The Romans protected their walls “against such as commit nuisances ... by consecrating the walls so exposed with the picture of a deity or some other hallowed emblem, and by denouncing the wrath of heaven against those who should be impious enough to pollute what it was their duty to reverence. The figure of a snake, it appears, was sometimes employed for this purpose.... The snake, it is well known, was reckoned among the gods of the heathens.”—(“Vestiges of Ancient Manners and Customs,” Rev. John James Blunt, London, 1823, p. 43.) Herodotus informs his readers that the Egyptians “ease themselves in their houses, but eat out of doors, alleging that whatever is indecent, though necessary, ought to be done in private, but what is not indecent openly.”—(“Euterpe,” p. 35.) Herodotus also speaks of the Egyptian king Amasis having made an idol out of a gold foot-pan, “in which the Egyptians formerly vomited, made water, and washed their feet” (“Euterpe”). Minutius Felix, in his “Octavius,” refers to this, and takes umbrage that heathen idols made of such foul materials should be adored (see his chapter xxv.). Tournefort mentions latrines in Marseilles. “They make advantage of the very excrements of the Gally-Slaves by placing at one end of the Gallies proper vessels for receiving a manure so necessary to the country.”—(“A Voyage to the Levant,” edition of London, 1718, vol. i. pp. 13-14.) There must have been latrines in Scotland, because James I. of that kingdom was killed in one in the Monastery of the Black Friars, in Perth, in A.D. 1437; yet for many years later pedestrians in the streets of Edinburgh, after night-fall, took their own risks of the filthy deluge which house-maids were wont to pour down from the windows of the lofty houses. “As in modern Edinburgh so in ancient Rome, night was the time observed by the careful housekeeper for throwing her slops from the upper windows into the open drain that ran through the street beneath.”—(Footnote to page 146 of Edward Walford’s (M.A. of Baliol, Oxford) ed. of Juvenal, in “Ancient Classics for English Readers,” Philadelphia, 1872, quoting from Juvenal the line, “Clattering the storm descends from heights unknown,” Satire III., line 274.) “’Tis want of sense to sup abroad too late Unless thou first hast settled thy estate; As many fates attend thy steps to meet As there are waking windows in the street: Bless the good gods and think thy chance is rare To have a piss-pot only for thy share.” (Dryden’s translation of the Third Satire of Juvenal.)