page_title: Baths of Agrippa
section_title: Bathing in the Roman World
hierarchical_section_title: Baths of Agrippa / Bathing in the Roman World
caption_attribution_description: English: Les thermes de Trajan à Rome.
context_page_description: The Baths of Agrippa was a structure of ancient Rome, in what is now Italy, built by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. It was the first of the great thermae constructed in the city, and also the first public bath.
context_section_description: By the late Republic and into the early Principate, bathing within Rome had started to become more complex. This can be traced through Imperial bathing structures, including those of Agrippa, becoming more and more grand and complex. Indeed, some theories suggest that it would appear as though the building of public bathing complexes was not taken on for some time due to the somewhat shady nature of the activities which took place within them. Recent studies have in fact shown that while the building of certain structures was considered virtuous (temples, fora, roads, aqueducts, et cetera), building of other types of structures (brothels, taverns, and other lowly structures) were symbolic of vice. Through these theories, it would appear as though the building of baths occupied a grayish middle-ground in between, “standing somewhere between useful public monuments and lowly havens of corporeal dissipation”. This is a likely explanation as to why there were no senatorially decreed bathing complexes during the Republic. Although senators likely did not avoid the baths altogether, they did not want to spend public money on their construction.
  Before the completion of the Bath of Agrippa, during the Roman Republic, water which was brought into the city via one of its many aqueducts was not used for baths. Owners of private bathing complexes were forced to purchase water which had run off from publicly accessible troughs. Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa innovated here as well, servicing his baths with water fed directly from his freshly built aqueduct, the Aqua Virgo. However, it must not be forgotten that the Baths of Agrippa began as a private bathing complex as well, paid for personally by Marcus Agrippa himself who was, by this time, one of the most wealthy men in the Roman world. However, upon his death in 12 BCE, the baths were bequeathed to the Roman people in Agrippa's will, making it the first public bathing complex in the city of Rome (although not the first in the Empire). This action caused a change in the attitudes within the Senate towards bathing complexes, removing their construction from the grey area and placing them into the realm of virtuous structures, although Agrippa's example would not be followed until Nero constructed his baths in the early to mid 60s AD.
  Indeed, it would seem as though the technological achievement of the baths was not lost on the Roman people, being able to control and contain vast amounts of water and even control the desired temperature at which certain pools were kept.
  Evidence suggests that bathing began to become much more popular within Rome during the first century BCE, when far greater numbers of Romans began bathing in public with more frequency. These numbers would again drastically increase during the first century AD. A passage within Varro states that when baths were originally introduced within the city of Rome there were separate sections for men and women, which is hinted at archaeologically within Republican baths which often feature an architectural division. In a passage of Cicero, detailing a particularly heated exchange between L. Licinius Crassus and M. Junius Brutus, it is brought to light that it was considered improper at the time for father and son to bathe together. However, the passage also indicates that, although the senators were not building baths at the time, they were still frequenting the private bath houses.
  A trip to the Baths of Agrippa, along with other private baths, was meant to be a pleasurable experience. According to Lucian, commenting on a trip to the Baths of Hippias, they were “brightly lit throughout, adorned with marbles from Phrygia and Numidia, and inscribed with citations from Pindar”. There appears one inscription that mentions a museum which was attached to a bathing complex where art was put on display and where discussions and lectures could be organized. Indeed, the baths of Rome have been recognized as social hubs within the Roman world, where members of the senatorial class would rub shoulders with the lower classes of society, eve
caption: Tha later Baths of Trajan showing the frigidarium (N), the tepidarium (F), and the caldarium (C), a form which became popular in the late Republic to early Principate. Whether or not the Baths of Agrippa were symmetrical remains unknown due to the scant archaeological evidence which has survived.
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