Bathing played a major part in Ancient Roman culture and society. Children bathing in a small metal bathtub Bathing is the immersion of the body in fluid, usually water, or an aqueous solution. ...

Of all the leisure activities, it was one of the most important, since it was part of the daily regimen for men of all classes, and many women as well. Today many cultures see bathing as a very private activity conducted in the home, but bathing in Rome was a communal activity, conducted for the most part in public facilities called thermae that in some ways resembled modern-day spas. Such was the importance of baths to Romans that a catalogue of buildings in Rome from 354 AD documented 952 baths of varying sizes in the city.^[1] Roman public baths in Bath, England. ... A destination spa is a business establishment which people visit for personal health, life enhancement, fitness, personal care treatments such as massages, facials, in a resort setting. ... Events Gallus deposed, executed at Antioch. ...

Although wealthy Romans might set up a bath in their town houses or in their country villas, heating a series of rooms or even a separate building especially for this purpose, and soldiers might have a bathhouse provided at their fort (as at Chesters on Hadrian's Wall, or at Bearsden fort), they still often frequented the numerous public bathhouses in the cities and towns throughout the empire. Remains of the bathhouse of at Chesters fort Cilurnum or Cilurvum was a fort on Hadrians Wall mentioned in the Notitia Dignitatum, now identified with the fort found at Chesters (also known as Walwick Chesters to distinguish it from other Chesters-es in the vicinity). ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Bearsden (pronounced Bears den []) is a suburb located in the northwestern outskirts of the city of Glasgow, Scotland. ...

Small bathhouses, called balneum (plural balnea), might be privately owned, but they were public in the sense that they were open to the populace for a fee. The large baths, called thermae, were owned by the state and often covered several city blocks. The largest of these, the Baths of Diocletian, could hold up to 3,000 bathers. Fees for both types of baths were quite reasonable, within the budget of most free Roman males.

Republican bathhouses often had separate bathing facilities for women and men, but by the First Century AD mixed bathing was common and is a practice frequently referred to in Martial and Juvenal, as well as in Pliny and Quintilian. However, gender separation was restored by Hadrian.^{[citation needed]} Marcus Valerius Martialis, known in English as Martial, was a Latin poet from Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula) best known for his twelve books of Epigrams, published in Rome between AD 86 and 103, during the reigns of the emperors Domitian, Nerva and Trajan. ... Woodcut of Juvenal from the Nuremberg Chronicle Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, Anglicized as Juvenal, was a Roman satiric poet of the late 1st century and early 2nd century. ... There are two famous persons named Pliny: Pliny the Elder, a Roman nobleman, scientist and historian who died in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD The great-nephew of the former, Pliny the Younger, a statesman, orator, and writer who lived between 62 AD and 113 AD. This... Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (c. ... Publius Aelius Traianus Hadrianus (January 24, 76 – July 10, 138), known as Hadrian in English, was a Stoic-Epicurean[] Roman emperor from 117 – 138, and a member of the gens Aelia. ...

Sources and notes

1. ^ Boëthius, Axel; Ward-Perkins, J. B. (1970). Etruscan and Roman architecture. Harmondsworth: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-056032-7. 

Axel Boëthius (born Arvika, Sweden 1889; died Rome, Italy 1969) was a scholar and archaeologist of the Etruscan culture. ... John Bryan Ward-Perkins CMG, CBE, FBA (born February 3, 1912 Bromley, Kent, United Kingdom; died May 28, 1981 Cirencester, United Kingdom) was a British Classical architectural historian and archaeologist, and director of the British School at Rome [1]. He was the eldest son of Bryan Ward-Perkins, a British...

Further reading

• ThermeMuseum (Museum of the Thermae) in Heerlen