A Day at the Baths
Learning Goals:
● How would Ancient Romans clean themselves? ● What were public baths like? ● What tools and technology were used in the baths? ● What social, health, and public roles did bathing fill? ● How often did people bathe? ● How did gender and social status impact bathing? ● What major differences can we discern between modern bathing practices and ancient bathing practices? ● In what order would one proceed through the baths?
Bath Vocabulary balneum, balnei exerceo, exercere, tepidarium, -i neut. bath exercui, exercitus neut. warm bath v. to exercise therma, thermae latrina, latrinae fem. bath complex apodyterium, -i fem. toilets (originally hot spring) neut. dressing room piscina, piscinae palaestra, palaestrae caldarium, -i fem. pool neut. hot bath fem. exercise yard strigilis, strigilis lavo, lavare, lavi, latus frigidarium, -i fem. strigil neut. cold bath v. to bathe
"We quickly undressed, went into the hot baths and after working up a sweat, passed on to the cold bath. There we found Trimalchio again. His skin was glistening all over with perfumed oil. He was being rubbed down, not with ordinary linen, but with clothes of the purest and softest wool. He was then wrapped in a blazing scarlet robe, hoisted into a litter, and trundled off." Petronius.
"I live over a public bath-house. Just imagine every kind of annoying noise! The sturdy gentleman does his exercise with lead weights; when he is working hard(or pretending to) I can hear him grunt; when he breathes out, I can hear him panting in high pitched tones. Or I might notice some lazy fellow, content with a cheap rub-down, and hear the blows of the hand slapping his shoulders. The sound varies, depending on whether the massager hits with a flat or hollow hand. To all of this, you can add the arrest of the occasional pickpocket; there's also the racket made by the man who loves to hear his own voice in the bath or the chap who dives in with a lot of noise and splashing." Seneca in AD 50 A Tour of the Baths
Entrance Welcome to the Baths of Caracalla, one of the most elegant and massive Roman baths ever built. As late as the fifth century A.D., over 200 years after it was built, it still was ranked as one of Rome's wonders.
If you were a Roman, you would know that the public baths were as much a way of life as they were a place to wash. By the early fifth century A.D., there were almost 900 baths in Rome alone. The typical bath had a mosaic of uses and served as a community center, restaurant, fitness center, bar, and also as a performance center, where a juggler, a musician, or even a philosopher might entertain.
The most likely time you would have visited is in the afternoon, as the Roman workday for most ended by noon. If that time wasn't convenient, you could bathe in the morning or evening, when some baths were lit by torch. The Baths of Caracalla covered 27 acres and could accommodate 1,600 people at a time, so you would have had plenty of company. All would come: infants and elderly, men and women, healthy and ill, freemen and slaves, all of whom often bathed naked and together.
At your service (if you had the money), would be masseurs and food vendors, bartenders and slaves, poets and musicians. The baths were a bustling place, and one man who roomed above one wrote a letter chronicling its noise, complaining of the "grunt" of a weight lifter, a masseur's "pummeling of a shoulder," the occasional "arresting of a pickpocket," and the "racket of a man who likes to hear his own voice."
But his complaints were drowned out by most Romans, who were devotees of the baths. Roman affection for them was typified by the remark one Roman emperor made to a foreigner who asked why the emperor took the trouble to bathe once a day. "Because I do not have the time to bathe twice a day," he replied.
Toilets It is most likely that you would have felt uncomfortable going to the bathroom at Caracalla—or any other Roman bath, for that matter.
Romans were far less shy about bodily functions than we are. In general, the Roman Empire was a much more communal world than ours. Acts we consider private—bathing and going to the toilet—were done by the Romans in public and without shame.
The seats of the toilets at Roman baths are close together. Some modicum of privacy was provided by the Roman's loose togas, since they were hiked up rather than pulled down.
"However," points out Garrett Fagan, an authority on life in the Roman baths, "that doesn't preclude the kinds of noises and odors that would disgust us. For modern-day Westerners, it would be a very embarrassing place to be, but the Romans didn't seem to mind."
Romans would wipe themselves using sponges on sticks. Before they left, they'd stop at a basin to wash their hands. The sewers passing underneath the baths—the last stop of water from the aqueducts—would wash their waste to the river.
