1842.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



231 



ON THE THERM.E OF ANCIENT ROME. 



(IFith an Engraving, Plate X.) 



Extracted from a Paper read by the Rev. Richard Burgess B.D. 



Honorary Member, at the Royal Institute of British Architects on 



Monday, ZOtk May, 1842. 



* * * If, as I have before observed, we learn from the study of 

 temples much of the religious rites of antiquity, if from the Basilicas 

 something of the mode of administering justice, if from theatres and 

 amphitheatres the public sports and pastimes, if from circuses and 

 stadia open air exercises and recreations, all which I have attempted 

 on former occasions to make out, with a little topography by way of 

 light reading I— from the Therms or public baths of Rome we may 

 learn something of that " luxuria soevior armis " which finally over- 

 came the courage of the Quirites and the modesty of the Roman 

 nations. 



It will not answer any purpose except tliat of tiring ray audience, 

 to investigate the state of swimming and bathing in ancient Greece ; 

 and unless Scipio could be shown to have been particularly hostile to 

 ablutions, I do not see why classical writers should make it such a 

 wonder that he had a bath. Seneca saw the remains of Scipio's bath 

 at his villa at Liternum, which he calls a " balneolum angustum tene- 

 bricosum," which may be translated 'the black hole of Calcutta, filled 

 with hot water.' " But who," the moral philosopher asks, (after 

 having described the darkness of Seneca's blattarium,) "would endure 

 to bathe in such a place now ? In short," he adds, "we have got to 

 that pitch of refinement that we cannot even put our foot upon any- 

 thing but gems." Leaving, however, the Greeks to bathe in the 

 sources of the Xanthus, and the Romans of the republic to lave their 

 hardy limbs in the waters of old Tiber, we will proceed at once to the 

 period when the luxury of the warm bath began to be publicly enjoyed 

 at Rome. I shall first give you a catalogue raisonnce of the thermae 

 from the Augustan age to the reign of Constantine, and then proceed, 

 with the help of our architectural illustrations, to describe the dirter- 

 ent parts and uses of the edifice, noticing as t go along the variety of 

 occupations for which the therma; were destined. 



Agrippa was the first to teach the Roman people the indulgence of 

 the warm bath. The thermE which he erected in the Campus Martius 

 were bequeathed to the public, and they were embellished, according 

 to Pliny, with various works of art. Amongst the statues was the 

 bronze' youth in the act of undressing, called the Apoxyomeuus, a 

 work of Lysippus, of surpassing beauty. Some remains of the therma; 

 of Agrippa still exist immediately behind the Pantheon, and extend- 

 ing, with interruptions, to the large fragment of a vault called, from 

 its resemblance to a crown, the Arco della Ciarabella. Those baths 

 had only the corpus internum ; and except the sudatorium laconicum 

 mentioned by Dion Cassius, we are unable to trace by the vestiges that 

 remain, anv 'of the usual compartments of a thermae establishment. 

 It will occur to many who now hear me, that the Pantheon, when 

 stripped of the inimitable portico, and opened at the large tribune 

 facing the entrance, would be reduced to nothing more than a principal 

 hall belonging to the baths, very much resembling, both inform and 

 position, the round room to which I shall have to refer in the therms 

 of Caracalla (see ground plan of Pantheon). I believe it must be 

 allowed (however shocking to our classical tastes and feelings,) that 

 the portico of the Pantheon was an afterthought, and that the mag- 

 nificent cupola was originally intended for the large hall of Agrippa's 

 thermffi. Of the baths of Nero and Vespasian we know nothing, 

 except that the former, Balnea Neruniana, are mentioned by a poet of 

 the fifth century as being adjacent to the therms of Agrippa. 



