How did Roman Baths work?
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- Опубліковано 20 лип 2024
- This video explores how Roman baths were built, supplied with water, heated, and cleaned.
Check out my video on the ONLY Roman bath still used today: • The Only Roman Bath St...
A special thanks to Woosh Drains of Astoria, Queens for sponsoring this video!
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Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:03 Designing baths
2:34 Supplying water
5:11 Heating baths
8:33 Cleaning baths
10:40 A working bath
I love that Steve from Woosh Plumbing is a sponsor again.
Steve's marketing strategy of concentrating on the Roman historian demographic may need a little expansion, but I too would prefer such a customer base.
@@erawanpencil I mean, since we know that every person thinks about the glory of ancient Rome every day this is not such a bad strategy.
@@erawanpencilThis specific video is about bath complexes and how they work. Isn't that perfect demographic targeting, for a plumbing service?! 😊
(I live in NYC, so maybe I'll need to give Steve a call, so I can "Woosh my problems away"..)
Steve is the real MVP
Garrett’s transition into Woosh is very impressive.😮❤
Best sponsor segway ever 😂😂😂
"Thinking about the Roman empire" is the best meme ever and I hope his sponsor segways pay dividends for hundreds of years 😂
Another quality video. Grateful for the plug. Aside from lacking filtration, these baths were quite sophisticated. It must have been an amazing experience back then to be in a hot bath for the first time.
Thanks for being a sponsor of this channel Steve, it’s really kind of you and us watchers of toldinstone appreciate it. Take care and wishing you the best of luck with your business!!!
Can I have a job?
@@maknnnaThere is nothing kind about sponsorship, it is merely an exchange of money for a service.
@@JohnDaubSuperfan369 K dude. The sponsorships help the channel afloat and I appreciate that.
Love your biz name & logo Steve! -Cheers
It's like the Romans took the mixed-purpose Greek gymnasia and asked _"But what if we apply an overwhelming amount of engineering to it?"_
The Roman mantra is “if the Greeks can do it, that means we can do it better” 😂😂😂
Curiously, Hadrian liked to go to public baths like a normal person. Imagine being an ordinary Roman who has just entered the hot springs to have a relaxing morning, only to pass in the hallway the most powerful man in the world naked and saying "Good morning, citizen." 😅
I pretty sure he liked to go for the scenery.
It is thought he was gay, not much else need be said
@@dla_915 Sounds like you should learn to say nothing at all. Homophobia is pathetic and for the feeble minded.
@@dla_915modern ideas of sexuality were not a thing in Roman times, calling him “gay” makes no sense seeing as that was not an idea present back then
It makes sense. We get it. You're one too. 😂@@M.Jebbers
_BEST_ video sponsor. Makes me want to go to Queens just so I can clog a toilet to support the channel.
I don't think I've ever seen such an incredibly specific sponsor before, I'm surprised it's good business for both parties to have sponsors for a local plumbing company on YT videos targetting a global audience. I'm not complaining though haha.
Now you need a set of episodes on Roman Glass.
Great idea! 👍
Well, your description of the water's cleanliness does explain why you "forgot" your swimming trunks!
😂
Questions:
1) Was there man and female sections?
2) Did they have need for lifeguards?
3) Did they have any water sports?
large baths had male and female sections, smaller ones had male and female times.
doubt they had dedicated lifeguards
there were swimming sports i think but no water polo that i know.
@@sudazima Thanks man!
Look into the gladiator naval battles, they were wild
Originally in republican Rome they were co-ed. However, after several incidents of orgies breaking out over the years, they were segregated by gender. If I remember correctly, this happened in the later days of the republic.
Male or female.
Man or woman.
Not man or female.
Ones a human term, the other scientific.
Seems kinda cold how women get the science one. No?
Woosh plumbing is a great sponsor
That was the best segway into an advertisement I've ever seen on youtube.
segue
Whoosh is back!
I don’t know, how DID Roman baths work?
And now I know. Thanks!
I literally muttered the same thing to myself as I clicked haha. "Yeah, how DID they work"
Augustus: "I'm glad that my new public baths are being a resounding success. Even my daughter Julia loves them, don't you think, Crispus?"
