Roman baths

Today we take a bath (mostly privately) to clean ourselves, and visit the baths (or the swimming or leisure pool as it’s now more likely to be called) as a leisure activity. We also visit theatres, go out to meet friends for a chat and a drink or a bite to eat, make a visit to the library or spend some time in the gym. In imperial Rome, all of these activities could be achieved with one single visit to the baths.

Roman baths were distinctly different from the baths we know today and played a central role in the social life of the day. And given that entry was inexpensive, or sometimes free, they were affordable by most levels of society except, obviously, slaves. The evidence for this lies in the grandeur and extravagance of the buildings themselves, their abundance in Rome and in the writings of various Roman statesmen, philosophers and historians over a period of several centuries.

We’ll come to this evidence later but in the meantime it’s worth looking at the development of this social phenomenon. Like many things Roman, baths, and communal bathing, looks to have been adopted from the Greek way of life and in the days of the Roman republic baths were relatively modest structures known as balneae. These could have been privately owned or served as a community or municipal washing place. But these were generally no more than a simple place for bathing (washing) and did not offer the wealth of activities that would come later.

The earliest large scale common baths in Rome is thought to have been built by the emperor Agrippa in 25 BCE. Known as thermae, these baths were much larger than the earlier balneae and contained a number of different sized pools of varying temperature – the frigidarium (cold), the tepidarium (warm) and the caldarium (hot). Successive emperors, including Nero, Titus, Domitian, Comodus, Caracalla, Diocletion (who built the largest of the thermae in the centre of Rome) and Constantine, would establish new baths – each trying to outdo the last in terms of grandeur and offering low cost or free entrance to curry favour with the voting population. These new marvels weren’t restricted to Rome and began popping up right across the Empire, from northern Africa to southern Britain. Lucian, who lived from roughly 125-180 CE, describes with flowing complements a new public baths in Hippias or the Bath. He mentions the highly lighted retreats, capacious locker rooms, a high hall finished in marble with marble statues and even another hall, “the most beautiful in the world”, as if such a thing could exist. Regrettably Lucian’s description reads more like an advertorial than an honest appraisal. However, it does get across the lengths the patrons of new baths would go to in order to impress.

With the successive building of new thermae, these attractions began to offer more in the way of non-bathing facilities. Before bathing, visitors could even work up a sweat in the gym or in the exercise area (the palaestra). The bathing ritual was more complex than our own today and would involve being covered in oil, sweating the dirt out in the laconium (a sauna type room), having the dirt and oil scraped from your body using a curved wooden or metal tool known as a strigil, taking a variety of baths and finally having some scented oil rubbed into their bodies by a masseur. Seneca, who somewhat puzzlingly claims to have lived above a public baths, declares himself irritated by the small of a masseur’s hand pummelling the shoulders of a bather. Admittedly, it’s hard to imagine a large group of bathers, who could number more than 1,000 at the larger baths, being anything other than noisy.

Bathing over, male bathers in particular would get on with the job of socialising with their friends. The options open to them, depending on the size of the baths, would have included a visit to the library, watching a live theatre or sporting performance or taking a leisurely walk in the gardens. Of course, drinks and snacks would also be available. But socialising was the main attraction and there would be the opportunity to meet friends and be introduced to new people, conduct business, catch up with the latest news and communicate your own and, of course, to show off.

In the years of the empire, mixed gender bathing was outlawed or at the very least frowned upon. It was prohibited by both Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius though the fact that they had to prohibit mixed bathing lends credibility to the belief that it happened. Interestingly, when Vitruvius, a Roman writer, architect and engineer who died around 15 BCE, writes that, “the hot baths for men and for women are adjacent and planned with the same resources.” (This would make heating the pools easier). It is therefore possible that mixed bathing was anticipated but remember he was writing at the very beginning of this social phenomenon so attitudes could easily change when mixed bathing was found to be unworkable. The Roman working day began at sunrise and continued until around 2pm. In the morning, while the men were at work, the baths were available exclusively for women. When the working day was over it was the men’s’ turn to use the facilities and it remained a male domain for the rest of the day. This male only environment provided an excellent income opportunity for prostitutes. There may also have been some overnight facilities for travellers. And if Martial’s witty epigrams are to be accepted as a reflection of the truth, we can also surmise that nude bathing was at least tolerated if not the norm. In one self deprecating poem he writes, “You never invite anybody, Cotta, unless you have bathed with him.” “I used to wonder why you never asked me to dinner. Now I know that you didn’t like me in the nude.”

