Cleanliness is the greatest benefit of modern civilization. You can wash yourself with hot and cold water, take a shower or a bath with aromatic salts … But there are areas on our planet where people have no idea about anything like that: what kind of shower could be in the middle of a plague or yaranga? And somewhere, on the contrary, it is too hot and dry, and therefore there is no water and there is simply nothing to wash with. In ancient times, hygiene was even worse. However, they had their cleanliness even then.
Public baths in Rome
These people were the Romans! Probably, of all civilized nations, they were the cleanest. And they achieved this by spending a lot of water on themselves, which flowed to Rome through the aqueducts and entered the fountains and baths - for each of the million inhabitants of imperial Rome, there were apparently from 200 to 9000 liters of water every day - the amount, which even we today can only envy!
Of course, the Romans did not drink so much water: as for the most part it was intended for public baths. Why public? But because 80 percent of the inhabitants of Rome lived in insul houses without any amenities at all. Not like the baths - there were no hearths or even toilets. They bought food in taverns or prepared for hire in bakeries, and went to public restrooms to relieve themselves - that's how.
True, many city houses and country villas of wealthy people had bathrooms, since from the 2nd century BC the Romans became literally obsessed with cleanliness.
But since everyone wanted to be clean, and only a few had the opportunity for this, at the beginning of the new era, public baths (thermal baths) gained exceptional popularity, the reason for which was the lack of bathrooms in the homes of poor people.
Even if the poor man had a bath, how many jugs of water would he have to lug up the stairs, say, to the fourth or fifth floor, in order to fill it? How would he heat this water? And where and how did you pour it?
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But the Romans always had public baths at hand. In 33 BC, there were about 170 of them in Rome, and a couple of centuries later - more than a thousand, which means that in any nearby district of the Great City there would probably be some kind of bathhouse, if someone needed it. The entrance to the bathhouse, as well as the use of hot water, either cost very little or were completely free.
Baths of Emperor Caracalla
The fact is that many high-ranking Romans, who sought to be elected to various positions, often took all the costs of maintaining the bath on themselves, undoubtedly hoping that such generosity would be rewarded with votes! The emperors did the same. "Meal'n'Real!" - demanded the plebeians - the Roman poor and got it all. And truly luxurious baths were built for them, in which … "all people were equal"!
Public baths were available in most Roman cities, even the smallest. For example, in the city of Volubilis in modern Morocco, two grandiose public baths were built, in which all residents of this city could simultaneously be. But this is not enough: wealthy townspeople started a bathhouse at their homes.
Inside, public baths were decorated in such a way that visitors were literally breathtaking, especially for those who lived in cramped apartments with low ceilings. Baths built with the money of the emperors were especially colossal. So, the baths of the emperor Caracalla had dimensions of 225 by 114 meters - and this is only their main building. Taking into account all the walking paths, gardens and outbuildings, the entire bath complex occupied an area of about 10 hectares (which is approximately equal to fifteen full-size hockey or football fields) - and these were far from the largest Roman baths.
A visitor to these baths immediately noticed the ornate ceiling, and the walls of the baths were decorated with rare rocks, rows of marble columns were lined up along the corridors, and the floors were often covered with mosaic patterns of multi-colored tiles - tesserae.
The building of the thermal baths had a huge dome, located at a height of 30 meters above the head, under which there was a calidarium room or a hot bath. Another room, equally luxuriously decorated, was called a frigidarium - a cold bath, and between them was a tepidarium - a warm bath. And in all the rooms there were pools filled with either hot or cold or warm water. The baths of the emperor Diocletian were no less huge, accommodating at once … three thousand people and occupying an area of 13 hectares!
Bath trip
We entered the bathhouse at the signal of the bell, which meant time for women and time for men. At the entrance to the dressing room, bath slaves crowded, who were hired to guard things, since otherwise they could well be stolen. Having undressed, it was possible to go on a real "bath trip", for example, start by going into a room with a dry heat (the Romans called it a "Spartan bath") and warm up there properly. We know this bath as a sauna, but, as you can see, the ancient Spartans and the Romans knew it too, very much (and very skillfully!), Borrowed from the peoples they conquered.
After sweating there, one could dive into a pool of cold water. And it was possible to go out into the open air and there to do wrestling or playing ball with your friends. And you could first go into a cold room, then into a warm one and, finally, into a room with hot steam …
That is, visit a Turkish bath. As you can see, it appeared long before the Turks themselves appeared and this is by no means their invention! By the way, the baths were heated with hot air, which heated the floors and walls, and they were arranged so that they did not get too hot and the legs did not burn. However, for this case, the tank provided sandals like our today's slates with wood soles!
Yes, but how did they actually wash themselves, or rather, as was the custom among the Romans? Oh, this was not an easy task! The skin was first smeared with oil, and only after that, together with the dirt, they cleaned it from the body with a special scraper - a shear. And it was not at all necessary to do all this yourself.
You can hire a slave for this, but you had to pay for his services, and not everyone could afford them. Massages and incense were also expensive. But if you were with money, then you could afford all these pleasures, why not ?! It is interesting that even slaves went to public baths, since they did not differ from the poor with their clothes, who did by pouring themselves with hot water from a vat, scraping dirt off their bodies, and then dipping into cold water or simply resting in cooler rooms.
You didn't even have to have a towel with you - you could rent clean and ironed towels in the Roman bath! So, if another slave, especially from the room servant, declared to his master that he was going to the bathhouse, he … treated this with understanding. Moreover, not only did people wash in the baths. There, if you wanted, you could do a variety of things.
The baths had a library, laundries, reading rooms, gardens, a tailor, a barber, a manicurist, lounges, a wine shop, an inn, and gymnasiums for sports exercises. So you worked with them there and tumbled in the dust … and - well, then go to the bathhouse again and so … several times a day, until you get tired of it! Most Romans went to the bathhouse every day, and often more than once. They say that one of the emperors, Chest of drawers, loved the bathhouse so much that he visited it at least eight times a day!
So it was the Romans in the ancient era, when Rome was truly a Great City and the center of European civilization, who were the cleanest among Europeans. True, it cost, as already noted, a lot of money and labor: huge aqueducts were built to supply water. Lumberjacks chopped down trees, and charcoal burners burned them into coal, because to heat the water in all these baths, not coal, but wood was used! So the Romans cut down entire forests for their bathing needs, but they surpassed all others with their purity!