Sources - Baths Flashcards
Where are the baths located?
In the forum
What do you do at the entrance of the bath?
Pay a small fee
What is the first area of the baths called?
The palaestra - exercise area
What are popular exercises in the palaestra?
Wrestling
Fencing with wooden swords
Throwing a large ball from one to another
What did the palaestra look like?
Open space surrounded by a colonnade
Like a large peristylium
Where is the second place to go in the baths?
Apodyterium
What do you do in the apodyterium?
Get changed
Hand their clothes to a slave who places them in rows along the wall
What is the third place to go in the baths?
Tepidarium
What is the Tepidarium?
Walk through an arched doorway
A warm room
Sit on benches round the wall
It is steamy to prepare for higher temperatures in the next room
What is the fourth room in the baths?
Caldarium - hot room
What is in the caldarium?
A large marble bath
Rectangular in shape
Stretching across the full width of the room
Filled with hot water bathers sat or wallowed
The Romans did not have soap. What did they use instead?
Olive oil
What do they do after soaking in the bath?
Lies on a marble slab
Gets a slave to rub them down with oil (bathers bring in little pot)
Removes dirt from the skin
How do the slaves remove dirt on the bathers?
Gently removes dirt with a blunt metal scraper - strigil
What 2 things do the bather do in the caldarium after he is clean?
Gets a massage
Goes to the large stone basin at the other end of the caldarium for a rinse down with cold water
What do bathers do before they get dressed?
Visit the frigidarium
What is the frigidarium and what do they do in it?
A cold room
Take a plunge in a deep circular pool of unheated water
Get a brisk rub down with a towel
Why do people visit the baths
To get clean
To spend time with friends in a nosy atmosphere
To have a leisurely social occasion
What is advertised around the baths?
Food sellers such as sausage-men and cake-sellers
Why are the baths noisy? What source says this?
Seneca talks of public baths: There are grunts of the men lifting weights The brawler or thief being arrested People who splash in the water People who like to sing The smacks of the masseur's hands
Why were there public baths?
Most Pompeians did not have bathrooms in their houses.
Who first built Roman baths?
The Greeks
What was the Greek method of heating baths?
- Heat water in tanks over a furnace
- Stood braziers (portable metal containers in which wood was burnt) in the rooms
- This was not efficient
What was the Roman central heating system and when was it invented?
- Furnace placed below floor level
- The floor was supported using small brick piles - left space for hot air from furnace to circulate
- First century BC
How were baths kept hot?
- The bath placed near furnace
- Passed hot air below
What was later added to the central heating system?
Flues (channels) in the walls and beneath the floor for hot air to be passed through.
What was the heating system called?
Hypocaust
What was used, especially in Britain, to be burnt in furnaces?
Wood
What is a source that talks of clients and patrons at the baths?
The martial has a source which explains the problems of public baths. This is that you cannot escape people.
