Roman Baths: Home to pickpockets and tapeworms

When a Roman guy wanted to hang out with his buddies, where would he go?

Maybe to the amphitheatre to watch some fights. Perhaps he’d swing by the local fast food establishment for a dinner of duck and a few games of dice. Or, he might head down to the good old Roman baths, strip naked, and hang out with his bros. Who’d also be naked. 

Roman Baths: Nasty, Smelly, Gross

When you think of the word “bath,” what comes to mind? Probably something along the lines of getting clean, right?

Sure, that was part of the purpose. Romans prided themselves on being clean — being advanced enough to control water with aqueducts and flush the streets of animal poop.

Here’s part of a notice posted in the Roman city of Herculaneum:

“Anyone who wants to throw excrement in this place is warned that it is not allowed.”

Which is a really pleasant and civically worded sign to have stuck to the side of a building. 

And, of course, aside from not throwing poop in certain areas, the Romans would bathe. They’d bathe a lot. All the time. Rubbing themselves with oil, meandering through the baths, scraping the oil off. Getting a massage, dousing themselves in perfume.

Aside from oils and perfumes and naked dudes, Roman baths had something else: Fleas. Lice. Bedbugs. Human feces and tapeworms. Oh yes, tapeworms — those nasty parasites that were possibly spread through their use of “garum,” a sauce made of uncooked, fermented fish.

Now, I’m certainly no expert on parasites or ancient sauces, but here’s a link to a lengthy scientific study on the matter.

It’s really quite fascinating that there’s such a thing as an “Ancient Parasite Expert.” Talk about a highly specific title.

Depending on the size of the Roman baths, you’d find yourself chilling (or warming, to be more accurate) with your bros in a large tub or a giant pool. And obviously that pool didn’t have chlorine. Some had drains, others relied on slaves to empty them with buckets.

One way or another, the point I’m trying to make is that every time you went down to the Roman Baths, you and your buddies were lounging in bacteria soup.

At least some Romans were aware of how incredibly disgusting this was. A guy named Celsus wrote a piece called “On Medicine,” where he said:

”Bathing, too, while the wound is not yet clean, is one of the worst things to do; for this makes the wound both wet and dirty, and then there is a tendency for gangrene to occur.”

What? I Can’t Hear You

Know what else Roman baths were? Loud. I mean, they’d be packed with people, all day long. They were reading, eating, napping, exercising, and doing god knows what in there. We actually have a lot of evidence of some of this, based on trash that’s been excavated. I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer not to bathe next to some fat Roman dude who’s gobbling down handfuls of pork.

What, you think that’s unlikely? They had vendors selling food right outside of Roman baths, and it wasn’t unusual for people to spend hours inside. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that a guy would have little rivulets of grease running down his face, creating a nice oily sheen on the surface of the water.

The Roman philosopher/ statesman/ playwright/ et cetera Seneca lived around the time of Pompeii and Herculaneum. He also lived above some Roman baths, and…well, he complained. A lot. Not just about the people exercising outside the baths, but the general nonsense going on while he was trying to work:

”So picture to yourself the assortment of sounds, which are strong enough to make me hate my very powers of hearing! When your strenuous gentleman, for example, is exercising himself by flourishing leaden weights; when he is working hard, or else pretends to be working hard, I can hear him grunt; and whenever he releases his imprisoned breath, I can hear him panting in wheezy and high-pitched tones.

”Or perhaps I notice some lazy fellow, content with a cheap rubdown, and hear the crack of the pummeling hand on his shoulder, varying in sound according as the hand is laid on flat or hollow. Then, perhaps, a professional (sports commentator) comes along, shouting out the score; that is the finishing touch.”

I’m always amazed by observations like these. It seems despite the immense gulf of time separating us, people are still fundamentally the same — he’s clearly describing gym rats clanging and banging and showing off.

This goes on for a bit, but we’ll come back to it. Seneca’s far too eloquent of a whiner to just leave it at that.

