The Baths

Most Romans went to the public baths in the afternoons. It was a place to meet people, exercise and have a snack. Typical visit would include: paying an admission fee, going to the palaestra to exercise, proceed to the changing room where a slave would take your clothes, go through a doorway to the warm room to sit for awhile in a warm steamy room, next you would go to the hot room where you would soak, be rubbed down with olive oil and have the dirt scraped off.

Following the scraping would be a massage then splash with cold water from a basin. You could also go to the cold room for a dip in unheated water. Romans learned about public baths from the Greeks. They improved them especially when it came to the heating systems. The Romans invented a central heating system that circulated warm air under the floors and later through flues in the walls. Wood was the fuel of choice.

Vocabulary Palaestra-sporting/exercise field tepidarium-warm room Caldarium-hot room frigidarium-cold room apodyterium-changing room Hypocaust-heating system Ostiarius-doorkeeper labrum-basin in the hot room filled with cold water