Ancient thermae: grim realities

The balneary epigrams present a gilded dream of ancient bath-houses as the haunts of goddesses, gilded palaces of leisure and pleasure. A few anonymous poems, though, point towards realities that coiuld not be relied on to measure up. Promises of exclusivity and intimacy might mask cramped and overcrowded premises. The hypocausts that heated the warm and hot rooms were not always up to scratch, or owners skimped on fuel bills. They also leaked sooty smoke that called for regular cleaning, which didn't always happen. The deep-clean sponsored by Theodore in the second of these epigrams is presented as a truly heroic labour.

AP 9.609a

This one is where the Graces really bathed:
It has no room for any more than three.

AP 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.

AP 9.617
On a chilly bath

You bath-attendant, who put walls around
This icy river? What deceitful man
Renamed as bathing-house this mountain spring?
‘The lord of winds, Hippotes’ son, and friend
To the immortal gods’ has gathered in
The gales of every quarter, here to dwell.
Why are these wooden boards beneath our feet?
Their purpose is not warmth; instead they bear
A chilling stream of freshly melted snow:
Phrixus and Narce find themselves at home.
Put up a sign, then: ‘Bathe in Mesorus,
For Boreas is gusting here within.’
 

Bathing Graces

The Graces (Kharites), embodiments of attraction and delight, appear in a number of the balneary epigrams collected in Book 9 of the Anthology. They are often in the company of Aphrodite (the Cyprian or 'Cypris'), her naughty son Eros, or both. Here are two examples:

 
9.616


ANONYMOUS



There was a time the Graces bathed herein,

And baby Eros stole their lovely clothes

And ran away and left them naked here,

Ashamed to leave and be a spectacle.


 

9.623


CYRUS



Cypris and all the Graces bathed herein,


Here too her boy of golden archery.


They left a Grace in payment of their fee.

Kharis and the Kharites also appear in epigrams found inscribed in bathhouses. Busch's Versus Balnearum (p.131-3) gives a couple of good examples in Greek from late antique Rome. Here is an extract in prosaic translation:

...From all around flashes inextinguishable kharis, whatever your eye may light upon: the waters of the Nymphs, the bathing-pools, the halls, the Kharites...

  There is a lot of Nymph action in the balneary epigrams too, as you might expect.

Theodorus titivates a bath

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.

Small but perfectly formed

Three tiny but exquisite bath-houses, again from the epideictic ninth book of the Anthology. Epideictic means declamatory, that is, rhetorical skill shown off for its own sake. In my first version I take liberties in unpacking the suggestive connotations of the violet among the flowers. The Callimachean echoes of the second lay it open to metapoetic interpretation as well. Paton declares the tree of the third to be myrtle, and I do not doubt him.

9.610

This is a very small facility
But its appearance is delectable:
It is a rose amid the shrubberies,
A violet in the basketsful of flowers
That destine for the garland-weaver’s stall.

9.611

Within a little bath, great beauty lies,
And sweet Desire belongs to those who bathe
Within a stream that is the slenderest.

9.612

There is a tree: its leaves are very small,
And yet its scent is lovely. Even so
This bath is loved though it is small and low.

Two classically allusive bath-houses, with alchemical postscript

 

A sizeable chunk of the Greek Anthology's ninth and largest book is given over to epigrams from bath-houses. They are all anonymous, which makes it hard to pin them down to particular times and places or to decide which ones are inscriptional and which literary games. Many such epigrams were definitely inscribed for real: Stephan Busch's Versus Balnearum (1999) amasses whole and fragmentary examples.

 I've not yet dived deep into Busch's material but on first glance I note various epigrams written in Greek to praise the Roman sponsors of public baths in the wealthy, Greek-speaking Eastern provinces. These then are classic thermae in the grand Roman style. Or sometimes not so grand; my next post will be about thermae that were allegedly all the more lovely for their small compass.

The bath-house poems of Book 9 give little local detail, but the world they conjure is Christian late antiquity, often in the Greek East but not necessarily exclusively so. The Maria of the second of the poems below was the wife of the Emperor Honorius (thank you, Paton) and daughter of his star general Stilicho, who thereby became his emperor's father-in-law. Honorius was son of Theodosius I and ruled 393-423. It was he who relocated the western imperial capital from Milan to Ravenna. That city would seem a likely enough setting for Maria to exercise her patronage in funding public amenity (her baths seem otherwise unattested, so let us pick whatever story we like).