Stripping Down

So let’s imagine we’re walking inside. Past the vendors, past the gym rats in their toga tank tops. Wait, did they have toga tank tops? Probably not, but just go with me on this.

Roman baths were made up of multiple rooms. The first one you’d enter is what’s called the “apodyterium.” Basically it’s where you’d take your clothes off. You’d pay a small fee outside the door, stroll in, and start stripping. 

Obviously you’d need a place to put your stuff, hence the shelves. You’d put your clothes there, as well as whatever junk you brought with you — your oils and your perfume, your sandals and your oil scraper, and so on. 

Wealthy people would have a slave come with them to carry all of this, as well as to watch over it. As you might expect, Roman baths were a prime spot for sneaky little crooks to lurk around, looking for unattended valuables. This from a Roman schoolbook, where a boy leaves his slave in this room:

”Do not fall asleep, on account of the thieves.”

Or this, gouged into a piece of metal at the baths in the appropriately named town of Bath in England:

“To Minerva the goddess of Sulis I have given the thief who has stolen my hooded cloak, whether slave or free, whether man or woman. He is not to buy back this gift unless with his own blood.”

You could also hire a slave at the baths to watch your stuff, called a “capsarius.” And the really wealthy people would show up with a Bieber-sized entourage, to get a good cleaning and a massage, as well as to show off how many slaves they had. Have you noticed how many Bieber analogies I throw into these? I feel like my pop culture references are a bit out of date.

I mean, it could be worse. At least I’m not referencing Dean Martin and the Rat Pack, right?

Take a look at the first picture up above : On the far side in the niche is a basin called a “labrum,” the birdbath-looking thing where you’d wash your hands. There used to be another on the platform in the corner for washing your feet. Whether this made any difference when it came to the lice and tapeworms, I’ll leave to you. 

From here, you could go into the tepidarium, kind of a warm sauna room with a heated floor — and in some cases, heated walls. The Romans were pretty good at using stoves and boilers to warm things up. The second picture up above shows a brazier in a tepidarium in Pompeii, also used to keep the room warm.

And there was also the calderium with its hot baths, and the frigidarium with its cold baths. There were duplicates of each, for men and women. Most baths had some combination of these different rooms, depending on how big they were.

Now, you’re probably wondering what was found in this particular room, since we keep coming back to talking about Vesuvius and all.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, Herculaneum didn’t have a lot of human remains. After all, the people there were able to watch Pompeii disappear under the cloud of volcanic ash for hours before things took a turn towards their town.

So, the vast majority of people got out. But here in this room, two skeletons were found beneath the mud and ash that filled the space — a man and a woman. Presumably they were custodians of the baths, who came here seeking shelter. Obviously the vaulted ceiling held up, but that didn’t save them from being buried. I imagine it came blasting through the door and any other way it could’ve gotten in.

Why they didn’t leave is beyond me. Nearly all the bodies found at Herculaneum were in boathouses near the shore, awaiting a rescue that came just a little too late. Presumably even the poor had the time and the means to evacuate, so why these two stayed is a bit of a mystery.

This room remains in really good condition. Most of the plaster and the frescos are gone, but you can see little stucco designs at the base of the ceiling, still intact. And obviously, the shelves look more or less just as they did nearly two thousand years ago.

The biggest difference between then and now? Probably how quiet it is — something our friend Seneca would surely appreciate:

”Add to this the arresting of an occasional roisterer or pickpocket, the racket of the man who always likes to hear his own voice in the bathroom, or the enthusiast who plunges into the swimming-tank with unconscionable noise and splashing.

”Besides all those whose voices, if nothing else, are good, imagine the hair-plucker with his penetrating, shrill voice, – for purposes of advertisement, – continually giving it vent and never holding his tongue except when he is plucking the armpits and making his victim yell instead. Then the cake seller with his varied cries, the sausageman, the confectioner, and all the vendors of food hawking their wares, each with his own distinctive intonation.”

See? What’d I tell you? People were eating sausages in there.