2.8 Baths

Everyday life: baths

Text Chapter 10 "Relaxation, Entertainment and Sport"

pp. 145-149 "Visiting the Baths"

Past HSC Question - 2009

Using Source 2, describe the features of baths in Herculaneum and Pompeii. (5 marks)

Source 2: Plan of the Forum Baths at Herculaneum

Baths

Few people had private bathing facilities.

A number of public baths have been discovered in Pompeii and Herculaneum.

A visit to the baths was a social occasion. See p.148 for sources relating to activities within the baths.

Pompeii:

• Stabian Baths (oldest)

• Forum Baths

• Central Baths (under construction at the time of the eruption)

• Sarno Baths

• Suburban Baths (Just outside Porta Marina)

• Baths of Marcus Crassus Frugi – known from an inscription – these have not been located.

• Private baths in the house of Julia Felix

Herculaneum:

• Forum Baths

• Suburban Baths

Features of a bathing complex:

• Different sections for men and women or different bathing hours for each gender.

• Vaulted ceilings, walls and ceilings decorated in stucco, floors in mosaics.

• Various rooms:

  • Apodyterium – changing and waiting room with niches

  • Frigidarium – circular cold bath

  • Tepidarium – warm room for transition from hot to cold and vice versa – laconium sometimes off the tepidarium

  • Caldarium – hot room, rectangular heated bath (alverus – could hold ten people, marble) and large circular basin (labrum) for cold water. Heating was provided by a hypocaust system.

• An exercise area.

• Stabian and Forum Baths in Pompeii and Forum Baths in Herculaneum had public toilets

• Heating system - furnaces provide heat, heated air is sent through a hypocaust system to the caldarium and sometimes the tepidarium

Pompeii – Forum Baths

Link: the Pompeii Forum Project has a plan and set of videos

• Built around 80 BC by Lucius Caesius (duovir) and Caius Occius and Lucius Niraemius (aediles) according to two inscriptions

• Uncovered in 1824

• Only baths in operation at the time of the eruption in AD 79 as they had been repaired quickly after the earthquake of AD 62

• Separated into men and women’s section; the men’s section was much larger and more ornately decorated

• Palaestra in men’s section

• Three entrances to the men’s section: Via delle Terme, Via del Foro, Vicolo delle Terme

Features

Apodyterium:

• Had vaulted ceiling with stucco decorations, little of which remains

• Walls didn’t contain recesses, so clothes were probably stored in a pile on the benches

• Pavement of white mosaic with black band around edges

Frigidarium:

• Round room with dome skylight

• Walls decorated with stucco friezes and pictorial representations of gardens and cupids

Tepidarium:

• Attractive room, ornamented with stucco panels along the ceiling of mythological scenes such as Eros with his bow, Apollo riding a griffin and Ganymede carried off by the eagle

• Series of recesses along the walls, framed by terracotta Atlases, with entwining plant motifs also decorating walls

• Large bronze brazier in the centre, that heated the entire room, decorated with insignia of donor Marcus Nigidius Vaccula who also donated three bronze seats, decorated with cow heads

Caldarium:

• Constructed so warm air could circulate to heat the entire room

• Stucco roof

• End wall features labrum in the centre

• Labrum was provided in 3 - 4 AD

• Alverus on opposite side

• Built around 10 BC

• Women’s section was smallest and least decorated, but has best preserved structure

• Palaestra in men’s section

• Figures of fish decorated vaulted ceiling of frigidarium

Women's section - apodyterium

The floor is decorated with a mosaic of Triton and sea creatures.

Above. Men's section - entrance and palaestra

Men's section frigidarium above and caldarium below.

The Romans' preferred method of cleaning the body was to massage oil into the skin and then scrape away both the oil and any dirt with a strigil. The Gauls used soap made from animal fat.

Summary:

• Baths

• Social occasion -“opportunity to satisfy not only the well-being of the body, but also of the spirit” Cantarella and Jacobelli.

• 4 Thermae discovered in Pompeii: The Stabian baths, the Forum baths, the Central baths (still under construction) and the Sarno baths.

• 2 thermae discovered in Herculaneum: The Suburban and Forum baths.

Divided into male and female sections or they were divided by time allocations

• Decoration – often with a marine theme

• Visitors would also practice physical exercise and play sport, indulge in a range of therapies such as a massage, stroll in the gardens, listen to music and poetry recitals and read in the library, conduct business and receive invitations.

• Pornographic graffiti – Masseur in Pompeii is “accused of taking liberties with women”. Graffito describes Apelles the waiter dining “most pleasantly with Dexter the slave of Caesar” and then both screwing “at the same time”.

• They found so many lamps in the Forum baths and the Stabian baths – implies they were open at night

• Slaves carried their masters or mistresses oil, soda and strigil

• Women wore a two-piece or more modest costume, men wore leather trunks or nothing.

The Stabian Baths:

• Oldest and largest in Pompeii – date from as early as the 4th century BC.

• Earliest known hypocaust, installed in the 1st century BC.

• Iulius and Annius refurbished the baths and added a laconium and a destrictarium.

• In the Augustan period, the palaestra extended and a swimming pool added.

• Elaborate stucco decoration and fourth style wall paintings, mosaic floors.

Suburban baths in Herculaneum:

• An inscription in the entrance courtyard states that they were financed by Marcus Nonius Balbus

• Waiting room = “one of the great finds of archaeology” -Deiss. It featured walls of varied – coloured marbles, framed white stucco panels containing bas-reliefs of naked warriors in various poses, winged cupids and a red spiral stucco frieze running around the room. A floor of black marble squares divided by narrow bands of white marble. Magnificent wooden panelled doors. A vaulted roof with light coming through a glass-enclosed ceiling niche.

Definitions:

Thermae: Municipal or privately owned bath complexes.

Apodyterium: Changing room with benches and shelves or niches for clothes.

Laconium: A small round room useed as a sweat bath, usually with dry heat. The room was heated either by a fireplace, hot stones or a brazier placed at the centre of the room.

Tepidarium: A vaulted chamber designed to acclimatize visitors passing from the apodyterium to the caldarium, with benches where people could sit to get used to the heat and/or wash themselves.

Calidarium: The principal bath chamber for a hot-water or steam bath, containing a communal, rectangular pool and a basin.

Frigidarium: A vaulted chamber for cold baths, containing one or more cold-water pools. Normally visited after the heated rooms.

Hypocaust: Heating system, provided by a charcoal-burning furnace located at the back of the caldarium, hot air circulated through the interstices and under the marble floor which was raised about 70-90cm to brick pillars and through air ducts built behind the walls. Ceilings had grooves in the plaster which collected and channelled the condensation down the walls.

Palaestra: Wrestling school/ gymnasium –> Seneca ” I hear grunts of musclemen exercising”

Natatio: Open air swimming pool

Praefurnium: Heating room

Destrictarium: Scraping-room, where oil and sweat were removed from the body with strigils.