The bathing arrangements in the gymnasium were severely simple. There existed, indeed, even in the time of Herodotus and Aristophanes, separate bathing establishments (βαλανεῖα) where hot baths and even vapour baths were to be obtained.[[816]] But these balaneia had nothing to do with the gymnasia, and are indeed sharply contrasted with them. To frequent them was considered, at all events among old-fashioned folk, to be a sign of effeminacy. Aristophanes bitterly complains that the effect of the new-fashioned education was to empty the wrestling schools and fill the balaneia, and Plato considers hot baths only suitable for the old and feeble.[[817]] In later times elaborate baths of this type were attached to the gymnasia, and became so important that the athletic part of the building was little more than an apanage of the baths. But there is no sign of such baths in connexion with the gymnasia of the fifth century, nor do they exist in the later gymnasia at Delphi and Olympia. The epheboi of the fifth century washed in cold water after exercise. The simplest form of washing is represented on a black-figured hydria in Leyden which dates from the close of the sixth century (Fig. [180]).[[818]] A group of men and boys are washing at a fountain which stands in the grove of the gymnasium. Their clothes hang on the branches of the trees. The fountain itself is under a portico, and the water issues from two panthers’ heads under which a man and a boy are taking a douche and rubbing themselves. On either side stand others preparing for the bath. One on the left lifts in his right hand what is probably an oil-flask, while on the right we see a youth engaged in powdering himself. Various powders were used, a sort of lye obtained from wood ashes, an alkali called litron and somewhat similar to nitre, and a kind of fuller’s earth.[[819]] After oiling and powdering his body the bather rubbed himself till a lather was obtained.
Fig. 180. B.-f. hydria. Leyden, 7794b.
Fig. 181. Scene on r.-f. vase. (Tischbein, i. 58).
On the red-figured vases the washing takes place in a bath-room forming a part of the gymnasium and probably adjoining the apodyterion. In the centre of this room is set a large stone or metal basin placed on a stand. Close to it a cistern is sometimes represented, and on one vase we see a youth pouring water into the basin from a bucket which he has drawn up from the cistern by means of a rope and windlass[[820]] (Fig. [181]). The inscription on the basin (δημόσια) shows that it is a public bath. One youth is splashing the water over himself, but a more satisfactory way of washing is to get a friend or assistant to swill a bucket of water over you in the manner represented on a kylix in the British Museum (Fig. [182]). On the other side of this kylix is seen a group of youths scraping themselves with strigils (στλεγγίδες). The strigil was in constant use in the gymnasium to remove dirt and sweat after exercise or remove moisture and lather after the bath. It was made of iron or bronze, sometimes of silver or even of gold; the handles are sometimes highly ornamental. Many of them exist in the British Museum and elsewhere. Their shape will be best understood from the accompanying illustration of a fifth-century strigil from the British Museum, on which the owner’s name is inscribed (Fig. [183]). A youth scraping himself with a strigil is the motive of the well-known statue, the “Apoxyomenos,” formerly ascribed to Lysippus.
Fig. 182. R.-f. kylix. British Museum, E. 83.
Fig. 183. Strigil, in British Museum, inscribed κέλων. Fifth century.