Originally Posted by Joe Obenberger

It's smart to keep in mind that lots of the most lurid stuff that gets posted about Roman life comes from the yellow journalists of the era who had a political axe to grind and who wanted to tear down the high and mighty by accusing them of immorality. Suetonius comes to mind. Because he or someone like him wrote about deviant practices, gluttony, and excess to hurt the ruling class - establishes what the center of gravity of Roman morality actually was, and how writers aimed to shock the people with thise reports. In general, the Romans were a highly moral and disciplined people, though their morality is not congrurent with ours, much of it, like idealism, simplicity, humility, selfless devotion and sacrifice is the same. The most surprising thing to me about the Romans is that the sexual use of slaves was considered moral, natural, and not even "cheating" on a spouse. Even in US chattel slavery, this was illegal and considered to be a thing of shame when it happened and was discovered.

As for urine - till pretty recent times, it was commonly used to get potassium nitrate in order to make gunpowder - during the US Revolution, we had few natural mineral deposits and urine extraction was the norm. (There were some deposits in Mammouth Cave, Ky.) There are probably survivalists who do it today. It was used in folk medicine here too. Elvis explained that when he had an earache as a kid, his mother dropped warm urine into his ear. Doesn't seem to have harmed him.

This is all just a matter of changing tastes and customs. None of it should shock any grown-up.