The document summarizes the layout and activities at Roman baths. Bathers would first exercise in the palaestra, then visit the cold, warm, and hot rooms to bathe. They would wash with oil, then have slaves scrape off the oil and dirt with metal strigils. The baths were a place for bathing, meeting with friends, business dealings, games, and exercise.

1. Roman Baths

2. Reasons for visiting the baths To wash To meet with friends and chat To conduct business To play games and entertain themselves To exercise

3. Setting the Scene “ I have lodgings right over a bathing establishment. So picture to yourself the assortment of sounds, which are enough to make me hate my very powers of hearing. When your strenuous gentleman…is working hard or else pretending to be working hard, I can hear him grunt…Add to this the arresting of an occasional 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 excessive noise and splashing.” Seneca

4. Exercise ground The exercise ground (palaestra) was made up of a large colonnaded open-space Bathers would visit this part of the baths first to take exercise, including running, boxing, wrestling, and fencing.

5. Changing Room

6. Storage space and decoration

7. The Latrines

8. Cold Room Known to the Romans as the frigidarium . First and last room that bathers would visit, after the palaestra Positioned near to the changing room ( apodyterium ).

9. Warm Room Known to the Romans as the tepidarium. Acclimatised bathers to the difference in temperature between the cold room and hot room. Here we can see the heating arrangements (hypocaust).

10. Hot Room Known to the Romans as the caldarium . Best lit room. Provided with basins, tubs, and (in the larger baths) a swimming pool too.

11. Washing After the workout in the palaestra, bathers would be massaged with oil. Slaves would be employed to then scrape off the oil and dirt with metal strigils. Strigil and oil flask

12. “ I notice some lazy fellow, content with a cheap massage, and hear the crack of the pummelling hand on his shoulders, varying in sound as the hand is laid on flat or hollow.” Seneca