Baths of Caracalla

“ We went on to the baths of Caracalla, the largest ruins of Rome. They are just below the palaces of the Cesars, and ten minutes' walk from the Coliseum. It is one labyrinth of gigantic arches and ruined halls, the ivy growing and clinging wherever it can fasten its root, and the whole as fine a picture of decay as imagination could create. This was the favorite haunt of Shelley, and here he wrote his fine tragedy of Prometheus. ”

“ Upon his coming out the coachman, without asking him anything, with a short trot of his nag, took him by the way traversed before, passing under the Titus Arch, to the stupendous Baths of Caracalla. The deputy, Sangiorgio, did not stop to inspect the photographs at the door; he entered quickly, as if seized with impatience.
The walls stood up enormously high, covered with tufts of grass and prickly weeds, and had the solidity that is bestowed by centuries. In the midst of the huge compartments the flooring had given way, becoming concave, like a basin, and filling with a puddle of inky water. ”

“ We have occupied it ever since, and find a paul (ten cents) apiece cheap enough for a good bed and a window opening on the Pantheon.
Next to the Coliseum, the baths of Caracalla are the grandest remains of Rome. The building is a thousand feet square, and its massive walls look as if built by a race of giants. These Titan remains are covered with green shrubbery, and long, trailing vines sweep over the cornice, and wave down like tresses from architrave and arch. In some of its grand halls the mosaic pavement is yet entire. ”

“ The last days of March have come, clothed in sunshine and summer. The grass is tall in the Campagna, the fruit-trees are in blossom, the roses and myrtles are in full flower, the shrubs are in full leaf, the whole country about breathes of June. We left Rome this morning on an excursion to the "Fountain of Egeria." A more heavenly day never broke. The gigantic baths of Caracalla turned us aside once more, and we stopped for an hour in the shade of their romantic arches, admiring the works, while we execrated the character of their ferocious builder. ”

“ I saw the Baths of Caracalla, witnessing to a cult of cleanliness, adduced also to prove the luxury of Ancient Romans and the simplicity of Anglo-Saxons. All it really proves either way is a love of washing on a large scale ”

“ The baths are arched with stone—the window to each is small, admitting little light, and less air:—and, as the doors are kept shut, except when the bathers are entering or retiring, the whole space not occupied by water, is full of a dense vapour, as hot as the Thermæ themselves. The very walls of the baths are warm, and always dripping with moisture. Such are the Sudatoria in which the German, Swiss, and Italian invalids indulge more luxuriously than ever did the Romans in the Baths of Caracalla. ”

“ Nothing can give one a more striking conception of Roman life under the Empire than the size, number, and magnificence of the public baths. Those of Caracalla are a typical example. They covered an area of fifteen hundred by twelve hundred and fifty feet, the surrounding grounds being a mile in circumference. They formed a perfect wilderness of stately halls, and corridors, and chambers, the very mouldering remains of which strike one with astonishment. ”

“ Of course, certain of the monuments and works of art will always remain, and nothing can prevent Nature from performing her careless miracles. No defacing hand will be allowed to touch the trees that grow in the Coliseum, or to desecrate the verdure and the luxuriant vegetation which is allowed to run riot in the baths of Caracalla. ”

“ The fountains were erected by the Farnese family to add the final touch of distinction to their new palace. They owe their unique combination of original classic features and seventeenth-century taste to the genius and opportunities of Paul III and his grandson, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese II, and to a still later descendant Cardinal Odoardo Farnese. The Pope and the earlier cardinal, men of wide culture and enormous wealth, were the first to excavate and exploit the Baths of Caracalla. ”

“ They can not therefore for a moment be compared to the baths constructed at Rome during the period of the empire, of which such magnificent remains may still be seen at the baths of Diocletian, and especially at those of Caracalla. In these vast establishments the bath formed only a part of the entertainment provided. There were also spacious porticoes for walking and conversing, halls and courts for athletic games and gladiatorial combats, apartments for the lectures and recitations of philosophers, rhetoricians and poets. ”

“ There are people who would be more struck with the excellent workmanship and first-rate bricks of the tall modern scarp which supports a part of the Colosseum that threatened to crumble away, than they would be with its ruined arches, its broken travertine blocks, its time-worn cornices and flower-draped benches, or than with the lovely ruins of Caracalla’s baths, concerning which Mr Story quotes Shelley, whilst himself describing them with much poetry of expression, and a warm perception of the beautiful. ”

“ Baths of Rome.—When Greece was subjugated by the Romans, the Romans carried back with them to Italy the taste for the bath. They erected thermæ of great magnificence, and in so great number, that at one period there were nearly nine hundred public baths in Rome. Agrippa alone is said to have built one hundred and sixty, while Mecænas has the credit of possessing the first private bath. The most famed of the public baths were those of Titus, Paulus Æmilius, Diocletian, Caracalla, and Agrippa. ”

“ I did a life-size oil study of the head of the celebrated model, Francesco, which was a great advance in freedom of brush work. But the walks were not abandoned, and many a delightful round we made with our father, who was very happy in Rome. The Colosseum was rich in flowers and trees, which clothed with colour its hideous stages of seats. The same abundant foliage beautified the brickwork of Caracalla’s Baths, but those beautiful veils were, unfortunately, slowly helping further to demolish the ruins, and had to be all cleared away later on. ”

“ The most considerable ruins of ancient Rome are those of the Baths. The Emperors Titus, Caracalla, Nero, and Agrippa, constructed these immense places of luxury, and the remains of them are among the most interesting and beautiful relics to be 393 found in the world. It is possible that my readers have as imperfect an idea of the extent of a Roman bath as I have had, and I may as well quote from the information given by writers on antiquities. "They were open every day, to both sexes. ”