As Katherine Dunbabin notes, excessive beauty risks incurring phthonos (jealousy) and the evil eye, making the poem for the Bath of Maria apotropaic. The "god of Envy" is Mōmus, a figure closely aligned with Phthonos. He is of course a pagan figure, as is the Aphrodite of 9.607. The late antique and Byzantine elite were classically educated and enjoyed striking pagan poses even as they devoutly worshipped Christ.

9.607

This water is of quality so fine
It birthed our Aphrodite Cythera;
Or else that Cytheraean entered here,
And bathed, and lent the bath her purity.

9.613

On the Bath of Maria

The god of Envy saw Maria’s Bath
And wept at seeing it: ‘I cannot stay;
As with its patron, I must go my way.’

I learned something wonderfully random while writing this post. In the middle ages, long after Honorius' Maria was dead and gone, 'Bath of Maria' became a technical term that had little to do with ancient thermae. Named for a legendary Egyptian lady alchemist, the balneum Mariae was a water-filled vessel in which magical potions might be gently warmed. We know it now in French and from watching Masterchef: it is the modern bain-marie.

The Playboy Anthology

Did you know that at the end of the 1960s Playboy Magazine published two instalments of epigrams from the Greek Anthology? An illustrated feature titled 'Ribald Classics' appeared in many issues of the magazine in that era, introducing modern readers to saucy old-timers such as Boccaccio, and had already supplied the materials for a couple of standalone paperbacks. Apparently some such versions were tinkered up by moonlighting academics under pseudonyms, but to add a touch of prestige to the 1969 and 1970 Christmas issues the editors roped in the long-established and classically educated poet, Harry Brown.

 I might write an article about it one of these days. Here in the meantime is one of Brown's adaptations, based on Philodemus AP 5.46. The original is here if you want to see it (in Paton's translation). It's a conversation between a hetaera and her potential mark; Brown's version relocates it to a modern meat-market.

Hi, chick. Hello. What's your name? What's yours? Phil O'Demus. And you are...?

Mary Jane. Nice name, doll. You here with some stud? No.

Will I do? ... all right. Done! Say, you want to blow the joint now?

I beg your pardon! I mean, find a more Active Spot.

Well ... I dunno. Where, for instance? My pad. I've stereo, soft lights,

Jack Daniel's. Well ... all right. You'll come then, M. J. ? Any time.

How's about coming right now? Heavens, you're eager. Correct, chick.

Well, I'd prefer your pad, but ... all right, that corner booth's dark.

 I'm not sure it's scholarly of me to say it, but I think Brown's a bit of a creep.

Two grieving mothers

Two mothers lament their sons who died young. These two epitaphs are from Hunter's green-and-yellow. Both are Hellenistic in date. The first was found at Alexandria; the other is from Corcyra.

 

'The Strophades, "Turning Islands", were in legend where the sons of Boreas turned around and abandoned their pursuit of the Harpies... Strabo 8.4.2 identifies them as two islands in the open sea west of the Peloponese, roughly south of Zakynthos...

'Corcyra had been identified with the Homeric Scherie, land of Alcinous and Arete, at least since the fifth century' (Hunter).

XV

Philoxenus, your mother used to throw

Her arms around your neck for love of you

When finally you came, but never more;

Never again with age-mates will you go

Up to our hallowed city, and enjoy

The shaded floor of the gymnasium.

Instead your father brought your sun-bleached bones

And laid them in this tomb, since all your flesh

Was burned at Caunus in a raging pyre.

XVI

Calliope was puddled on this tomb;

Ten thousand tears in mourning for her son,

For Alexander who was swift to die

And left no issue when she laid him here

Beneath this earth, leaving the breath of life

At twenty-seven years, a cultured man,

Famed with the bow, whom murderous pirates slew

Hard by the ocean-girded Strophades.

But go now, traveller, and bid farewell

To a good man, good Satyrus’s son,

Born from the island that Alcinoüs won.