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Roman Baths

Among the Romans the public baths were long the only ones in use, and consisted of but two halls, one for each sex. Every town and even village had one bath or more. In Rome itself there were over 800 in the Fourth Century AD. This number does not include the magnificent imperial thermae, which were much more than baths; nor the private baths, without which no house of any pretensions was complete.

Orata, about a century before Augustus, was the first to make a bathroom over a hypocaust, or basement filled with hot air - a discovery which was developed into a system of hot-air pipes throughout the thickness of all the walls, giving an even, hot temperature. Probably the increase of comfort due to this invention was the cause of the growth in both the number and the popularity of baths toward the close of the Republic. Maecenas was the first to have a swimming-tank of hot water, and the other friend of Augustus, Agrippa, was the first to build immense thermae on an elaborate and systematic plan, with all the luxuries of Graeco-Oriental tradition improved by Roman practical inventiveness.

The essential parts of the bathing establishments were:

1. a vestibule for loungers, servants, and attendants, and sometimes an atrium;
2. an undressing-room, or apodyterium, though often the bathers undressed in the larger bathingrooms;
3. the frigidarium, or hall for cold baths, with a sunk basin at one end or in the center, often large enough for a swimming-tank; often the bathers contented themselves with the cold bath;
4. the tepidarium, a hall not used for bathing, but kept at a moderate temperature to serve as transition between the hot and cold bathrooms, used for dressing and undressing, anointing and waiting; it was fitted out with a sunken tank for hot water at one end, and a raised basin at the other for cold water;
5. the calidarium, or hall for hot baths; under it was the hypocaust, or hollow floor filled with hot air from the furnace, which was conveyed also into the hollow walls around the calidarium.

With the furnace were connected three boilers, the lower one containing hot water, the middle one warm, and the upper cold water, so connected by pipes that when hot water was drawn off from the lower boiler it was replaced by tepid water from the one above, and that again by cold from the uppermost. The scraping off of the perspiration by strigils, and the anointing with oil, which at first took place in the calidarium, were afterwards transferred to the tepidarium, or to a special hall called the unetorium, the last hall toward the exit. Connected with the calidarium was the laconieum, or sweating-room.

The system of bathing in all the various classes of bathing establishments was fundamentally the same, except when special treatment was prescribed by medical advice. Galen recommended the following succession: (1) hot-air bath in laconicum; (2) hot-water bath; (3) cold bath; (4) massage. That other great physician, Celsus, recommended: (1) sweating, dressed, in tepidarium; (2) sweating, disrobed, in calidarium; (3) douche bath, first hot, then tepid, then cold; (4) scraping, rubbing, and anointing.

The process of bathing was usually as follows: After undressing in the apodyterium, the bather was anointed in the elaeothesium with oil, and then proceeded to a spacious court devoted to exercises of various kinds, among which games at ball held a prominent place. After exercise, he went through the tepidarium into the calidarium to sweat and take a hot bath; he then returned to the frigidarium, took a cold bath, and returned to the calidarium or laconicum for another sweat. He was then rubbed and anointed by the attendants, and resumed his clothing. Sometimes the bather went at once to the hotroom, and followed the sweat with a cold plunge and a rubbing and anointing.

The type of the Augustan Age can be studied in the descriptive text of the Roman architect Vilruvius. The later imperial thermre became the center of the public leisurely life of Rome, including as it did libraries, lecture-rooms, gardens, porticoes, gymnasia, running-tracks, and every variety of incentive to luxurious ease. The principal imperial establishments of this kind were those of Titus. Trajan, Caracalla, and Diocletian. They covered enormous spaces in the heart of the city.

