The visitors of the baths
With the very first sentence of his book, Garrett Fagan gives us the main characteristic of Roman baths: "For the Romans, bathing was a social event". The evidence indicates that all social classes used the baths. There are reports that even the Emperor (Titus, Hadrian, Caracalla and Alexander Severus) bathed with the people in public baths. These events could well have been exceptional however, aimed at winning sympathy. However, the presence of leading citizens in public baths is documented very well by various sources. A good example is provided by Pliny the Younger, who had a villa near the Vicus Augustanus Laurentium, a small settlement a bit to the south of Ostia. He wrote: "The vicus, which is separated only by one residence from my own, supplies my modest wants; it boasts of three public baths, which are a great convenience, when you do not feel inclined to heat your own bath at home, if you arrive unexpectedly or wish to save time" (it takes quite some time to heat up baths; Epistulae II,17,26). Obviously his visits to public baths were quite normal and accepted.
Mosaic of a domina entering the baths. To the right is a servant carrying a box of bathing gear, to the left a servant carrying a chest of towels and clothes.
Villa del Casale, Piazza Armerina, Sicily. Photo: Wikimedia, Ludvig14.For most people in Rome and Ostia the use of public baths was a necessity. Communal water basins indicate that in most apartments on the upper floors water was not piped in, but had to be brought to the upper floors in buckets. Factors that may well have had an impact on the choice of baths are the entrance fee (balneaticum) and cost of services, that will have varied from bath to bath. Partly this was compensated for by the generosity of wealthy citizens, who sometimes offered free bathing, for a short or long period, for small and large groups (women, resident aliens, and so on). The beneficiaries were given lead tokens (tesserae), to be produced when entering the baths. The tokens could carry the name of the baths, and depictions of strigiles and deities such as Fortuna and Neptunus. A related gift was free oil.
There is clear evidence that women and men, especially husbands and wives, could bathe together, with their children. A funerary inscription set up by a stuccoworker (tector) in Lugdunum (Lyon, France) says: "You who read this, go and bathe in the bath of Apollo, which I did with my wife. I wish I were still able to do it" (EDCS-10500938). A funerary inscription from Rome records the death of a child who drowned in a pool: "Daphnus and Chryseis, freed slaves of Laco, to their Fortunatus. He lived eight years. He died in a pool in the Baths of Mars" (EDCS-12001637). There is, simultaneously, evidence for separate bathing: separate bathing wings and different bathing times. In the Historia Augusta we read that Hadrian "provided separate baths for the sexes", that Marcus Aurelius "abolished common baths for both sexes", and that Alexander Severus "forbade the maintenance in Rome of baths used by both sexes - which had, indeed, been forbidden previously, but had been allowed by Elagabalus" (SHA Hadrianus 18,10; Marcus Aurelius 23,8; Alexander Severus 24,2). In the regulations for baths belonging to an Imperial mining facility in Portugal we read that the baths should be open "for women from first light to the seventh hour of the day, and for men from the eighth hour to the second hour of the night" (EDCS-60700134).
Slaves also visited the baths, not just accompanying the dominus or domina, but also as customers. They could be beneficiaries of free bathing. The inscription from the mining facility mentioned above says: "Exempt from charge are those imperial slaves and freedmen who work for the procurator or who enjoy privileges, likewise minors and soldiers". In the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, two slaves are mentioned, cooks of a rich master, who take baths on a daily basis (Metamorphoses 10,13-17). Perhaps there were restricted hours for slaves, but others may have bathed with their masters.
An issue that has not been resolved is, to what extent people were completely naked, or wore bathing clothes. Perhaps we should here start by asking ourselves to what extent this was relevant for the Romans, or whether it is primarily a modern preoccupation. The many communal latrines in Ostia and elsewhere (also in baths of course) testify to an attitude towards the body that is difficult to understand for us. There is clear evidence that men and women could bathe together in the nude, for example in the Paedagogus (The Tutor 3, chapter 5) of the Christian author Clement of Alexandria, writing around 200 AD: "The baths are opened promiscuously to men and women; and there they strip for licentious indulgence (for from looking, men get to loving), as if their modesty had been washed away in the bath. Those who have not become utterly destitute of modesty shut out strangers; but bathe with their own servants, and strip naked before their slaves, and are rubbed by them". On the other hand, the mosaic with "bikini-girls" from the Villa del Casale near Piazza Armerina, Sicily, comes to mind. Also, the dress code inside the building may have differed from that in the palaestra.
Girls playing with a ball, detail of the "bikini-girls" mosaic.
Villa del Casale, Piazza Armerina, Sicily. Photo: Wikimedia.