“ They were begun by Caracalla in the year 212, enlarged by Heliogabalus, and completed by Alexander Severus; their area being 140,000 square yards—length, 1840 yards by 1476. As many as 1600 persons could, it is said, bathe in them at the same time. The baths, properly so called, were 1720 feet in length and 375 in width, and they were surrounded by pleasure-gardens, porticoes, a stadium, &c. The reservoir was supplied by the Antonine aqueduct, which carried the water from the Claudian over the Arch of Drusus. ”

“ The building as a whole is a perfect example of old Roman architecture, feeling its way toward the big architectural principles that are in vogue today, among others the economical principle involved in the counteracting of thrusts. If the Roman Emperor who was nicknamed Caracalla on account of the hooded military tunic that he made fashionable in his day hadn't built those baths we should probably not have the glorious Pennsylvania station in New York, that some of the architectural authorities consider the most important building of its kind built in this country. ”

“ Caracal has little trade, except in grain. Its chief buildings are the prefecture, school of arts and crafts and several churches. There are some ruins of a tower, built in A.D. 217 by the Roman emperor Caracalla, after whom the place is named. ”

“ No man, said a thinker, is wholly base. Caracalla was. He had not a taste, not a vice, even, which was not washed and rewashed in blood. In a moment of excitement Commodus set his guards on the spectators in the amphitheatre; the damage was slight, for the Colosseum was so constructed that in two minutes the eighty or ninety thousand people which it held could escape. Caracalla had the exits closed. Those who escaped were naked; to bribe the guards they were forced to strip themselves to the skin. In the circus a vestal caught his eye. ”

“ One may be prepossessed; one may, with the cumulative weight of the whole tragedy in one’s mind, see more in a phrase than the poets intended to put there. Nevertheless, it does seem to me that Caracalla’s answer to his mother, “Rise from your knees,” and her frightened rejoinder, “I am not kneeling,” are supreme touches, awful in their brief, pregnant, startling rightness.
Caracalla, happy to find his mother alone, has been protesting his love for her:
Caracalla. ”

“ In reading these graffiti, now very much injured by dampness, exposure, and the unscrupulous hands of tourists, we are really witnessing household quarrels between pagan and Christian dwellers in the imperial palace, in one of which Caracalla, when still young, saw one of his playmates struck and punished on account of his Christian origin and persuasion. ”

“ But virtue passed away as wealth increased, and when the thermæ came into use, not only did the men bathe together in numbers, but even men and women stripped and bathed promiscuously in the same bath. It is true, however, that the public establishment often contained separate baths for both sexes adjoining each other, as will be seen to have been also the case at the baths of Pompeii. ”

“ She was off duty for all of that day and night and was to dine with Flexinna and Vocco. In the course of the pestilence they had inherited a magnificent abode on the Esquiline. In particular it had a private bath with a large swimming-pool. The Vestals were the only ladies in Rome who might not enjoy the magnificent public baths, to which all Roman society flocked every afternoon, somewhat as we moderns throng a beach at a fashionable seaside resort. Brinnaria, who loved swimming, felt the deprivation keenly. The Atrium had luxurious baths, but no swimming-pool. ”

“ Bathing among the Ancients.—The Romans and other nations of antiquity made great use of the vapor-bath as a means of preserving the health, but more particularly as a luxury. Their method was not unlike that employed in northern Europe at the present day. The public baths of Rome and other cities are among the grandest and most interesting monuments of ancient luxury and splendor; and from their ruins have been recovered some of the most beautiful works of art. ”

“ I have tried many times to determine precisely what it was about those cavernous baths that gave me the impression of wickedness, and because my attempts have always been unsuccessful I have been driven to entertain the possibility that the wickedness lay in myself, and was evoked by the semi-darkness, the drip of water, the lamps that flickered but did not die, the humid air, the long treacherous corridors, the dirty domes, and the soft secrecy of scandals stealing up the stair. ”

“ The anointment of the body with oils was one of the characteristics of a Roman bath. The practice was indulged in by people of both sexes, and the time when applied depended much on the treatment the bather was taking. For instance, most bathers anointed the body as the finishing touch of the bath, while some bathers applied the oil before going to the hot or sweat room.
Interior of the Frigidarium or Cold Bath, Caracalla
No luxury can be monopolized by the rich, and it was not long before public bathing establishments, in which a small entrance fee was charged, were built by private capital. ”

“ Lucas's Bath being a plain hall without piers, Sutherland assumed the same form for the hall of the great Roman Bath, and altogether omitted the arcades that divide it into three aisles. (5) Not to dwell on other errors built on the baseless fabric of conjecture, it is evident that Sutherland imagined a system of baths existed west of the great Roman Bath similar in all respects to that known to exist east of the great Roman Bath. But here, again, theory has been upset by facts. ”

“ Such things show the trend of a temperament, though not, perhaps, its force. Presently the latter was displayed. For years those arch-enemies of Rome, the unconquerable Parthians, had been quiet; bound, too, by treaties which held Rome's honor. Not Caracalla's, however; he had none. An embassy went out to Artobane, the king. Caracalla wished a bride, and what fairer one could he have than the child of the Parthian monarch? ”

“ Men were lazily coming and going through a door that led into the baths. There were large rooms with high ceilings and painted walls. In one we can still see the round marble basin. The walls are painted with trees and birds and swimming fish and statues. It was like bathing in a beautiful garden to bathe here. Another room was for the hot bath, with double walls and hot air circulating between to make the whole room warm. The bathhouse was a great building full of comforts. ”

“ The bath was sunk in the floor as the baths of luxurious Roman Empresses used to be, and as nowadays baths sometimes are, in model dwellings. (Only I am told that some people keep their coals in the baths—which is quite useless because coals are always black however much you wash them.) ”