The most monumental ruins of Roman baths are those of Caracalla and of Diocletian, whose tepidarium was transformed by Michelangelo into the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli. It was an immense hall 300 feet long and 92 feet wide, covered with a groin vault in three compartments. The halls of Caracalla's thermae, though not so large - the tepidarium being 170x82 feet - were better proportioned and more artistic in decoration. The Baths of Diocletian accommodated 3,000 bathers, almost twice as many as the Baths of Caracalla, being approximately twice its size. These thermse had a profusion of marble columns, surface decoration of rich marble slabs, coffered ceilings, rich cornices, mosaic floors, a wealth of decorative statuary and paintings.

• Baths of Agrippa: Also known as Arco di Ciambella. Used as basis for a palace plan by Peruzzi. Palladio identified the Area between Arco di Ciambella and Pantheon as the Baths of Agrippa. His reconstruction is unreliable.
• Baths of Traian Decius: Located on the Aventine. Partial plan by Palladio but known earlier.
• Baths of Helena: Near S. Croce. First drawn by the Sangallo circle.
• Novatianae Baths: Beneath S. Pudenziana.
• Baths of Philipus: On the Esquiline behind the Sette Sale.
• Baths of Septimius Severus: Located in Trastevere.
• Piscina Publica: Possibly an artefact derived by the region name. Probably same complex as Baths of Caracalla.
• Varianae Baths;
• Olympiadis Baths;
• Baths of Gordianus;
• Baths of Commodus;
• Baths of Licinius Sura;
• Baths of Domitian;
• Lavacrum Agrippinae;
• Aurelian Baths;
• Baths of Hadrian: Locations differ in sources.
• Balneum Pauli: Misinterpretation of the Trajan Markets.
• Minerva Medica: More likely a nymphaeum. Has none the less to do something with water. Therefore up to the 20th century sometimes misinterpreted as a bath.
• Palatine Baths: Misinterpretation of the Domus Augustana.

There are many remaining examples of Roman baths of the various classes. Those at Pompeii form the most interesting and varied group outside of Rome. That of the Villa of Diomedes shows the type followed in the wealthy private house (open-air bath; dressing-room; frigidarium; tepidarium; calidarium); the public ancient baths, which show two complete sections, one for each sex, show the normal plan of the age of Vitruvius, before the development of the elaborate imperial thermae. One of the best preserved of these public baths of moderate size is in Germany, at Badenweiler, also with its two sex-divisions, perhaps the most interesting example of their perfectly symmetrical arrangement. Special arrangements are, of course, to be found in famous curative thermal establishments, such as those at Baise.

The public baths for women were much frequented, even by the most respectable. The women bathed in company, like the men. When there were no baths for women, they seem to have had the exclusive use of the public baths at special hours. At Rome the great baths were for men only, but were frequented by dissolute women. The irregularity of men and women bathing together is also alluded to by ancient writers, and was legislated against by several emperors. In later times, the baths in general became the scenes of all sorts of debauchery, as was the case at Baiae.

In Imperial times the greater number of the public baths were situated in the Monti. The great Piazza di Termini, now re-named Piazza delle Terme, before the railway station, took its name from the Baths of Diocletian -' Therma;,' ' Terme,' ' Termini.' The Baths of Titus, the Baths of Constantine, of Philippus, Novatus, and others were all in Monti, supplied by the aqueduct of Claudius, the Anio Novus, the Aqua Marcia, Tepula, Julia, Marcia Nova and Anio Vetus.

No people in the world were such bathers as the old Romans ; yet few cities have ever suffered so much or so long from lack of good water as Rome in the Middle Age. The supply cut off, the whole use of the vast institutions was instantly gone, and the huge halls and porticos and playgrounds fell to ruin and base uses. Owing to their peculiar construction and being purposely made easy of access on all sides, like the temples, the buildings could not even be turned to account by the Barons for purposes of fortification, except as quarries for material with which to build their towers and bastions. The inner chambers became hiding-places for thieves, herdsmen in winter penned their flocks in the shelter of the great halls, grooms used the old playground as a track for breaking horses, and round and about the ruins, on feast days, the men of Monti and Trastevere chased one another in their murderous tournaments of stone throwing.