Apodyterium This is the changing room, your entry into the baths. An apodyterium had cubicles or shelves where you could tuck away your clothing and other belongings while you bathed. Leaving belongings behind unprotected was a risk, of course, for one of the most common visitors to the Roman baths apparently was thieves.
Privately owned slaves, or one hired at the baths, called a capsarius, would watch your belongings while you enjoyed the pleasures of the baths. One Roman schoolbook quotes a wealthy young Roman schoolboy who entered the baths, leaving his slave behind in the apodyterium. Master reminded slave: "Do not fall asleep, on account of the thieves."
If you were wealthy, you might even bring more than one slave along, as parading your slaves at the baths was a way to show your elevated social status.
If you were a wealthy free man or woman, slaves carried your bathing paraphernalia: exercise and bathing garments, sandals, linen towels, and a toilet kit that consisted of anointing oils, perfume, a sponge, and strigils, curved metal instruments used to scrape oil, sweat, and dirt from the body. Slaves might also wash you or give you a massage.
If you were robbed, you could respond by appealing to one of the Roman gods for retribution. A curse on the wrongdoer was written on tablets and offered up to the gods, who were asked to intervene.
Many of these curse tablets were found at the spring at Bath, England. One of them reads: "Solinus to the Goddess Sulis Minerva. I give to your divinity and majesty [my] bathing tunic and cloak. Do not allow sleep or health to him who has done me wrong, whether man or woman, whether slave or free, unless he reveals himself and brings goods to your temple."
Palaestra Before stepping into a series of baths, you and other visitors—young and old, male and female—exercised in open courtyards.
The exercise was usually neither extremely vigorous nor competitive. It was done, instead, to maintain health, as was recommended by the Roman medical profession. Doctors believed that bathing, exercise, massage, and a good diet—all things that a bath provided—were the basic ingredients of good health.
Exercise also worked up a light sweat recommended before a bath. If you were a man, your workout might consist of running, wrestling, boxing, or fencing. Ball games such as handball were also played.
Women also partook in this prelude to bathing. Trochus, a game that consisted of rolling a metal hoop with a hooked stick, was considered a more appropriate woman's exercise, as was swimming. One Roman, Juvenal, mocked brazen society women who worked out with weights and dumbbells for infringing on a sport that he obviously considered solely part of the male domain.
Romans strigiled away oil, dirt, and sweat.
Tepidarium After changing in the apodyterium and working up a sweat in the palaestra, you would step into the tepidarium. This was the first stop on the way to the hot caldarium and then the cool-watered frigidarium. The tepidarium was the place where "strigiling" often took place, the Roman habit of using curved metal tools to wipe oil, and with it sweat and dirt. Instead of using soap, Roman bathers would cover their bodies with oil to loosen dirt and then wipe off the mixture with various strigil devices. This might have been done by your own slave, if you had one, or by one who worked at the baths, if you could afford one.
Depilation was never fun.
You could receive a massage here. That was definitely less painful than a depilation, which consisted of having your body hairs plucked out, as hairless bodies were fashionable during much of the Roman Empire. One man who lived above the baths complained of the "hair-plucker with his penetrating shrill voice—for purposes of advertisement—continually giving it vent and never holding his tongue except when he is plucking the armpits and making his victim yell."
The often-gloomy Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius could have been describing a tepidarium when he said: "What is bathing when you think about it—oil, sweat, filth, greasy water, everything loathsome."
The hypocaust system heated bath water and air.
Caldarium This was the hottest room in a Roman bath. At the Baths of Caracalla, the room was 115 feet wide and crowned with a concrete dome.
The hot water and steamy air were designed to open your pores, and water and air temperatures may have risen well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, with a sticky 100 percent humidity to exaggerate the effect. At the Baths of Caracalla, the caldarium consisted of a large hall that contained a large pool a little over three feet deep. If you had slaves attending you, they might use a pouring dish called a patara to refresh you with cool water.
This room and its waters, like the tepidarium, were heated by the hypocaust, the system's furnace. The hypocaust, below ground and stoked by slaves, heated a tank of water transported by pipe to the appropriate pool.
The furnace heated the air drawn underneath the floor of the caldarium to heat its tiles. You would have probably worn sandals or wooden clogs so as not to scorch your feet. Hot air then rose up through hollowed-out bricks that lined the walls before exiting through chimneys.