Crispus: "Yes, Caesar. Especially those on the Aventine" 😉
Augustus: "But on the Aventine there are only baths for me...F*ck"
Fascinating as usual. However, the idea of immersing oneself in that odious soup gives me the chills.
You cover many interesting topics about how the classical world functioned. But may I suggest a topic for the future: How did slavery work in Greece and Rome? How were slaves bought and sold? How was new raw material obtained? How were slaves identified? I have heard that slaves were emancipated from time to time. What was the procedure? How could an emancipated slave prove it? How could a runaway slave be distinguished from an emancipated slave or an enslaved slave going about his owner's business? If you have already covered this topic, please provide me with a link.
Basically, the latest scholarship has it that most slaves most of the time were born into slavery, with a significant contribution from abandoned infants and slaves bought from barbarians raiding and enslaving each-other.
And children who ran away from their parents were often caught by organized crime gangs and shipped off to the opposite end of the empire to be sold into slavery, much like with child-sex trafficking today. It was always quite a scandal when such cases were uncovered.
With regard to "how did slavery function on a day-to-day basis, and how were freedmen or free-born people distinguished from current slaves?" the answer is usually that unless you had a passably rich and influential patron who would testify before court - or more likely send a bunch of other guys to testify for you - you would be vulnerable to random kidnapping and sale into slavery. Roman courts were quite open to hearing from people who claimed to have been falsely enslaved, and precisely for this reason. Ideally of course, public officials would probably try to maintain lists and registers of who was a slave and who wasn't and give out slave-ownership certificates, but this was a lot harder in preindustrial times than it would be today, especially with the much higher birth and death-rates back then. Rich patrons needed clients for status and to be their muscle in intra-elite squabbles, so they were incentivized to protect their subjects from random enslavement.
Basically, anybody could end up randomly enslaved by organized crime gangs, and you needed to belong to some kind of protection racket to be protected from this threat, either through direct physical force, or more commonly, through having people who will testify before court that you are in fact a free person who was unlawfully abducted. We know rich influential patrons filled this role - and that nobody dared to enslave them, because they had body-guards and witnesses galore. I suppose there were also probably more mutualistic and horizontal associations as well.
Although it would have been quite possible for a slave in a large city to just run away and blend into the crowd if he weren't a freshly imported foreigner - in which case he would quickly be caught and sent back to his master for punishment - then that runaway would essentially be a random homeless man on the street, quite vulnerable to getting abducted by an organized crime gang and sold on the other side of the Empire. And if he managed to find people who would take him in, those people would be in extreme legal trouble if the slave's master ever found them out and produced evidence before court proving the man's enslavement. Everyone was legally obligated to report escaped slaves to the authorities, and the penalties for failing to do so were brutal.
So if you were a slave in the big city and you were trusted enough by your master to walk around doing his business on your own, you probably had a lot to lose and nothing to gain by running away, since you may very well have had an informal family among your master's household slaves, and you were probably among those slaves who were relatively skilled and treated semi-tolerably.
If you were a distrusted new slave, you were probably physically restrained within the house to keep you from escaping. There's plenty of useful work for a chained slave to do, primarily milling grain into flour for the household or weaving textiles. This was usually done to slave-women. Particularly flight-happy slaves were branded or fitted with collars reading "escaped slave, return to master XYZ for a handsome reward."
That's about it for the cities. In the countryside, we have a hell of a lot less evidence. Some say most slaves were just kept constantly chained in pits when they were not working for their masters in the fields. Others have less bleak interpretations, but the truth is that we just don't know that well, since most of the written sources are about the cities.
Worlds most genius sponsorship lol
Forgive me if you've already done so, but please do consider an episode on the seemingly ubiquitous use of lead
I remember an episode on aqueducts where he did talk about how some historians speculate lead-lined pipes were the cause of the insane emperors but it may also not be the case because some sections exist today and the lead was quickly covered with calcifications from the water flowing into it, blocking the lead from escaping the lining of the tubes.
