History of SanitationCosgrove, J. J. (John Joseph)
History
History of Sanitation
Cosgrove, J. J. (John Joseph)
Sanitation -- History
We now proceed to the adjoining set of baths, which were assigned to
the women. The entrance is by the door, A, which conducts into a small
vestibule, 18, thence into the apodyterium, 19, which, like the one in
the men's baths, has a seat on either side built up against the wall.
This room opens upon a cold bath, 20, answering to the natiatio of
the other set, but of much smaller dimensions. There are four steps
on the inside to descend into it. Opposite to the door of entrance
there is another doorway which leads to the tepidarium, 21, which also
communicates with the thermal chamber, 22, on one side of which is a
warm bath in a square recess. The floor of this chamber is suspended
and its walls perforated for flues, like the corresponding one in the
men's baths.
The comparative smallness and inferiority of the fittings up in this
suit of baths has induced some Italian antiquaries to throw a doubt
upon the fact of their being assigned to women, and ingeniously
suggest that they were a set of old baths, to which the larger ones
were subsequently added when they became too small for the increasing
wealth and population of the city. But the story already quoted of the
consul's wife who turned the men out of their bath at Teanum for her
convenience, seems sufficiently to negative such a supposition and to
prove that the inhabitants of ancient Italy, if not more selfish, were
certainly less gallant than their successors. In addition to this,
Vitruvius expressly enjoins that the baths of the men and women, though
separate, should be contiguous to each other, in order that they might
be supplied from the same boilers and hypocaust; directions that are
here fulfilled to the letter, as a glance at the plans will demonstrate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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