They
were adorned with all the charms of painting, architecture, and
sculpture. The pipes for convoying the water were of silver. Many
of the lavacra were of precious marble, illuminated by lamps of
chrystal. Among the statues, were found the famous Toro, and
Hercole Farnese.
Bathing was certainly necessary to health and cleanliness in a
hot country like Italy, especially before the use of linen was
known: but these purposes would have been much better answered by
plunging into the Tyber, than by using the warm bath in the
thermae, which became altogether a point of luxury borrowed from
the effeminate Asiatics, and tended to debilitate the fibres
already too much relaxed by the heat of the climate. True it is,
they had baths of cool water for the summer: but in general they
used it milk-warm, and often perfumed: they likewise indulged in
vapour-baths, in order to enjoy a pleasing relaxation, which they
likewise improved with odoriferous ointments.
The thermae consisted of a great variety of parts and
conveniences; the natationes, or swimming places; the portici,
where people amused themselves in walking, conversing, and
disputing together, as Cicero says, In porticibus deambulantes
disputabant; the basilicae, where the bathers assembled, before
they entered, and after they came out of the bath; the atria, or
ample courts, adorned with noble colonnades of Numidian marble
and oriental granite; the ephibia, where the young men inured
themselves to wrestling and other exercises; the frigidaria, or
places kept cool by a constant draught of air, promoted by the
disposition and number of the windows; the calidaria, where the
water was warmed for the baths; the platanones, or delightful
groves of sycamore; the stadia, for the performances of the
athletae; the exedrae, or resting-places, provided with seats for
those that were weary; the palestrae, where every one chose that
exercise which pleased him best; the gymnasia, where poets,
orators, and philosophers recited their works, and harangued for
diversion; the eleotesia, where the fragrant oils and ointments
were kept for the use of the bathers; and the conisteria, where
the wrestlers were smeared with sand before they engaged. Of the
thermae in Rome, some were mercenary, and some opened gratis.
Marcus Agrippa, when he was edile, opened one hundred and seventy
private baths, for the use of the people. In the public baths,
where money was taken, each person paid a quadrans, about the
value of our halfpenny, as Juvenal observes,
Caedere Sylvano porcum, quadrante lavari.
The victim Pig to God Sylvanus slay,
And for the public Bath a farthing pay.
But after the hour of bathing was past, it sometimes cost a great
deal more, according to Martial,
Balnea post decimam, lasso centumque petuntur
Quadrantes -
The bathing hour is past, the waiter tir'd;
An hundred Farthings now will be requir'd.
Though there was no distinction in the places between the first
patrician and the lowest plebeian, yet the nobility used their
own silver and gold plate, for washing, eating, and drinking in
the bath, together with towels of the finest linen. They likewise
made use of the instrument called strigil, which was a kind of
flesh-brush; a custom to which Persius alludes in this line,
I puer, et strigiles Crispini ad balnea defer.
Here, Boy, this Brush to Crispin's Bagnio bear.
The common people contented themselves with sponges. The bathing
time was from noon till the evening, when the Romans ate their
principal meal. Notice was given by a bell, or some such
instrument, when the baths were opened, as we learn from Juvenal,
Redde Pilam, sonat Aes thermarum, ludere pergis?
Virgine vis sola lotus abdire domum.
Leave off; the Bath Bell rings - what, still play on?
Perhaps the maid in private rubs you down.
There were separate places for the two sexes; and indeed there
were baths opened for the use of women only, at the expence of
Agrippina, the mother of Nero, and some other matrons of the
first quality. The use of bathing was become so habitual to the
constitutions of the Romans, that Galen, in his book De Sanitate
tuenda, mentions a certain philosopher, who, if he intermitted
but one day in his bathing, was certainly attacked with a fever.
In order to preserve decorum in the baths, a set of laws and
regulations were published, and the thermae were put under the
inspection of a censor, who was generally one of the first
senators in Rome. Agrippa left his gardens and baths, which stood
near the pantheon, to the Roman people: among the statues that
adorned them was that of a youth naked, as going into the bath,
so elegantly formed by the hand of Lysippus, that Tiberius, being
struck with the beauty of it, ordered it to be transferred into
his own palace: but the populace raised such a clamour against
him, that he was fain to have it reconveyed to its former place.
These noble baths were restored by Adrian, as we read in
Spartian; but at present no part of them remains.
With respect to the present state of the old aqueducts, I can
give you very little satisfaction. I only saw the ruins of that
which conveyed the aqua Claudia, near the Porta Maggiore, and the
Piazza of the Lateran. You know there were fourteen of those
antient aqueducts, some of which brought water to Rome from the
distance of forty miles. The channels of them were large enough
to admit a man armed on horseback; and therefore when Rome was
besieged by the Goths, who had cut off the water, Belisarius
fortified them with works to prevent the enemy from entering the
city by those conveyances.