@@postblitz oh nice I'll check that out - thanks for the suggestion! On a related note, clearly there was a lot of sophisticated plumbing in Rome, would love a deep dive into that if he hasn't already made one
0:53 this is like the craziest thing i've ever seen
It is indeed a thing of wonder. A public work that is a thing of beauty and utility is something governments should strive for. Some say should be limited to.
Peaceful Skies.
That is a cross section if that wasn't clear to you.
I believe those are the bath of Caracalla.
You should watch more of the channel, he uses that image in about half his videos lol
Not built anymore because our governments hate us.
Smoothest sponsor transition ever.
Your money was well spent, Steve.
watching from the bath 🛁
That was the strangest sponsor for a UA-cam video I've ever seen
I live nowhere near Steve but if I did I’d break something just to have him fix it 😂
I was fortunate enough to visit quite a handful of Roman baths a few months ago. It must've been quite a sight to behold back then.
From the Dpt. "What have the Romans ever done for us?"
Hey Dr. Ryan! Thanks for more great classical content.
One aspect of Roman baths still exists today. I gave up using the hot tub at the YMCA I'm a member of. They have it posted that you must shower before using the hot tub. And a suit is required. I have seen people using the hot tub in their underwear. But then I've seen guys taking a shower in their shorts.
Most people are pretty gormless. But not everyone.
😮 there still a roman bath open today! Holy crap thats cool! Also has anyone ever made one at home?🤔 I mean people have pools but do they have baths like acient Rome!
Hey Dr. Ryan
Is there any chance you could do a video on the waterproofing techniques of the Romans? Today we still have a hard time developing materials that can make a shower pan that doesn’t leak.
How did they have a pool on top of a furnace with no leaks? And some pools without leaks even today?
What were their methods for large water containment?
The Romans made extensive use of concrete using pozzolanic lime derived from volcanic activity. This mixture made a very waterproof concrete . They also made extensive use of lead to create pipework that was very waterproof
Was thinking along the same lines - I'd really be interested in learning about Roman plumbing such as the lead pipes and valves, how they were constructed and how the designs changed over time.
@@TheArchesIsleofMan Not sure pozzolanic concrete was used "extensively", especially outside of Italy. But yes, their default material for hydraulic engineering seems to have been lead: a cheap metal (essentially a waste product of silver smelting) that doesn't rust and is easy to work. It does come with some health drawbacks, that some Romans at least were aware of, but the feasible alternatives were thin on the ground.
@@TheArchesIsleofMan i understand that they used cement and lead and i understand the cement was made with volcanic ash which had lime in it but regardless, concrete is porous and needs something to seal it. If have ever actually tried building a pool or shower pan you would understand the question better
@@chriskucia8348 apparently for the most part water continuously flowed which helped them not to get lead poisoning as it didn’t have time to seep in. And i would guess its most likely a gate valve when they needed it but yeah id be very interested in seeing the evolution of their valves
This makes me very interested in the history of pump-assisted water filters.
"Returning to our topic...." (After a commercial break🤗)
Very classy!🏆
Great documentary on Roman baths! Thanks for the excellent content!
thank you for the content, please do continue
Keep up the awesome work, Garrett 👍
These are just very interesting. Thanks for making them. :-)
Thank you for this bro, as many Roman Baths I've been in, I just learned the most here.
Steve is the MAN
The Romans did some amazing things.
im especially interested into roman bathing, love the video thanks :D
Normal Sponsors: Nord VPN; Raycon; Raid Shadow Legends
This guy: "Do you have clogged pipes?"
An excellent sponsor!
Although I kinda wish this video discussed what, exactly, the different rooms and such were for. If that knowledge is known.
We need to rebuild them all here in America. Every so many miles there should be huge Roman baths rest stops.
Speaking of roman baths, it's impossible to forget the iconic scene from the 1979 movie "Caligula" in which the priestesses of Isis practice passionate sapphism in the goddess's pool. I don't care what they say about the movie, the cinematography and soundtrack of that scene is pure ART.
