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The term thermae was the word the ancient Romans used for the buildings housing their public baths. Most Roman cities had at least one, if not many, such buildings, which were centres of public bathing and socialisation. Upper-class Romans would usually visit daily, lower-class people about once a week.
Origin of the term The word thermae is a Latin borrowing from the Greek adjective thermos, therme, thermon (hot). c.f. Thermopylae (the hot gates, gates of fire) thermae sc. aquae means "hot waters, hot springs". Baths in culture and society Of all the leisure activities, bathing was the most important for ancient Romans, since it was part of the daily regimen for men of all classes, and many women as well. Today many cultures see bathing as a very private activity conducted in the home, but bathing in Rome was a communal activity, conducted for the most part in public facilities that in some ways resembled modern-day spas. Such was the importance of baths to Romans that a catalogue of buildings in Rome from 354 A.D. documented 952 baths of varying sizes in the city.• Although wealthy Romans might set up a bath in their town houses or in their country villas, heating a series of rooms or even a separate building especially for this purpose, they still often frequented the numerous public bathhouses in the cities and towns throughout the empire. Small bathhouses, called balneum, might be privately owned, but they were public in the sense that they were open to the populace for a fee. The large baths, called thermae, were owned by the state and often covered several city blocks. The largest of these, the Baths of Diocletian, could hold up to 3,000 bathers. Fees for both types of baths were quite reasonable, within the budget of most free Roman males. Since the Roman workday began at sunrise, work was usually over a little after noon. Around three in the afternoon, men would go to the baths and stay for several hours of sport, bathing, and conversation, after which they would be ready for a relaxing dinner. Republican bathhouses often had separate bathing facilities for women and men, but by the time of the empire the custom was to open the bathhouses to women during the early part of the day and reserve it for men from two in the afternoon until closing time, which was usually at sundown. Mixed bathing was generally frowned upon, although the fact that various emperors repeatedly forbade it seems to indicate that the prohibitions did not always work. Certainly women who were concerned about their respectability did not frequent the baths when the men were there, but of course the baths were an excellent place for prostitutes to work. Building layout Within the building the baths were divided according to gender. Each gender had three pools: a hot one, a lukewarm one and a cool one. They were respectively called: The baths often included, aside from the three main rooms, listed above, a palaestra, or outdoor gymnasium where men would engage in various ball games and exercises. There, inter alia, weights were lifted and the discus thrown. Men would oil themselves (as soap was still a luxury good and thus not widely available) and remove the excess with a strigil (c.f. the well known Apoxyomenus of Lysippus from the Vatican Museum). Often wealthy bathers would bring a capsarius, a slave that carried his master's towels, oils, and strigils to the baths and then watched over them once in the baths. The changing room was known as the apodyterium (Greek apodyterion, apo + duo "to take off" here of clothing). Location Baths sprung up all over the empire. Where natural hot springs existed (as in Bath, England) thermae were built around them. Alternatively a system of hypocausta (Greek hypocauston < hypo "below" + kaio "to burn") were utilized to heat the waters heated by a furnace (praefurnium) Algeria Bulgaria United Kingdom France Germany Hungary Italy Romania Spain The Netherlands See also | ||||||||
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