1. The Baths

2. What Were They?
As we have seen, much of an average Roman’s life was conducted in public, and the baths were no exception to this.
Comparatively few houses had bathing facilities, so most Romans cleaned themselves at the public baths.
It is perhaps easiest to think of three baths as we might think of a leisure centre: a one-stop shop for a number of social and health activities.
Pompeii had three large baths (thermae).
A grafitti in Pompeii said:
“Wine, sex and the baths destroy our bodies.
But what makes life worth living is –
Wine, sex and the baths.”

4. How did they work?
The building of a bath complex required excellent engineering skills. Baths required a way of heating up water.
This was done by using a furnace and the hypocaust system carried the heat around the complex.

5. Visiting the Baths
Most bath houses opened around noon, when the working day began to wind down.
Many citizens visited the baths as part of their dinner (cena) preparations.
At the baths, a slave would oil his master’s body, then use a strigil to scrape it clean.
If a man did not have a slave to perform this task, it is theorised that men would scrape themselves against the wall of the bathroom.

6. Protocol
1. Pay the doorman upon arrival (the baths were cheap, but few were completely free).
2. Go to the palaestra, an exercise courtyard, to perform various fitness exercises (discus-throwing, wrestling, boxing, lifting weights. A favourite game was trigon. Three people formed a triangle and threw small hard balls at each other while also trying to catch those thrown at them.
3. Next to the apodyterium (changing- room) clothes were left in niches along the wall. An attendant guarded them.

7. Protocol (2)
The sequence of bathing varied facilities offered. The most splendid baths offered dry and wet heat.
4. Bathers started in the sudatorium, a dry sweat-room (anticipating modern saunas) and moved to the tepidarium (warm room), then the caldarium where there was a large heated bath.
5. After this the strigil was again applied to the opened pores; some also had a massage.
6. Bathers then returned to the tepidarium to cool off, and then the frigidarium, for a cold bath.
7. Citizens could spend most of the afternoon at the baths and their adjoining facilities (brothels were often built adjoining the baths).

8. Mixed Bathing Not all baths had separate suites for men and women.
The emperor Hadrian passed a law prohibiting mixed bathing, which shows that until then the practice had existed.
Where there was only one suite, there must have been separate hours: probably women had first use.

9. Toilets
Public and private toilets were sprinkled throughout the city of Pompeii.
Almost no private toilets had sewer connections.
These cesspit toilets were often situated in the kitchen, where food was prepared.
Public latrines – multi-seater toilets that were almost always connected to the main sewer lines of a city – posed serious threats to users.

10. Putting the toil into toilet
The Roman version of toilet paper in many cases was a communal sponge on a stick.
Public latrines were notorious for terrifying customers when flames exploded from their seat openings.
These were caused by gas explosions of hydrogen sulphide (H2S) and methane (CH4).
Customers also worried about rats and other small vermin threatening to bite them.
Some believed that demons inhabited these black holes leading to the mysterious underbelly of the city.

11. Question
Why do you think the entry price for the baths was cheap enough to allow anyone, including slaves, to use them?

12. The Skinny Everyone went to the baths. All classes mixed together.
Heated by hypocaust system.
Rooms included: frigidarium, tepidarium, caldarium, palaestrum, apodyterium, sudatorium.
Public toilets may have been plumbed to a sewer; private toilets were not. Risk of disease.

13. Sources
sanitation.html
Taylor, David. Roman Society. Bristol Classical Press, 2001.