The Dirt on Clean - Katherine Ashenburg [6]
SYBARITIC STEAM
The Sybarites, a luxury-loving people who lived in southeastern Italy from around 720 to 510 B.C., are credited with inventing the soup spoon, the chamber pot and the steam bath.
More than the most lyrical copywriter extolling the wonders of a modern bathroom, Homer stresses the transforming power of the bath—partly because The Odyssey is a tall tale but partly because travellers in the wilds of ancient Greece did no doubt look remarkably better after soaking in hot water. Not only does a bath turn nice-looking young men into near-divinities, but Odysseus gains height, strength and splendour when his old nurse bathes him. With his clean hair curling like hyacinth petals, he too “came out of the bathroom looking more like a god than a man.”
The most poignant transformation achieved by a bath in The Odyssey happens at the end of the book. Odysseus, who has been away from home for twenty years, comes upon his old father, Laertes, digging in his vineyard. Laertes’ clothes are dirty and patched, and “in the carelessness of his sorrow,” as Homer puts it, he is wearing a goatskin hat, an emblem of rustic poverty. Before he reveals his identity, Odysseus tells his father that he looks like a man who deserves better—namely, “a bath and a good dinner and soft sleep.” Laertes explains that his son is missing, probably devoured by fishes or beasts, and “a black cloud of sorrow came over the old man: with both hands he scraped up the grimy dust and poured it over his white head, sobbing.” It is a potent image of desolation, one repeated by mourners from many cultures—dirtying oneself, whether by daubing one’s face with mud or covering one’s head, as Laertes does, with dust. Misfortune and dirtiness are natural companions, as are cleanliness and good fortune.
MURDER IN THE BATH
In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Agamemnon’s wife, Clytemnestra, kills him in the bath by striking him twice with an axe.
At this point, Odysseus reveals his identity and takes an overjoyed Laertes back to his house. The neglected old man has a bath, which once again works its magic: “Athena stood by his side and put fullness into his limbs, so that he seemed stronger and bigger than before. When he came out of the bathroom his son was astonished to see him like one come down from heaven, and he said in plain words: ‘My father! Surely one of the immortal gods has made a new man of you, taller and stronger than I saw you before!’”
The ancient Greeks cleaned themselves for the reasons we do: to make themselves more comfortable and more attractive. They also bathed for reasons of health, since soaking in water was one of the major treatments in their physicians’ limited arsenal. Hippocrates, the great fifth-century doctor, was a champion of baths, believing that a judicious combination of cold and hot immersions could bring the body’s all-important humours, or constituent liquids, into a healthy balance. Warm baths also prepared the body, by softening it, to receive nourishment and supposedly helped a variety of ailments, from headaches to the retention of urine. Those suffering from painful joints were prescribed cold showers, and female ills were treated with aromatic steam baths.
HIPPOCRATES ON BATHING
“The person who takes the bath should be orderly and reserved in his manner, should do nothing for himself, but others should pour the water upon him and rub him.”
The world’s earliest known bathtub—painted terra cotta—dates from about 1700 B.C. and was found in the queen’s apartments at the Palace of Knossos on Crete.
As The Odyssey makes clear, washing was a necessary prelude to prayer and libations. Sanctuaries normally had fonts of water at their entrances—not that intercourse with the gods required greater cleanliness than with humans, but the Greeks believed that any respectful