Investigate Aquae Sulis - Frequently Asked Questions

Spring

Where does all the water come from, and where does it go?

All the water that you see coming through the site today originally fell as rain water on the Mendip Hills, just outside the city of Bath. It percolated through the natural landscape, picking lots of minerals as it goes. It pools nearly 2 miles under the surface of the Earth, where it is heated geothermically.

The heat and pressure generated underground forces the water back upwards through natural faults in the Earth until it reached the surface to form a hot spring. The Sacred Spring at the Roman Baths is the only naturally hot spring in the UK.

The water from the spring is channelled into two directions. Most of the water flows through a series of Roman drains which eventually leads into the River Avon. The rest is diverted for use in the Great Bath, the Roman fountain, and other healing pools, before re-joining the rest of the spring water in the main drain.

The spring provides over 1.1 million litres of water every single day, allowing a constant flow of water through the Roman complex. Apart from installing anti-flooding measures, the Roman pipes and drains having been functioning in the same way for the past 2,000 years.

Why is the water green?

In Roman times the baths would have had a roof – they would not have been open air as they are today. The sunlight allows lots of plants and algae to grow in the water, the heat and minerals in the water allow the algae to reproduce very quickly, hence the water is green.

The Roman roof would have prevented the sunlight getting in, helping to keep the water cleaner for the Romans to use.

What happened to the roof?

The bath-house fell into disrepair sometime in the middle of the 5th century AD. Bathing had become less popular and no-one was using the baths, let alone looking after the building. The roof collapsed, and the site began to be gradually filled in over time. Some sections of the roof survive and are on display around the Great Bath.

Life & Death, Citizens & Slaves

How can you tell if someone’s a Roman citizen?

Usually you can tell by their name – citizen men have three parts to their name. For example; Gaius Julius Caesar:

• Gaius is the praenomen, like a modern first name. You can’t really identify someone by this name, as there were only about 12 names to choose from. • Julius is the nomen gentile, a family or clan name like a modern surname. • Caesar is the agnomen, a nickname or given name. If you wanted to get someone’s attention, this is the name you’d shout out. Citizen women had two parts to their name, but these names could change depending on whether she kept her family name or took her husband’s at marriage. Slaves generally had only one given name, which was combined with part of their master’s name if they gained their freedom.

How do you become a Roman citizen?

To be born a citizen of the Roman Empire and to benefit from citizenship, you had to be born to two citizen parents who themselves lived in Rome or Roman Italy. However, there were other ways to earn Roman citizenship:

• In exchange for full service in the military • As a reward for good deeds • In exchange for peace i.e. a conquered peoples given citizenship and benefits of citizenship in order to quell resistance, or to keep a client king on side

Freed slaves (freedmen) did not automatically become citizens as soon as they were freed.

How do you become a slave in Roman times?

As far as we can tell, being a slave in Roman times had very little to do with the colour of your skin. Slaves from certain parts of the empire were highly prized because they were perceived to have a particular set of skills, e.g. Greeks were good teachers, the Spanish were good with horses, the Germans made good bodyguards.

You could be born into slavery if one or both of your parents were slaves. You automatically became the property of the same master who owned your parents. A master could force two of his slaves to bear children, or he could reproduce with one or more of his female slaves. The children in both cases automatically were born slaves. There are other ways to be made a slave:

• Captured by the Romans during conquest, or captured during an uprising or resistance • Sold into slavery by a poor parent or guardian in exchange for money • Sell yourself into slavery to a specific person in lieu on a debt (debt slavery was commonplace in Greece in the 5th century BC but may also have happened under the Roman Empire) • Sell yourself to a gladiator school • As punishment for a crime – prisoners were used as slave labour • Kidnap

What’s the difference between cremation and burial?

Cremation is when the dead person’s body is burned on a funeral pyre. Their ashes and any other remains are placed in an urn, which then rests in a tomb, mausoleum, or is buried in the ground.

