The drains of Athens, built of brick and stone and provided with air-shafts, ran into a basin from which pipes carried the sewage beneath the surrounding plain which it helped to fertilize.
The chief drain of Rome was the Cloaca Maxima, and there was a great network of smaller drains. The privy in private houses was usually situated near the kitchen, and a common drain from the kitchen and the privy discharged into the public cloaca. A pipe opened just above the floor of the closet to supply water for flushing. Ruins of very small rooms have been discovered in the Via Sacra of the Roman Forum, and it has puzzled archæologists to discover their use, but they are thought to have been sanitary closets. The sewers of Rome drained into the Tiber.