History of Sanitation

by J. J. Cosgrove

In the baths of Pompeii, this chamber served likewise as a disrobing room for those who took the warm bath, for which purpose the fittings up are evidently adapted, the walls being divided into a number of separate compartments or recesses for receiving the garments when taken off. One of these compartments, known as an Atlantes, is shown in the annexed woodcut.

In addition to this service there can be little doubt that this apartment was used as a depository for unguents and a room for anointing, which service was performed by slaves. For the purpose of anointing, the common people used oil simply or sometimes scented, but the more wealthy classes indulged in the greatest extravagances with regard to their perfumes and unguents. These they evidently procured from the elæothesium of the baths, or brought with them in small glass bottles, hundreds of which have been discovered in different excavations made in various parts of Italy.

From the tepidarium, a door which closed by its own weight, to prevent the admission of cold air, opened into No. 13, the thermal chamber. After having gone through the regular course of perspiration, the Romans made use of instruments called strigils, to scrape off the perspiration, much in the same way as we are accustomed to scrape the sweat off a horse with a piece of iron hoop after he has run a heat or come in from violent exercise. These instruments, many of which have been discovered among the ruins of the various baths of antiquity, were made of bone, bronze, iron and silver. The poorer classes were obliged to scrape themselves, but the more wealthy took their slaves to the baths for the purpose, a fact which is elucidated by a curious story related by Spartianus. The Emperor while bathing one day, observing an old soldier, whom he had formerly known among the legions, rubbing his back as the cattle do against the marble walls of the chamber, asked him why he converted the walls into a strigil, and learning that he was too poor to keep a slave he gave him one, and money for his maintenance. On the following day, upon his return to the bath, he found a whole row of old men rubbing themselves in the same manner against the wall, in the hope of experiencing the same good fortune from the prince's liberality; but instead of taking the hint, he had them all called up and told them to scrub one another.

Coppers for Heating Water. From an old woodcut

The strigil was by no means a blunt instrument, consequently its edge was softened by the application of oil which was dropped on it from a small vessel. This vessel had a narrow neck, so as to discharge its contents drop by drop. Augustus is related to have suffered from an over violent use of this instrument. Invalids and persons of delicate habit made use of sponges, which Pliny says answered for towels as well as strigils. They were finally dried with towels and anointed.

The common people were supplied with these necessaries in the baths, but the more wealthy carried their own with them.

After the operation of scraping and rubbing dry, they retired into or remained in the tepidarium until they thought it prudent to encounter the open air. But it does not appear to have been customary to bathe in the water, when there was any, which was not the case at Pompeii nor at the Baths of Hippias, either of the tepidarium or frigidarium; the temperature only of the atmosphere in the two chambers being of consequence to break the sudden change from the extreme hot to cold. Returning now to the frigidarium, 8, which according to the directions of Vitruvius has a passage, 14, communicating with the mouth of the furnace, e, and passing down that passage we reach the chamber, 15, into which the præfurnium projects, and which has also an entrance from the street, B, appropriated to those who had charge of the fires. There are two stairways in it, one leading to the roof of the baths, and the other to the coppers which contained the water. Of these there were three, one of which contained the hot water, caldarium; the second, the tepid, tepidarium; and the last, the cold, frigidarium. The warm water was introduced into the warm bath by means of a conduit pipe, marked on the plan, and conducted through the wall. Underneath the caldarium was placed the furnace which served to heat the water and give out streams of warm air into the hollow cells of the hypocanstum. These coppers were constructed in the same manner as is represented in the engraving from the Thermæ of Titus; the one containing hot water being placed immediately over the furnace, and as the water was drawn out from these it was supplied from the next, the tepidarium, which was already considerably heated, from its contiguity to the furnace and the hypocaust below it, so that it supplied the deficiency of the former without materially diminishing its temperature; and the space in the last two was in turn filled up from the farthest removed, which contained the cold water received direct from the square reservoir behind them. Behind the coppers there is another corridor, 16, leading into the court, 17, appropriated to the servants of the baths, and which has also the conveniences of an immediate communication with the street by the door, C.

We now proceed to the adjoining set of baths, which were assigned to the women. The entrance is by the door, A, which conducts into a small vestibule, 18, thence into the apodyterium, 19, which, like the one in the men's baths, has a seat on either side built up against the wall. This room opens upon a cold bath, 20, answering to the natiatio of the other set, but of much smaller dimensions. There are four steps on the inside to descend into it. Opposite to the door of entrance there is another doorway which leads to the tepidarium, 21, which also communicates with the thermal chamber, 22, on one side of which is a warm bath in a square recess. The floor of this chamber is suspended and its walls perforated for flues, like the corresponding one in the men's baths.