The nature of the evidence
For this brief introduction, three general studies of bathing in the Roman world were used: Die römischen Thermen und das antike Badewesen by Erika Brödner (Darmstadt 1983), Bathing in Public in the Roman World by Garrett G. Fagan (University of Michigan, 1999), and Bathing in the Roman World by Fikret Yegül (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
There is much literary evidence for the baths. Events in baths in the city of Rome are often mentioned by the satiric poet Marcus Valerius Martialis, who lived in the second half of the first century AD. His words should be used with great caution however, because of the satiric nature of his epigrams, and because he moved in a very specific segment of society. Very famous is a description of baths by the Stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca, tutor of Nero. He used an upper floor apartment near baths in Baiae in the Gulf of Naples:
I have lodgings right over a bathing establishment. So picture to yourself the assortment of sounds, which are strong enough to make me hate my very powers of hearing! When your strenuous gentleman, for example, is exercising himself by flourishing leaden weights; when he is working hard, or else pretends to be working hard, I can hear him grunt; and whenever he releases his imprisoned breath, I can hear him panting in wheezy and high-pitched tones. Or perhaps I notice some lazy fellow, content with a cheap rub-down, and hear the crack of the pummeling hand on his shoulder, varying in sound according as the hand is laid on flat or hollow. Then, perhaps, a professional comes along, shouting out the score; that is the finishing touch.
Add to this the arresting of an occasional roysterer or pickpocket, the racket of the man who always likes to hear his own voice in the bathroom, or the enthusiast who plunges into the swimming-tank with unconscionable noise and splashing. Besides all those whose voices, if nothing else, are good, imagine the hair-plucker with his penetrating, shrill voice -for purposes of advertisement -, continually giving it vent and never holding his tongue except when he is plucking the armpits and making his victim yell instead. Then the cake-seller with his varied cries, the sausageman, the confectioner, and all the vendors of food hawking their wares, each with his own distinctive intonation.Seneca, Epistulae 56, 1-2. Translation: Richard M. Gummere. Other sources are legal texts, inscriptions, and of course the remains of the baths themselves. With so much evidence available, one might expect that we have a full picture of Roman baths and bathing, but that is only partly the case. It is not always easy to establish what happened where in the baths. The bathing procedure itself is pretty clear. After undressing, the body was rubbed in with olive oil, some physical exercise could take place (such as a ball game), after which the various bathing rooms were visited: a lukewarm room, a hot room and a cold room, often with pools. However, the use of many non-heated rooms is open to debate. When we zoom in on the visitors, we find many contradictions, or rather variations, to be explained by changes taking place over time, regional differences, and individual preferences within a city. For example, scenes of crowding in the baths, found in ancient literature, surely reflect a reality. It seems more than likely however that most people visited specific baths at fixed times, in order to avoid crowding, and to meet friends and acquaintances. We should not try to find simple and standardized solutions, which tend to become caricatures.
View of the Baths of Caracalla in Rome. Photo: Wikimedia, Roundtheworld.
