A VOMITORIUM

Here’s a bit of cocktail trivia for you: a vomitorium is not actually a room where ancient Romans went to barf.

I know. You don’t want to believe me—thanks to a misunderstanding popularized in many sixth-grade history classes, most people assume that a vomitorium is a room where Romans threw up after particularly heavy meals. This would seem to be a natural extension of other weird things the Romans did, like wear togas and speak Latin. But it’s less strange to use an inflected language than it is to build a vomit room in your house. The Romans were no strangers to gluttony, but they didn’t designate specific chambers to capture the results.

Instead, a vomitorium is an architectural term for a passageway in a theater that opens into a tier of seats. Think of the entrances in a typical sports stadium — you know, the tunnels that pop you out into the stands? Those are vomitoria. The name does share its root with vomit—both words come from the Latin verb vomere (to throw up, spew). And, depending on the event, they may very well contain nauseated fans. But the name vomitorium itself refers to the passages’ ability to quickly move spectators into the stadium. Or, more graphically, to puke them out when the show is over.

By Catherine Price in "101 Places Not To See Before You Die", Harper Collins, Australia, 2010, excerps chapter 52. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.