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THE BATHS OF CARACALLA

EDWARD HUTTON

T might seem that the two characteristics of that later Roman civilization that came to such tragic splendour under the Emperors, the two characteristics which mark it off from any other civilization Europe has ever known, and impress us most to-day, were its indifference to death, to the spectacle of death, at any rate, a thing so hard to understand, and its care for the body, for even the smaller material needs of life which, in a sort of reaction, Christianity was so eager to condemn. If the Colosseum stands even yet as a memorial of the one, we are most vividly reminded of the other by the immense ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, at the foot of the Aventine Hill on the verge of the Appian Way. The greatest building in Rome, greater even than the Colosseum, these Thermæ, which Caracalla began and Elagabalus completed, were more than a mile in circumference, and could accommodate more than 1,600 persons at the same time. It is difficult to realize that such a building was only a Bath; and indeed it was much more, for the Thermæ had come to be a public meetingplace, a sort of club and a gymnasium.

Among the Greeks warm baths were for long only used for special purposes, to take them often being looked upon

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as a mark of effeminacy. And, indeed, the Athenians, even, never attained in this matter certainly to the luxury of the Romans under the Empire.

It was after the Second Punic War that the Thermæ began to multiply in Rome; before that time men had been content to take a weekly bath merely in the lavatrina, or wash-house, close to the kitchen. But about 200 B. C. Rome began to devote the hottest hour of the day between two and three-the hour of the siesta-to the Bath, with which the Gymnastica gradually came to be the chief recreation, and therefore for a host of people the most important event of every-day life. The Baths were then placed under the superintendence of the ædiles, a small fee, balneaticum, of a quadrans, about half a farthing, being charged for men and rather more for women. Little by little, the hours for bathing lengthened, as more and more it became the fashionable recreation, till, before the fall of the Republic, the Baths were open in the City from two o'clock till sunset, and in the suburbs were often lighted up and used long after nightfall.

It was, however, under the Empire that the daily bath grew really into the most absorbing function of life, among the wealthy people, at any rate: one bathed not once but many times a day. And if thus the Therme became the great meeting-place of the City, full of luxuries, music, for instance, and statues, the splendour of the arrangements, especially in private houses, increased too with the number of Baths. It was not only for bathing that one went there,

but for conversation and exercise, to hear music or the verses of a poet, to lounge through the day. Already numerous in the time of Augustus, Agrippa, when he was ædile, added a hundred and seventy Thermæ to those already in existence, and the Emperors did likewise, so that by the middle of the Fourth Century their number within the City alone was not far short of a thousand.

Agrippa, the first great builder of baths, was the first, too, it seems, to introduce the Thermæ or hot baths, such as those which in southern Italy were already in use, attached to the Greek gymnasia. It was about this time then that the Baths began to be built with at least three chambers, each having separate parts for the use of women. The Tepidarium was a room heated with warm air in which one reclined after undressing. Thence one passed into the Caldarium, where the hot bath was taken in a tub, solium, or a basin, piscina. Passing again through the tepidarium, one entered at once the Frigidarium, where one took the final cold bath or douche. This being over, one entered a special apartment, or perhaps in one of the older baths the tepidarium, to have oneself scraped with the strigilis, rubbed down with a linen towel and anointed with oil. Dressingrooms, with drawing-rooms, cloisters and halls for reading and conversation were, in most luxurious baths, at any rate, everywhere provided. And indeed so general was the luxury and so fond were the Romans of it, that it was not uncommon for a rich man to bequeath a sum of money to throw open the Bath to all for a day, or a week, or even forever.

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