This epigram by an unknown poet of late antiquity praises an unidentifiable Theodore for renovating a public bath in Smyrna, today called Izmir. Then as now it was a great city though earthquake-prone. The context is certainly Christian: the name Theodore means 'Given by God'. It seems likely the poem came to the Anthology from genuinely inscriptional use.
9.615
On a bath at Smyrna
You premises once murky, tell, what man
Rendered you wealthy in the light of day
That shines upon your bathers? Who was he
That found you caked in sooty smut and grime
And scoured it to expose your radiance?
The mind of Theodorus, wise in this
As in all things: how truly did it show,
Even in this, his heartfelt purity;
Though city father, steward of its means,
He never stained his hands with private gain
From public property. Almighty God,
Immortal Christ, protect this patriot
And ward him safe from all calamity.
For Theodore to have merited this puff-piece implies that this was no mere spring-cleaning: the bath must have been in a truly shocking state, thickly encrusted with debris accumulated from a leaky heating system. One wonders at the air quality and what it had been doing to the bathers.
The poet's determination to frame amenity maintenance as a heroic display of civic-mindedness reminds me of this one by Agathias from a little later in Book 9, on his gentrification of a public toilet. It's in my World's Classics translation and is one of my favourites (9.662):
I was a place detestable to see,
A mud-brick warren. Here the strangers came,
And native folk and boorish countrymen,
To noisily excrete their bowel waste,
Until our city’s father intervened.
Agathias transformed me: now I shine,
Who was so ignominious before.