Frigidarium You have already taken a warm bath in the tepidarium and a hot one in the caldarium, and may even have stopped in other sauna-like rooms.
Now it's time to close all the skin pores that have been opened. You can do this by plunging into the frigidarium's cold waters. The dip is meant to refresh and is often the final bath of a visitor.
Write a short description highlighting important features of each room. Expect short answer questions about these rooms on your next test.
Quaestiones de Thermis Answer Latin questions in Latin, answer English questions in English. 1. Suntne balneae in casis? 2. Quid faciunt viri in palaestra? 3. What is the difference between a balneum and a therma? 4. How could the Romans afford such lavish complexes? 5. What important features would appear in most bathing complexes? 6. How were the baths supplied with water?
The Hypocaust System The hypocaust system is the ancestor of modern heating and air conditioning. It was pioneered by the Ancient Greeks and modified by the Ancient Romans, who both understood physics better than we give them credit for! One important fact that they understood is that hot air rises. Therefore, what is the best way to heat a room? Through the floor, of course! To create heated floors, the Greeks and Romans invented the hypocaust (from the Greek hypo, below, and caust, fire). It was primarily used in bath complexes, but occasionally appeared in the private homes of the very wealthy. The hypocaust requires the floor of the room in question to be above ground level. To accomplish this, the architect would build brick or stone pillars a foot or two apart, then lay the floor tiles on top of these. This left an open space below the floor for air to circulate. Modern houses typically have a crawlspace within the foundation that is similar to this building style. Another important feature of the room’s foundation would be open walls, in other words, two walls with space in between for air to flow. This means the walls would be heated as well as the floor. Lastly, the architect would need to create vents or ducts from this room to a smaller room nearby. This room would function as a furnace. Slaves would work day in and day out putting wood on the fire to keep the furnace blazing. The heat from the fire would travel through the ducts to the room in question, then radiate upward through the walls and floor. A similar system can be used to heat water directly for hot pools. As far as engineering is concerned, the system is brilliant. The huge drawback, however, is that it relied on human labor to work consistently. No animal or mechanical system could keep a fire going, so this led to unfortunate result. As Romans became used to this kind of luxury, it perpetuated the horrific practice of slavery, making it seem to Patricians of the day like an inevitable necessity. Similar practices promote poor ethics today, for example, sweatshops in third-world countries continue to abuse their workers because first-world consumers can’t imagine life without cheap tennis shoes. Be cautious about the luxuries you take for granted!
Bathing Accoutrements The ancient world used a common tool to scrape the body, not only for cleaning, but, based on historical context, to release tensions in the superficial layers of the skin. This tool is called a strigil . Generally made of copper, bronze, bone or ivory. Artistic records show the strigil being used by athletes during athletic events in the palaestra and by the general population in the Roman baths. Modern interpretations of historical records generally describe the strigil as a tool used to cleanse the body after athletic events with olive oil, applied beforehand, then scraped off at the end of an event. Some describe that Caesar Augustus, who lived to age 75, had his face strigiled so severely that his skin was often seen bruised from deep use of the strigil. In Galen’s De Sanitate Tuenda he describes that it is possible to diagnose illness from observing the scraped skin, implying the strigil was also used as a medical tool. Soap was reputedly first developed by the Germans or Celts, Rome’s barbarian neighbors to the North. In the course of conflict and conquering, Romans picked up the use of soap in a small way, but continued to prefer olive oil as their primary cleanser. This may seem more palatable when you realize that early soap was made of natural ingredients, the primary ingredient being animal fat. This continued to be true for centuries. Many Romans were guilty of wearing perfume and cosmetics. While these were generally reserved for women, men were not always above a quick spritz of some good-smelling concoction. Unlike our views on cologne today, men would probably be mocked for the use of scent, and we can therefore assume it was not a common practice.
Response
Paragraph Response 1: Describe the rooms of a Roman bath, including their different functions and how one would proceed through the bathing complex.
Paragraph Response 2: Describe the similarities and differences between ancient and modern bathing practices. Include technology, slaves, modesty, and social function.
Olive Oil Washing vs. Water Washing How did you feel while you were washing with the olive oil? How did your hands feel afterwards? Could you feel clean if this is how you washed every day?