The legend says soap was first discovered by women washing clothes along
the Tiber River at the bottom of Sapo Hill. The women noticed the clothes became
cleaner with far less effort at that particular location. What was happening?
The ashes and the grease of animals from the sacrificial fires of the temples
situated on the top of Sapo Hill mixed with the rain, making soap which ran down
the slope in the streams of rain water giving the women a wash day bonus.
You can see at a glance the word saponification, the chemical name for the
soap making reaction, bears the name of that hill in Rome long ago. Most
products on the market today are not real soaps by the true definition but
rather are detergents which have been created from petroleum based products.
Saponification is a very big chemical word for the rather complex but easy to
create soap making reaction.