Baths

By the time of the eruption, Pompeii had four large public bath complexes and many smaller ones. Public baths were an important institution of the Roman world. Although some wealthy houses had their own washing facilities, most people went to the public baths. The baths were not simply for cleaning oneself, but were social centers where one exercised, relaxed, ate, attended cultural events, and met friends and business associates. They generally opened at noon and closed at sunset. Men and women had separate areas or, in small complexes, separate hours or days. The grandest bath buildings were those of the capital city during the later empire. As one would expect, the Pompeiian examples were more modest.

The origins of Roman bath complexes are disputed. Since many of the technical terms for components of baths were Greek, the Romans may have taken much from the Hellenistic Greeks. But local practices, such as taking advantage of the natural hot springs in Baiae, in Campania, surely contributed to the tradition.

The Stabian Baths, the earliest at Pompeii, were built originally in the second century BC, later remodeled after 80 BC. The plan is irregular (Figure 22.4), but does include the key rooms of the typical bath complex. One entered from the street into the changing room (apodyterium), continued into a warm room (tepidarium), possibly a small sweat room (laconicum), and a hot room {caldarium), then ended with a dip into a cold pool (frigidarium). The Stabian Baths also have a large open-air swimming pool (natatio), a court for exercise (palaestra), smaller rooms, and a latrine.

Heating originally came from portable braziers, following Greek practice, but eventually the warm and hot rooms were heated from below the floor. In this hypocaust system, the floors of these rooms were raised on piles of bricks so that hot air from central furnaces could circulate freely in the space below. Some bath complexes also contained walls fitted with flues for hot air, a type of supplemental heating popular especially in the northern, colder areas of the empire, in Germany, Gaul, and Britain.

Seneca, who lived above a bath establishment in first-century AD Rome, gives colorful testimony about the crowded, lively, vibrant world of the baths. Rich men made grand entrances accompanied by their servants; bath personnel circulated, offering equipment such as bath oil, food such as cakes and sausages, and services such as plucking hair and giving massages; and slaves operated the furnaces and kept the premises clean.

The Roman bath culture depended on the aqueducts bringing large quantities of water; maintaining the aqueducts necessitated in turn economic and political stability. With the disruptions of the Middle Ages, the system fell apart. In western Europe, the bath culture came to an end by

Figure 22.4 Plan, Stabian Baths, Pompeii

The ninth century. In the politically stable east, in contrast, baths have continued without break through Byzantine, Arab, and Ottoman Turkish cultures to the present day.