The Dirt on Clean - Katherine Ashenburg [14]
GROOMING ADVICE FOR MEN
Keep your nails pared, and dirt-free; Don’t let those long hairs sprout In your nostrils; make sure your breath is never offensive, Avoid the rank male stench That wrinkles noses.
—Ovid, Art of Love
But for the men and women who lived in Rome’s dark apartment blocks, without water or toilets or much space, an afternoon at the bathhouse was a delight. Even the relatively modest quarters of a Republican bath were luxurious to them, while the huge, light-filled Imperial baths gave them an intimate experience of Rome at its most splendid. Besides, poverty was not always a disadvantage at the baths. Far from making everyone equal, nudity imposed its own hierarchy, one that frequently favoured the toned body of the poorest freedman or slave over that of the indulged, unexercised rich man.
The accumulated sweat, dirt and oil that a famous athlete or gladiator strigiled off himself was sold to his fans in small vials. Some Roman women reportedly used it as a face cream.
BEHIND THE GREAT THERMAE
Three technological innovations allowed the sturdy Republican bath to evolve into the sybaritic Imperial one. The early baths obtained their water from wells, cisterns and springs, but by 100 B.C., nine aqueducts provided each Roman with 300 gallons of water a day, four times the average consumed by a modern North American. The baths were among the aqueducts’ most demanding and privileged users, served from mains connected to the bottom of the tank, where the water flowed with greatest force.
From the bath’s reservoir, water was sent, by means of pumps and lead pipes, to the furnace and then to the bath’s various chambers. The pools and the rooms were heated by the second innovation, a system called a hypocaust. Developed at the end of the second century B.C., the hypocaust heated a hollow space underneath the floors and behind the walls with hot air generated from a furnace. The floor, supported over the cavity by short piles of bricks or tiles, could become so hot that bathers needed sandals to protect their feet. The bath’s hottest rooms were positioned directly over the furnace, with the cold room and the dressing room placed farthest away.
An early bath could be made of squared stones. By the first century B.C., the invention of Roman concrete, an amalgam of brick fragments and stones in a mortar of lime, sand and volcanic dust, made increasingly large, sophisticated buildings possible. The development of the concrete vaulted roof, in particular, led to the untrammelled spaces that made a visit to the Imperial baths such an impressive experience.
Prosperous Romans also built private baths in their townhouses and, more frequently, in their country villas. Although lodged in private houses, these too were public, in that family and guests bathed together in a suite of rooms that usually included tepid, hot and cold chambers. Far from being a private hideaway, the bath suite was often positioned near the main entrance of the villa—a reception room as public as the dining room.
A bath at home had obvious advantages, but a family that owned one would also use the public baths for their greater size and variety of facilities. Pliny the Younger had baths in his Laurentine villa, but he was pleased that the nearest village had three public baths, “which is a great convenience if you arrive unexpectedly, or if you are staying such a very short time that you do not feel inclined to have the fires in your own bath lit.” Few Romans wanted to deprive themselves of the convivial fun of the public bath. After his outrageous, wine-sodden dinner party, Trimalchio and his guests,