Did they washed their hands after toilet?

[Jeroen Pelgrom]

this is the reconstruction of the toilet at Housesteads (Hadrian's wall)

users.bestweb.net/~bennetc/Romans.jpg

and a photo of the site today:
news.pinkpaper.com/uploads/Mag_Travel/Hadrian.jpg

I wondered why there were 2 tubs in the toilet. I also suspected that 1 was for washing the hands.

[Sergey Lenkov]

You could look on the problem of the sponge in more simple way.
Rableais depicts crazy amount of possibilities to clean this part of the body with different things. Of course it's a kind of joke for him but it's possible that people in that times could use as toilet paper as example big leaves of different plants. Roman cities - it wasn't such concrete jungles as New York - without grass, trees etc., chip pieces of textiles in winter times - so it wasn't necessary to keep sponge with yourself or to use one sponge for every visitor of the toilet.

[Marcus Mummius]

Vinegar works as a disinfectant, so it's not so strange that the sponges were stored in that...

[D B Campbell]

Can I have one question? It is about using sponges in the army: Is it true that soldiers have obtained only one stick with a sponge for the contubernium?

The paleobotanical analysis of the sewage deposit from the latrine of the Bearsden fort discovered the presence (amongst other things) of moss, which the excavator interpreted as a local substitute for the sponge. Much more hygenic, because it's disposable!