At the same time, there is some evidence that women’s bathing was not an entirely chaste exercise. Ovid, in The Art of Love, writes, “The public baths provide plenty of private fun for girls – while their guardians sit outside”. And Martial notes in Epigram 11.75, “Your slave goes into the bath with you, Caelia, covered with a brass sheath”.

Fabulously decorated thermae weren’t exclusively public places and wealthy, elite Romans could have their own personal baths – though obviously not quite on the same scale. In a letter to Gallus, Pliny describes the bathing facilities at his Laurentine home. He lets us know he has a cooling room with two curved baths, an oiling room, a furnace room, an antechamber and two rest rooms. He tells us they are beautifully decorated in a simple style and lead to a heated swimming pool which is much admired. We can only assume it was admired by guests. On the evidence of this letter it appears Pliny used his bathing facilities not just for his own relaxation but also for the entertainment of guests. But having your own private baths didn’t exclude the elite from also attending the public ones, particularly if it presented an opportunity to ingratiate yourself with voters. Titus was known to attend the public baths to court popularity and, later, Hadrian presented one man he met at the public baths with a slave and money for his maintenance, so that the man wouldn’t be forced to clean himself.

Among the largest of the thermae was the Baths of Caracalla, built by the emperor Marcus Aurelius between 211 and 216 CE. Situated on the outskirts of Rome on the Appian Way, the whole complex, including the extensive gardens, occupied around 30 acres. The bathing buildings, which incorporated the exercises areas, various pools, rooms for socialising, a library and other rooms, covered about the same area as four modern day football pitches, and could hold an estimated 1,600 bathers. The large outdoor swimming pool was comparable in size to today’s Olympic-sized pools but was only around one metre in depth.

It does seem strange to us that bathing, and by that I mean washing oneself, would be a communal activity since for us it is usually a private one. But surely the idea of not bathing, or only bathing once or twice a year, as people were doing in nineteenth century Britain, seems stranger still. Looked at on a purely pragmatic and logical basis, the idea of Roman communal bathing seems less repellent than its nineteenth century alternative. However, we know these days that public bathing areas can be a perfect breeding ground for bacteria. In fact, in a letter to Rosianus Geminus, Pliny explains that his doctors are unwilling to let him have a bath at a time when he was suffering from a fever. Perhaps physicians even then had noticed a link between the baths and the spreading of disease though some other evidence seems to be to the contrary. Celcus, who lived at the beginning of the first century CE, recommends the baths as a place where people with, “some parts of the body weak”, can achieve some relief. Though he also recommends the avoidance of moonlight.

But ‘modern’ Roman baths weren’t universally popular among the elite and Seneca in particular reveals some criticisms of them in a letter to Lucilius, written sometime between 63 and 65 CE. Having visited the home of Scipio Africanus (who had lived there several hundred years earlier), Seneca contrasts what he sees as Scipio’s primitive but practical bathing room with the more elaborate bathing establishments of his own time. Seneca sees the only purpose of bathing being to wash off the dirt and sweat of honest labour. Of modern bathers he states, “…men are dirtier creatures now than they ever were in the days before the coming of spotlessly clean bathrooms”. Here Seneca is clearly not referring to the lack of physical cleanliness, but rather to the array of strong smelling scents favoured by men who attend the baths. He may also be making some oblique reference to the baths being a place where underhand business or political transactions took place. If this is the case then it is hardly surprising. When Seneca wrote his letter Rome, particularly its politicians, had a reputation for political (and actual) backstabbing. If those politicians were now spending more time at the baths than they were at the senate, it’s only natural that the ‘politicking’ would take place there. Perhaps though he was also referring to the prostitutes who plied their trade at the baths.

Roman thermae were very much a city within a city. At a time when popular entertainment choice and locations for socialising were far more limited than they are today, they must have presented fabulous entertainment for every visitor. Certainly they seemed to offer a great deal of choice and a surely a cooler afternoon than would be found in the hot sun of the Colosseum or the Circus Maximus. The very size of these baths, the sheer number of them (there were several hundred in Rome alone), the fact that they were present in all lands conquered by Rome and the number of references to bathing in writings of the time, gives us strong reason to believe that bathing was a central part of Roman social life.