View Page: Baths & Bathing as an Ancient Roman

	Baths & Bathing as an Ancient Roman
	written by kjw2 / 09.13.2004

Section Six

6 of 7

Personal Observations

http://www.vroma.org/~bmcmanus/baths.html

Mosaic of Exercising Woman

This woman is most likely competing in an athletic competition, as weight lifting was usually not an acceptable form of exercise for women. Could her attire be typical bathing attire?

Bathing in American culture is considered a private activity, and I was interested in the cultural impact of public bathing. I was most surprised to learn about the positive impacts public baths had on community, social life and culture. However, there was also a darker side to the public baths. They were an ideal place for prostitutes to solicit customers and they were considered an appropriate prelude to a purchased sexual encounter. There were also many criticisms of their increasing and sometimes excessive luxury and the impact so much leisure was having on Roman society.

I was particularly curious to find out whether or not the Romans bathed in the nude. I learned that the roman word for being naked is "nudus" which also refers to being scantily or improperly dressed. This makes it difficult for modern scholars to determine exactly how nudus the Roman bathers were, though there is evidence that sometimes they did sometimes bath naked. There is also ample evidence for associated bathing attire, including bathing robes worn on the way home or in the palaestra (exercise area) and sculponea, sandals with wooden soles for the heated floors.

Just as baths existed at varying levels of luxury, they also existed at varying levels of propriety. At one extreme were the less respectable establishments where prostitutes bathed with (and presumably solicited) men. At the other extreme were bath houses with separate facilities for men and women, or bath houses that were open to women in the morning and men in the afternoon. There is evidence that men and women did bath together completely naked in respectable bath houses, though the prevalence of this practice is debated. Several imperial decrees against co-ed bathing were issued by emperors, such as Hadrian, indicating that this practice was widespread. There is evidence that noble women did frequent the mixed bathhouses, and that mixed bathing was completely normal in certain circles. No clear cut line between mixed and non mixed bathing can be easily established, whether chronological or economical, so the matter was most likely a personal choice that varied between persons, regions, and establishments. This is probably analogous to nude sun bathing in Europe, as it happens in some places and not in others, and there really is no particular pattern governing its occurrence.
I think the most surprising thing I learned while researching the baths was that in addition to their cultural function, they served an architectural function as well. Since baths were a well funded public endeavor, but they were less formal than monuments and temples, they served as an excelent playing ground for Roman architects to experiment with new and innovative building styles. The dome is one example of an architectural style that was first tried in a bath house and later used in monuments and temples.

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