page_title: Baths of Agrippa
section_title: The baths
hierarchical_section_title: Baths of Agrippa / The baths
caption_attribution_description: English: Statue of Apoxeomenos, 1st century AD, after a 4th cent. BC bronze original. Pius Clementine Museum, Vatican
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: The first version of the Baths of Agrippa, also known as the Laconicum, was finished in 25 BCE. A laconicum appears to have been an earlier version of a heated bath which was also associated with a running track and exercise facilities for youths. Dio tells us that they “gave the name Laconian to the gymnasium because the Lacedaemonians had a greater reputation at that time than any one else for stripping and exercising after anointing themselves with oil”. Agrippa also dedicated his Pantheon, the original structure where the current Trajanic reconstruction sits, in the same year. In fact, Cassius Dio claims that three structures were completed by Agrippa in this year, the third being the Stoa of Neptune, suggesting that all three were related.
  
  The Baths of Agrippa are the first known to have contained monumental sculpture, including the famous Apoxyomenos of Lysippus, the famed court sculptor of Alexander the Great. In fact, Pliny the Elder mentions the baths several times, noting that they were "a point of departure in artistic endeavor, implying that the building was perceived as groundbreaking in certain respects". 
  The full version of the thermae, or Baths of Agrippa, did not come into use until after the completion of the Aqua Virgo in 19 BCE. This new aqueduct was paid for by Agrippa himself and was one of a series of works connected with Roman water supply and sewers over which Agrippa seems to have had managerial control. The Aqua Virgo is still in use today after almost 2000 years, terminating, and currently supplying the waters to, the Trevi Fountain. These building projects were a few of the many which Agrippa undertook within the Roman Campus Martius and across the Empire, constituting aqueducts, fountains, porticoes, baths, roads, a voting precinct, a theatre, a bridge, and a harbour.
  Agrippa built up the area around the complex to include gardens with nice walks and colonnades with resting places and shelters from the sun. Wright claims that “The total effect was somewhat like the Athenian gymnasia, the Lyceum, or the grove of Academus, but on a very much larger and more sumptuous scale.” That the bath itself could have served a multitude of functions, serving as a type of club with “a restaurant, a reading-room, and a bathing establishment with every kind of bath then known, hot, tepid, cold, vapour, and shower”. Indeed, it would appear as though bathing had begun to become more complex around the time of the late Republic going into the early Empire, introducing three different types of rooms and pools: The frigidarium (cold pool), the tepidarium (or lukewarm to room temperature pool), and the caldarium (hot room and pool). Whether or not the caldarium within the Baths of Agrippa contained window glass to sufficiently heat up the room and keep the heat in, as was the case within the Baths of Trajan and other later examples of Imperial bathing facilities, remains unknown due to the scant archaeological evidence of the site.
  However, the baths, being a highly experimental project within the city of Rome, seem to have lacked a larger swimming pool, present in later Imperial bathing structures. It has been pointed out that this need could have been met with the man-made Stagnum (lake) of Agrippa or, more likely, the Euripus (canal) which allowed for runoff from the Stagnum to flow into the Tiber (please see below for more information on both the Stagnum and the Euripus).
  Agrippa's baths, along with his other work within the Campus Martius, were burned down in the great fire of 80 AD in the reign of Titus. These appear to have been restored almost immediately during the reigns of either Titus or Domitian as Martial mentions they were often frequented. Repairs and rebuilding were completed again under the Antonines as well as the Severan emperors. There was a further reconstruction during the reign of Constantius and Constans in 354–355 AD which was noted on an inscription found near Santa Maria in Monterone, found not far from the west side of the baths.
caption: Marble copy of the Apoxyomenos of Lysippus (Pius Clementine Museum, Vatican).
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