Heritage > The Romans


The Roman Baths

The public baths were a very important social centre in Roman life. Most Roman men went to the baths in the afternoons; the entrance fee was only a quadrans, and anyone could go in. Sometimes a rich man would be generous enough to pay everyone’s entrance fees for the day. In Augustus’ time there were about 170 bath-houses in Rome alone, and by AD 300 their numbers had increased to over 900.

Bath, EnglandThe most famous bath-house in Britain is in the town of Bath; in Roman times it was known as Aquae Sulis. Sulis was the Celtic goddess of the spring, and when the Romans arrived they, too, worshipped her, identifying her with their own goddess of healing, Minerva. On the hot spring the baths were built, and next to it, a temple to Sulis-Minerva in a walled enclosure. There were no services in the temple: priests sacrificed animals, and afterwards people went in for private prayers. They prayed standing in front of the statue with their hands out, palms up, and when they finished they kissed the statue’s feet.

A gilded bronze head remains, which was probably part of her statue. On the pediment of the temple there is a carving. In the centre is a Gorgon’s head, with moustaches flowing into the hair, showing that it is male, though the figure is derived from the breastplate of Minerva. The hair turns into sun-flares, the beard to serpents. It features not only elements of water, but of fire and earth.

Not much remains of the temple today; all that is left are the steps and some pieces of decorated stone. The steps are worn down by the feet of the worshippers who walked across them. In the nineteenth century, it was discovered that the Great Bath was lined with forty-five sheets of lead - money must have been no object in constructing the buildings. The overflow drain is still in use today. Enormous quantities of limestone went to constructing the huge complex, which also featured a theatre. The courtyards had highly decorated screen walls, and the entrance was through a magnificent arch.

In the Great Bath, many suppliants left votive offerings. Among them were curse tablets, written backwards to help the magic. One of them lists the names of some people who seem to have abducted a girl called Vilbia. Archaeologists can use these tablets to find out the names of people who lived in Roman Britain; one of Vilbia’s abductors was apparently named Catusminianus. Basilica’s curse tablet demands that whoever stole her silver ring, or even knows anything about it and has not told, should be cursed in their blood, eyes, and every limb, and have all intestines eaten away.

The waters at Bath are still valued for their health-giving properties. For all the benefits they got from bathing, there seem to have been many drawbacks, because the Romans had no idea of germs or viruses. They would innocently drink water as long as it tasted fresh. At Orton Longueville, a woman’s skeleton has been found which has a calcified hyatid cyst the size of a chicken’s egg, which was caused by a tapeworm getting into her lung. This is probably what killed her. Eye diseases were spread quite easily, and dirty water contributed to trachoma. At Wroxeter many desperate people seem to have been responsible for leaving votive offerings of more than thirty eyes cut out of wallplaster, and one pair of gold eyes.


People went to the baths to exercise, gossip with friends, conduct business, and even to get clean. Slaves stoked the fires outside the building, and hot air circulated under the floors and through vents in the walls, then out through chimneys. People had to wear clogs to avoid burning their feet on the hot floors. The fire was kept going 24 hours a day, because it would have been too expensive to keep shutting it down and starting it up again, so the baths were never closed for business. Women usually had separate baths, or went in the morning.

Most baths had a series of rooms. The bather would start in the outer gymnasium and go into the undressing-room, leaving clothes in cupboards or paying someone to look after them. Curse-tablets suggest that cloaks were particularly desirable items to thieves; at least seven of them were stolen from Aquae Sulis. The bather would go into the tepidarium, a warm pool; move on to the caldarium, a hot pool, and finish in the frigidarium, a cold pool, to close their pores. Or they might use pouring dishes, or paterae, to splash cold water over themselves. Invalids benefited from a visit to the laconicum, which was dry and extra hot, like a sauna. Finally, the bather might enjoy a massage before setting off home for dinner.

After the hottest stage of the bath a slave might have the chore of scraping off the dirt with a strigil. Romans carried the strigil on a big ring, like a key ring, which also held an oil flask. Soap was unknown, so they used olive oil instead. Many other things have been discovered in bath-houses: tweezers, earpicks and nail-cleaners, as well as fragments of glass which were once perfume and scented-oil bottles. Seneca lived above a bath-house in Rome, and he complained of the ‘shouts, grunts, slaps... and the screams of those who were having their armpits plucked’. Seneca also thought that the baths were proof of society’s increasing decadence, and was nostalgic for the ‘good old days’, when men washed once a week and smelt of the farm and the army.

The buildings could be quite luxurious; Seneca further complained: ‘We think ourselves badly done by if the walls are not covered in mirrors, the ceilings are not buried in glass and the pools lined with marble.’ Many baths were equipped with a gymnasium, and people could swim, jog, wrestle, or show off their weight-lifting. Ball games of all kinds were popular, including games which used heavy medicine balls. The less energetic could play board games; we have ivory, bone and glass gaming counters to prove this, as well as dice made of agate and rock crystal. Some baths also had gardens and a library reading room. A lot of them had snack bars, and in the Caerleon legionary baths archaeologists have found shellfish remnants, mutton chops and chicken bones. Poets recited their work, and hoped for a dinner invitation. The unfortunate Seneca, who had to live above all this activity, was bothered by the noise: ‘...the man who likes to sing in the bath; men who jump into the water with an almighty splash; and then the cries of "Cakes for sale" and "Hot sausages".’



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