelius (lived 121 – 180 AD) and asked him to show you to the vomitorium, it is doubtful that he would know what you were talking about either. In other words, we can technically say that the word vomitorium is ancient because it is used in one ancient source, but that source is so late that it is probably not representative.

Furthermore, even though the word vomitoria is indeed (technically) ancient, it did not become commonly used as an architectural term until the Early Modern Period. Macrobius’s Saturnalia makes it clear that vomitorium was only a nickname and not the actual, official name for anything.

ABOVE: Photograph of the title page of a printed edition of Macrobius’s Saturnalia from 1560. The Saturnalia is the only ancient source in which the word vomitorium is actually used to refer to a building structure at all.

But wait! What about that one quote from Seneca the Younger?!

Now, some people have tried to point to a certain line from the Consolation to Helvia, a consolatory work written by the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger (lived c. 4 BC – 65 AD) in around 42 AD as evidence that the Romans did engage in gorging followed by deliberate vomiting for the purpose further gorging. The line goes like this: “vomunt ut edant, edunt ut vomant.” It means “They vomit so they may eat; they eat so they may vomit.”

First of all, I am not at all convinced that this passage is really talking about people deliberately vomiting in order to eat more food. This passage is so brief and so vague that there are all kinds of different meanings we could find in it. If you read the quote in context, it actually sounds more like Seneca is mocking people who feast upon enormous quantities of gourmet foods, but eat so much that they cannot keep the food down—not talking seriously about people who deliberately vomit in order to gorge themselves further. Here is the full passage from Seneca’s Consolation to Helvia, Chapter 10, Section 3 in the original Latin:

“Ultra Phasin capi volunt, quod ambitiosam popinam instruat, nec piget a Parthis, a quibus nondum poenas repetimus, aves petere. Undique convehunt omnia, nota ignota, fastidienti gulae; quod dissolutus deliciis stomachus vix admittat, ab ultimo portatur oceano; vomunt ut edant, edunt ut vomant, et epulas, quas toto orbe conquirunt, nec concoquere dignantur. Ista si quis despicit, quid illi paupertas nocet? Si quis concupiscit, illi paupertas etiam prodest; invitus enim sanatur et, si remedia ne coactus quidem recipit, interim certe, dum non potest, illa nolenti similis est.”

Here is the same passage, as translated into English by John W. Basore for the Loeb Classical Library:

“They want game that is caught beyond the Phasis to supply their pretentious kitchens, and from the Parthians, from whom Rome has not yet got vengeance, they do not blush to get—birds! From every quarter they gather together every known and unknown thing to tickle a fastidious palate; the food which their stomachs, weakened by indulgence, can scarcely retain is fetched from farthest ocean; they vomit that they may eat, they eat that they may vomit, and they do not deign even to digest the feasts for which they ransack the whole world. If a man despises such things, what harm can poverty do him? If a man covets them, poverty becomes even a benefit to him; for he is made whole in spite of himself, and, if even under compulsion he will not take his medicine, for a time at least, while he cannot get them, he is as though he did not want them.”

As I said, it does not really sound like Seneca is talking about people deliberately vomiting in order to eat more (or at least not to me).

In any case, even if Seneca really were talking about people deliberately vomiting in order to eat more food here (which, again, I very much doubt), this passage is only talking about a tiny minority of extremely wealthy gourmands. There is absolutely nothing in this passage to suggest that anything Seneca describes here was ever a common practice. Seneca himself makes it all too clear that he strongly disapproves of these people’s eating habits—just as most other sane people would. Indeed, Seneca’s whole point here is that the people who eat like this are disgusting.

ABOVE: Photograph of an ancient Roman marble bust currently held in the Antikensammlung Berlin depicting the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger, who wrote the Consolation to Helvia as a consolation to his mother Helvia following his own exile to Corsica

Why is this story so popular?

We might ask ourselves, “Why is this whole story about the Romans supposedly gorging themselves and then vomiting it all up so they could gorge themselves again so popular?” I think that the answer to this question is that it is the result of a combination of two factors. The first factor is that people in general have a natural fascination with the disgusting and the bizarre. Whether we like to admit it or not, I think most of us find this whole sick story about Romans vomiting in order to gorge themselves further amusing, albeit in the gross way. Thus, because people find the story amusing, they tend to retell it.

The second reason why I think this misconception has become so popular is because it feeds into the stereotypical image of the ancient Romans in popular culture as thoroughly debauched, decadent, and hedonistic. This stereotype, however—which has been fueled by a variety of disparate influences ranging from Christian moralizing to Hollywood movies—is not accurate. The ancient Romans were no more debauched or hedonistic than people today.

Many other stories you have probably heard about the ancient Romans’ alleged crimes and debaucheries are also either not true or greatly exaggerated. For instance, as I discuss in this other article I wrote, the idea that orgies were at all common in ancient Rome is a complete misconception. Likewise, the Roman emperor Caligula was probably not really insane—just cruel and arrogant. Finally, as I discuss in this other article, Nero never fiddled while Rome burned (partially because the fiddle was not even invented until around fifteen centuries after Nero’s death).

Nonetheless, the inaccurate image of the ancient Romans as a nation of depraved gluttons and perverts continues to appeal to modern audiences.

ABOVE: The Roses of Heliogabalus, painted in 1888 by the English Academic painter Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, one of the most iconic modern representations of (alleged) ancient Roman decadence