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.