The Penthouse girls proved to be great nymphs, by the way 😉
"Heated vessels of bronze or lead". I find it hard to believe that there were lead vessels heated for this. For a start its low melting point would result in holes developing having direct contact with the fire. I suspect there was at least a metal sheet between the fire and the lead vessel. Also and more importantly, lead is an incredibly soft metal that it doesn't take much to deform it. Adding heat increases the ease at which lead can be molded. I have a feeling these vessels were actually brick but lead lined. That way you keep the heat gentle and steady on the lead metal. Bronze must have been insanely expensive or it was difficult to manufacture due to a lack of furnaces being hot enough to produce the alloy, but then the Romans wouldn't have been able to create its bricks. Interesting none the less. I suppose you have to keep in mind that the Roman Empire spanned several hundred years so the technology must have advanced from lead lined brick vessels to bronze vessel.
Do you have any evidence for this, or is it just off your head? Do you even work with lead?
The water can actually be boiled in any plastic bottle placed right into an open fire, so a lead vessel will survive the heating indeed as long as there is water in it.
@@hashbrownz1999 The issue is the naked flame, it can get hotter than the melting point of lead. With lead being a heavy soft metal as well as the lead vessel being full of the weight of water, eventually the vessel would mold into a lump. It's why I mention there was either a metal sheet between, or a lead lined brick vessel due to bricks being rigid.
Your channel has inspired me to do a similar style of videos but for indigenous america; I have often gotten many questions where i have thought "if i could just write a book answering these questions!" This format allows me answer many of the questions ive gotten over the years.
To my fellow viewers, please feel free to ask any questions you have about indigenous culture. Keep in mind im much more knowledgeable on northern great plains, and the pacific northwest and partly the great lakes. However atlantic/martimes and the further you go from the aforementioned, the more rusty i am on the info. But i could always research the topic using google scholar.
Look out for my "toldwhilestoned" series on this channel or maybe another one designated for it. But hope to incorporate atleast one persons question lol
Not a question, but I personally find the most iconic part about Pacific Northwest indigenous culture to be the pre-contact woolly dogs that were bred for their wool like sheep. Extremely fascinating method to compensate for not having any other domesticated animals that can be sheared. You should talk about that.
Lucius Modestus from _Thermae Romae_ approves of this video 👍
New toldinstone video just dropped
Smoke from furnaces tend to deposit soot in the chimney. This may cause fire in the chimney if not cleaned away. I wonder how the Romans managed that? The hypocaust could be cleaned (slave children probably were very useful "instruments" for that). Was it nescessary to clean the tubes in the walls?
I think too much, I am not fat enough.
The hypocaust was cleaned on a regular basis (the task was often assigned to condemned criminals), but I don't think it was possible to scrub the tubuli.
@@toldinstoneis the tubuli exposed to rain water? If yes, maybe that help keep it clean? But, won't that make a mess in the other parts of the heating system?
Told in Stone Posted 😮💨👏🏻
Ancient waterparks
Love your videos mate, keep em coming 👍😁
I love that people in Algeria are still keeping up the Roman baths.
I am perplexed that the British did not!
@@rmp7400Bath water in Bath is contaminated.
Wait what, that sponsor felt like an April fools joke. :D But that looks like a real company....
did romans pee in the baths like people do in hotel pools nowadays?
they were as homo sapiens as we are, so yes
Since urine was a valuable asset in Roman I'd think that a good Roman would not pee in the pool, but in a tub supplied for that use. Clothing was cleaned using urine, the ammonia being used as a cleaning agent. This causes me to wonder if one's newly cleaned toga might have a bit of an unpleasant odor.
Imagining the Roman version of Spirited Away where a young girl is trapped in a bathhouse run by lemures.
Romans generally did not venture out at night. The streets in Roman cities were dangerous with roaming bands of thugs taking advantage of folks walking around. There was no police force. There was no fire department...usually. Romans had to fend for themselves if they ventured out at night. There were pubs and inns. Cleopatra and Brutus liked to dress like commoners and go out and visit the bars and have a fling playing like regular people. Doing so was dangerous, but as the story goes they enjoyed the freedom and wild times.
