Potty Training in Ancient Greece

Humans take so darn long to learn how to potty-train. For many early peoples, we must use guesswork to assume how the process went, but we actually have a relatively large body of evidence from the Ancient Greek world on this issue. (Issue. Get it? Groan . . .).

Shown on the first and second images are artistic renditions of baby toilets. The first appears on a wine-jug from late 5th-century Athens. As shown here, they worked by sticking the child in the bowl, feeding their legs through holes. The baby here is holding some sort of toy — you can see there is another push-toy propped to the side. Maybe the kid will be allowed to play with it after he makes a successful drop-off? The type of wine-jugs here were known as “choes.” Often they were painted with important moments in a child’s life, and could be given to them later to celebrate their growth out of childhood.

The adults get in on the encouragement in the second image, which was painted at the bottom of a cup. Like the other toilet-training potties shown in this post, the child is situated in the bowl with its legs pushed through especially designed holes. This baby’s legs are kicking and their arms are reaching towards a woman seated nearby, likely cheering them on.

These illustrations are corroborated by remnants of an actual child commode from the early 6th century BCE, which was discovered in the Ancient Greek Athenian agora.