The Breath of a Roman

June 25, 2024 Saxo Greek and Roman, Human Affairs

THE SCENE: The next time you give someone a hard time for their bad breath, maybe you can soften the blow by saying that they smell like a lion, a bear … or a Roman.

THE TEXT: Lion’s breath contains a virulent poison and bear’s breath is unwholesome. No wild animal will touch things that have come into contact with a bear’s breath, and things which bears have breathed upon putrefy more quickly. As for the other species, Nature has willed that only in man is the breath made bad in several different ways, namely by tainted food, decaying teeth, and most of all by old age.

– Natural History, Pliny the Elder, 1st Century AD

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