Burial or inhumation is when the dead person’s entire body is buried in the ground, sometimes in a coffin. Christians tend to bury their dead as they believe the body can be resurrected with the coming of Christ.

Roman Religion

Who was Sulis Minerva?

Sulis Minerva is the name of the goddess worshipped in Aquae Sulis, and gives her name to the town, which was named Aquae Sulis in Roman times. She is a hybrid goddess – a combination of the local Celtic goddess Sulis and the Roman goddess Minerva. The two were combined to allow the locals and incoming Romans to worship in the same place i.e. at the Sacred Spring without causing tension between the two religions.

The two goddesses were very similar anyway. Sulis was the goddess of healing, hot waters and knowledge, and Minerva was the goddess of all these as well as wisdom and medicine.

The Temple of Sulis Minerva was built next to the Sacred Spring and contained a life-size bronze state of the goddess. The head is all the remains today. It is made of bronze and covered in gold leaf.

Did the Romans sacrifice people?

No! The Romans only sacrificed animals – such as chickens, goats, sheep – as an offering to the goddess, in the hope she would answer their prayers. Sacrificing was a key part of Roman worship, thus one reason why the Romans distrusted the Christians and Jews, who did not sacrifice.

The Romans believed that the body of the citizen was sacred and could not be harmed by others (warfare was not included in this belief), so the idea of human sacrifices was abhorrent to them. The Welsh Druids supposedly performed human sacrifices, including sacrifices of children and captured Romans, which led to their systematic murder and persecution by the Roman Army during the conquest of Britain.

Why is the Gorgon’s Head significant?

The gods the Romans worshipped were taken from those of the Greeks. They were renamed but kept the same personalities and stories connected to them. For example, the Roman goddess Minerva was called Athena by the Greeks. The stories could be long and complicated with lots of adventures, monsters and action.

In Greek mythology, gorgons were monsters with snakes for hair and eyes that could turn you to stone. They were also female, whereas the Gorgon from the temple pediment is male. It’s thought that the Gorgon might represent another Roman god, possibly one associated with water, or another local god. He may be a hybrid god, like Sulis Minerva herself – we just don’t know.

The pediment carvings as a whole are a good example of Romanisation. The head of the gorgon Medusa is a symbol of Minerva (see the myth of Perseus and Medusa to find out more), maybe some the locals interpreted the myth in a new way.

The Great Bath

How deep is the Great Bath?

The Great Bath is roughly 1.5 metres deep, and it is s consistent depth all the way along – there’s no deep or shallow end. There are a series of steep steps from the edge all the way to the bottom, for people to sit and relax in the hot water.

How did the Romans use the bath-house

At either end of the Great Bath there is a series of rooms – the apodyterium, tepidarium and caldarium – that were heated using hot air under the floor. The hot air was provided by a wood- burning furnace.

The hypocaust was the underfloor heating system designed to keep the rooms hot. Stacks of tiles acted like stilts, supporting the walking surface, and allowed all the hot air from the furnace to flow freely underneath. The closer the room to the furnace, the hotter the room would be. Hot air escaped through hollow brick called flue tiles that lined the walls.

How much of the site is Roman?

Have a close look at photos of the Great Bath. Everything from about 2 metres and below is the original Roman structure. It’s easy to see when looking at the columns. All the dark, square cut stone is Roman, anything that is a sandy yellow colour was added as part of the Victorian restorations.

All the circular columns, the terrace and the statues all date to about 1890. The Victorians wanted to cheaply restore the buildings to their former glory and did not pay too close attention to archaeological accuracy.

The paving stones around the Great Bath, the entire Great Bath itself, lower column and wall sections, as well and the plaster on the walls is all 2,000 years old. When the baths were abandoned sometime in the 5th century AD the site was slowly filled in with silt, mud, and refuse eventually covering the entire bathhouse. No-one knew it was there until a leak in a nearby house sparked the city engineer, Major Charles Davis into investigating the Sacred Spring and the surrounding area, leading to the rediscovery of the Roman Baths in the late 1880s.