[adrian_b]

That was certainly necessary for an athlete where a layer of dirt would stick on the oil, but just rubbing your body with any piece of metal or of wood is not enough to make it non-greasy.

Besides having no soap, there was no paper and any tissue was very expensive as it required a lot of work, so they would not use disposable tissues.

Only lye, which is made from water and plant ashes, would have been easily available, but that is much more unpleasant and damaging for the skin than soap.

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We already produce natural oils for our skin (sebum), and those oils accumulate skin cells, dirt and dust, sweat, etc. It was common for Romans to use bathhouses, where they would coat themselves with olive oil, sometimes with an abrasive like pumice or fine sand, then use a strigil to remove the oil, and everything that had accumulated on the skin, before soaking/rinsing in the bath. This is enough to get you "not greasy" and they likely had a different concept of what "clean skin" should feel like, given that before soap, your bodies natural oils would be fairly ever-present.

https://www.unrv.com/culture/strigil.php

https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103SNR

https://maa.missouri.edu/education/museum-in-30-objects/stri...