The next great baths erected at Rome were by Titus : they were 

 built over the ruins of Nero's overgrown palace, and their vast remains 

 still cover a good portion of the Esquiline Hill. The well-known 

 plans and illustrations of De Romanis will render any farther descrip- 

 tion here superfluous (see plan). I may, however, observe that, taking 

 a measurement of the thermae of Titus, and guided by the indubitable 

 vestiges remaining in the several vineyards and lanes around, the whole 



space occupied by the buildings must have been three-quarters of a 

 mile in circumference. I am not aware that any description or any 

 account whatever has reached us of those immense therms : the ruins 

 themselves are the mute historians of what they once were, and it is 

 from the subterraneous vaults containing the celebrated arabesque 

 paintings that we learn that the house of Macaenas, embodied in the 

 palace of Nero, formed the foundations of the area on which the 

 thermae Titianae were erected. Those baths were built at about the 

 same period as the Flavian amphitheatre: the reservoir, called the 

 sette sale, for supplying the water, is still to be seen. 



If we consider tlie thermae of Agrippa and balnea Nerouiana as 

 parts of the same establishment, we may equally annex the thermae 

 Trajanffi to those of Titus, making two large public baths ; and except 

 the balnea and lavacra of a more private kind, these were all that 

 serve to indicate the progress of luxury during the reign of the twelve 

 Cffisars and their two immediate successors, which brings us to the 

 120th vear of the vulgar era. Considerable remains of the thermae 

 of Trajan (which were probably begun by Doiuitian to complete the 

 work of his brother,) are to be seen beneath the church of S. Martino 

 ai Monti. We are indebted to ecclesiastical writers for a notice of 

 these baths : they were the "scene of two councils, in which the 

 heresies of the third and fourth centuries were condemned ; and 

 although they are to be considered as a continuation of Titus' works, 

 yet they retained in later ages a distinct appellation. The thermK 

 of Hadrian were a still further addition, or perhaps the completion 

 and embellishment of the works of his predecessors might cause the 

 name of that imperial architect to be inscribed on the walls. Two 

 statues of the young Antinous were found amongst the ruins; and 

 perhaps this circumstance has chiefly prompted antiquaries (who 

 sometimes snatch at shadows,) to put Hadrian's name into the list of 

 builders of baths. If, however, the therms of Titus were begun by 

 him, carried on by Domitian, and achieved by Trajan and Hadrian, 

 the work must have been in progress from first to last for about 30 

 years. If we except the therms publics, the position and extent of 

 which have not been ascertained, we go through the second century, 

 including the golden age of the Antonines, without any further increase 

 of those luxurious establishments. At this period (dating from the 

 reign of Commodus,) historians generally date the period of the de- 

 cline of the Roman empire ; and from this same period the great 

 increase of therms began. It was during the third century that those 

 prodigious edifices were reared whose remains are to occupy our 

 attention this evening. The first are the Therms Antouians, built in 

 the reign of Caracalla, and finished by Alexander Severus. This 

 immense structure was begun in the year 205 or 20ti, and was finished 

 with the exception of some outworks added by the successors of 

 Caracalla, before the year 217. In the excavation made by the 

 Conte Velo di Vicenza in 1820, a fragment of marble was turned up, 

 on which were read in ill-formed letters the names of Albinus and 

 ^milianus. As this fragment of marble appears to be unworked, one 

 would conclude that it is as it came from the quarries, where it was 

 not unusual to scratch the names of the consuls for the year upon the 

 surface of the blocks. We are thus enabled to say that in the year 

 206, when the two consuls named were in office, the materials were 

 preparing for the erection of the therms near the via Appia. They 

 were situated near a valley which divides the Aventine mount, and 

 in which formerly were the Piscina Publiea. It will be seeu, by refer- 

 ence to the plan, that they were nearly a mile in circumference, inclu- 

 ding the exterior porticos, and it may be imagined what the riches of 

 this fabric were, from the profusion of marble and the exquisite works 

 of art which at different periods have been found; 1600 seats of 

 polished marble furnished the interior of the apartments, and the 

 Cella Solearis, to which we shall shortly recur, was the wonder 

 and admiration of all architects. The ancient authors have left us 

 scarcely any description of those baths, but they almost seem at a loss 

 for words to express the splendour of the building. The seven-leagued 

 word of "magnificentissimas" and "therms eximis" are found in 

 Spartian. Eutropius calls them an "opus egregium," and when we 

 find vestiges of tesselated pavement on the topmost stairs, where the 



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