Hmmm. Wow. Algeria has an ancient Roman bath that actually still works? I imagine the sanitation there has improved dramatically in the past 2,000 years if people are actually using it. Fantastic.
Dr. Ryan, could you make a video about those mysterious objects Roman dodecahedrons? What do you think these items were used for?
What are the leading official (and unofficial) theories? Thank you.
Can we talk Roman history with the swoosh plumber while there at our house......
Amazing advertising!
Somewhat similar to the baths I recently visited in Budapest!
Public baths are also popular in Japan.
🤯This is 2000 year old technology........
I like the local ads you've put in the video. It beats a corporate conglomerate brainwashing campaign.
0:50 holy shit is that Steve Martin?
Interesting!
Ive been going to the sauna every day for the last 8 years and mademany friends and businesses connections, my skin is great and my muscles relaxed, i think we should bring back baths!
During the VN War I was stationed in Japan. They have wonderful public baths and a bunch of us guys would visit them several times a week. They had a sauna and we'd sit in one taking our pulse. After we were good and hot we'd jump into the cold pool and take our pulse as it slowed down. Then it'd be back into the sauna. We'd go back and forth four or five times; when we'd dress and walk back to the base. Talk about sleep! One would sleep like a baby!
please mention wooden and lead pipe aqueducts
Nice I love Roman history and the baths is one of my favorite topics
The baths employed, probably slaves, who were hair pluckers. They plucked pubic hair and hair that grows in other places. In Rome there were separate baths for men and women. Communal bathing did exist in some cities in the Empire, but generally boys and girls bathed separately.
Is there any consensus on how hot the baths really were? And how does that compare to today?
The hot water in the baths of Bath England is pretty warm. I've put my hand in the water there and it was quite hot. While there, one is told not to put ones hand into the water. The geo thermal pools in Yellowstone are boiling hot! So I think the hot water in most Roman baths was quite hot indeed. Hotter than tepid anyway. They also had a caldarium, or cold water pools. I don't know how cold the water was. I don't think the Romans had refrigeration, but one never knows. Those Romans were pretty tricky. The floors in the hot pool room was extremely hot, so hot that one couldn't walk in there in bare feet.
7:00 WHAT'S PUBLIC STORAGE DOING IN ROME?? 🤔
Always making Fridays interesting
Deeply appreciated!
Anything about Caesarea Maratima in Israel is of my interest. Do let us know about Roman baths or equivalent there.
Imagine the smell 😮💨
The smell? I think that Romans were pretty clean and most, or many of them bathed daily. The baths were free after all. Also when the average Roman visited the bath he or she took along a little vial of perfume. It was scented oil of some kind. One can see these little bottles for sale by the hundreds in antique shops today that sell Roman stuff. Romans scented their hair and bodies almost daily so I think the quality of the B.O. was pretty high grade. I think that hard working Romans, even slaves, bathed daily. I'm not too sure if slaves could bathe often, but I imagine that Romans didn't want smelly people around them.
@@stevemccarty6384 I partly doubt the sanitary practices of those who lived 2000 years ago included not peeing in the pool and spilling food and beverages into the water too lol. That and they cleaned rear with a communal sponge on a stick unless Im wrong and everyone brought their own from home, which is almost worse in a way since that would imply every carried around dookie sponges with their belongings.
So public pools, but fancier.
❤
Can you talk about Roman bedtime
Romans generally went to bed when it got dark. They had beds with rope mattresses. They awoke early and had a glass of water. Then they go and get their dole of wheat. They'd take it to a local bakery and turn it in where the wheat was ground to flower and made into bread. Then they'd go to work. Romans had many jobs, children often working in the family business. After work they'd go and pick up their bread, now freshly baked. They'd eat and then maybe after a nap they'd go to the local bath where they'd spend the rest of the afternoon. At dusk Romans had an evening meal after which they'd socialize and prepare for bed.
👍👍
How many times are you going to retitle this video?
I guess the closest thing to these today are public indoor pools. Some are pretty nice, but not as nice as these traditional baths if the renderings are accurate representations.
I don't like to swim in public pools. I think that they are about 50% kiddy pee.
