Sources - Baths

Question 1

Where are the baths located?

Answer 1

In the forum

Question 2

What do you do at the entrance of the bath?

Answer 2

Pay a small fee

Question 3

What is the first area of the baths called?

Answer 3

The palaestra - exercise area

Question 4

What are popular exercises in the palaestra?

Answer 4

Wrestling
Fencing with wooden swords
Throwing a large ball from one to another

Question 5

What did the palaestra look like?

Answer 5

Open space surrounded by a colonnade

Like a large peristylium

Question 6

Where is the second place to go in the baths?

Answer 6

Apodyterium

Question 7

What do you do in the apodyterium?

Answer 7

Get changed

Hand their clothes to a slave who places them in rows along the wall

Question 8

What is the third place to go in the baths?

Answer 8

Tepidarium

Question 9

What is the Tepidarium?

Answer 9

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

Question 10

What is the fourth room in the baths?

Answer 10

Caldarium - hot room

Question 11

What is in the caldarium?

Answer 11

A large marble bath
Rectangular in shape
Stretching across the full width of the room
Filled with hot water bathers sat or wallowed

Question 12

The Romans did not have soap. What did they use instead?

Answer 12

Olive oil

Question 13

What do they do after soaking in the bath?

Answer 13

Lies on a marble slab
Gets a slave to rub them down with oil (bathers bring in little pot)
Removes dirt from the skin

Question 14

How do the slaves remove dirt on the bathers?

Answer 14

Gently removes dirt with a blunt metal scraper - strigil

Question 15

What 2 things do the bather do in the caldarium after he is clean?

Answer 15

Gets a massage

Goes to the large stone basin at the other end of the caldarium for a rinse down with cold water

Question 16

What do bathers do before they get dressed?

Answer 16

Visit the frigidarium

Question 17

What is the frigidarium and what do they do in it?

Answer 17

A cold room
Take a plunge in a deep circular pool of unheated water
Get a brisk rub down with a towel

Question 18

Why do people visit the baths

Answer 18

To get clean
To spend time with friends in a nosy atmosphere
To have a leisurely social occasion

Question 19

What is advertised around the baths?

Answer 19

Food sellers such as sausage-men and cake-sellers

Question 20

Why are the baths noisy? What source says this?

Answer 20

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

Question 21

Why were there public baths?

Answer 21

Most Pompeians did not have bathrooms in their houses.

Question 22

Who first built Roman baths?

Answer 22

The Greeks

Question 23

What was the Greek method of heating baths?

Answer 23

• Heat water in tanks over a furnace
• Stood braziers (portable metal containers in which wood was burnt) in the rooms
• This was not efficient

Question 24

What was the Roman central heating system and when was it invented?

Answer 24

• 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

Question 25

How were baths kept hot?

Answer 25

• The bath placed near furnace

- Passed hot air below

Question 26

What was later added to the central heating system?

Answer 26

Flues (channels) in the walls and beneath the floor for hot air to be passed through.

Question 27

What was the heating system called?

Answer 27

Hypocaust

Question 28

What was used, especially in Britain, to be burnt in furnaces?

Answer 28

Wood

Question 29

What is a source that talks of clients and patrons at the baths?

Answer 29

The martial has a source which explains the problems of public baths. This is that you cannot escape people.