Roman Toothpaste

My last post was supposed to be about Atlantic City, but I got off subject. So here's a little on the actual trip.

In Atlantic City, we stayed at Caesars. Caesars is a hotel/resort/casino, that is designed with an ancient Roman motif. In the (entrance hall?) the walls are lined with tall corinthian columns. Off the main lobby, there is a fountain surrounding a statue of Augustus Caesar. The hall is decorated with random other statues. (Side note: The statues are all white, reminiscent I guess, of the way the ruins appear today. But from from what I understand, back in the day, the Roman statues were actually painted.) The ballrooms and arenas have names like "The Colliseum" and "The Palladium". A restaurant is called "Bacchanal". One sign, lettered in ancient looking print directs you "To the Vomitorium".

To me in particular, it was somewhat enlightening, because I had just finished reading "The Seven Wonders of the World- A history of the modern imagination" by John Romer (which I highly recommend to any readers of overly verbose paeans to structures of dubious existence). In it, he describes the statues and structures of Greece, which long ago was also ancient. Did you know that in those days good sculptors were revered for their skill the way perhaps actors and athletes are today? And the number one sculptor in ancient Greece, the Michael Jordan of the Mausoleum, was a dude named Pheidias. Perhaps he was the inspiration for this famous limerick, which I found in "Milton Berle's Private Joke File"(which contains ten thousand jokes, most of which may have been funny in ancient Greece, or at least in the fifties.)

There once was a sculptor named Pheidias
Whose manners in art were invidious:
He carved Aphrodite
Without any nightie,
Which startled the ultra-fastidious!

Anyway, after reading about all the thought that went into the Greek, and later Roman temples and statues, it was fun to see a portrayal of how some of them may have looked. But the Casino/Hotel taught me more than just that, about life in ancient Rome. (Warning: This post is about to take a decidedly gross turn.) Did you know that in ancient Rome, people would brush their teeth with urine? Apparently in those days yellow teeth were a fashion statement! (Rim Shot/groan) I found this out when I tasted the complimentary in room little tube of toothpaste!

Our language and culture today owe a lot to the ancient Romans. So sp many of our words are rooted in Latin. For instance, the word diabetes comes from the Latin "Diabetes Mellitus" which means "sweet flow". Since the body of a diabetic cannot process glucose, it leaves the body in urine without entering the blood. So the urine is sugary. And now we know how they came to find this out.

I bet in those days diabetic urine was found in the exclusive toothpaste section, maybe next to Rembrandt and Tom's of Maine. But from what archaeologists can gather, the RDA (Roman Dental Association) wouldn't approve it, because it contained too much sugar.


Random Observations: After Going to Caesars and Bally's Wild West, it seems clear that the theme has no real role in the casino. When I went from Caesars to Bally's, it took me fifteen minutes to notice that the music had switched from Harp to Country. The wretched looking old ladies stuffing money into three machines at once were identical.

You know how in childrens books every class has a whiny goody-two-shoes little girl who always makes sure to point out who got the answer wrong and who wet the bed? Well one of them grew up and got bitchier. (But not any funnier.) Her name is Ann Coulter.

Random Limerick of my own composition:
There was once a fellow named Gump
Whose pajamas got glued to his rump
'twas a task Herculean
To undertake peein'
And never mind takin a dump!