@@stevemccarty6384 lmao probably. Still fun places tho if one likes the water. Kroc centers & YMCA pools are fun.
First, yay! Love your content!
Great video, and NO damn music.
I wonder if any were ever used for swimming.
Why not? I'm sure the dog paddle was a Roman stroke. No diving however. Not deep enough.
I wonder if they played chess like they do today in the baths of Szechenyi in Budapest. Well maybe not chess.
I moved into a place with no hot water, the landlord understood that she wouldn't be fixing it and that my rent wouldn't be going up. Taking showers is like an episode of the ice bucket challenge. What I learned is how infrequently you really can bathe, if you are a low sweat low body odor person with a certain diet. Also, I got most of my scalp hair back.
Interesting - but I believe you can sue her for that. Hot water is considered a need.
@@YourCapyBra_3Dpipesa90sspecial
For close to 30 years l rarely showered at home. I always took a shower before l left work. That's one way to save on utilities. Or if you belong to a gym shower there.
I always imagined them being gross. Crowds of people bathing all day. No chlorine. Yuck!
Indeed, no chlorine and I imagine that all of the oil that Romans poured onto their bodies must have come off into the pool. But I also think that water was drained off and replaced with fresh constantly. That is what happens in Bath England's Roman bath anyway. I've been there three times and no, I did not dive in. The water is light green in color and I could not see the bottom and it isn't very deep. The pool is lined in lead sheets. Some people think that the Roman's usage of lead is what led to their demise, but recently studies have been made that disprove that theory. Roman pipes were made of lead and so were some drinking vessels.
how much lead?????!
Lots and lots of lead.
There are a handful of companies and products that populate these videos but not this channel. Personally, I'd like to find a good butcher shop in my area but if it's Queens, no use for me.
Roman Bon Ami?
With regards to glass and a little off topic: Did the ancient Romans use hand mirrors?
Yes but they were usually polished metal mirrors like bronze and silver
Video interaction
It’s CA LI DAR IUM. Not cal.
Pamukkale Pah-muk-a-lay
Stupid question: were the baths coed? I thought yes because I read something from Marshall (Marcelus) that made fun of a woman that he knew, and the only way he would have seen her nude was at a bath?
No they were segregated0
Elitest citizens.
Isaac Moreno Gallo ua-cam.com/video/Pzlj4U2ZWaQ/v-deo.html [27:40]
Is there any evidence or stories of lead poisoning because of lead pipes use ?
No. Seems like there should be stories of lead poisoning and it was thought so for years, but I read that new studies belay the theory that lead caused Rome to fall.
@@stevemccarty6384 That is interesting. Thank you for information.
Can you do a video on Roman drug use?
I think he has one already.
There were some drugs in Ancient Rome. They did go to Afghanistan after all. Romans drank wine, but they did not have distilled liquor. That didn't come about until the monks cooked it up. Wine was very popular and they had all kinds of wine. White wine from vineyards in North Africa was some of the most popular. Romans often, or always, cut their wine with water. Sometimes sea water! Least that's what I read somewhere. Wine was stored in terra cotta amphoria which was line in resin to keep them from oozing. This resin got into the wine and today we call it Retizin. (sp?) It is the national drink in Greece. It is an acquired taste. I didn't like it at first. Today I drink very little wine. I'm old and drink very little.
🏛🏛🧙🏻♂
Me up until this point in my life, "I wish I could travel back in time to see so many ancient places and wonders. I'd love to go to the grand baths of Rome!"
Why?! Why did you have to steal what little innocence I have left?! 😭🤢
No, you must be a liar, yes that's it. The water was clean and clear, and scented with aromatherapy, Enya was playing over speakers and the bathers were all given a puppy on their way out. 😂
I lived in Japan for a year and spent many wonderful hours in the public baths there. They are very Roman-like. Men and boys in one side and women and girls in another. They had hot and cold pools and a sauna similar to what the Roman's had. Really nice.
143rd
Imagining a podcast of Told In Stone, Let's Talk Religion, Esoterica, and Religion For Breakfast 🥵