The ancient Greeks may have come up with the idea of a public bath, but the Romans perfected it. I was looking at www.crystalinks.com where it mentioned that public bathing was an everyday occurrence and that one of the main purposes was to socialize.
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| A wannabe modern day fraternity |
How
similar that is to our modern day swimming pools! I may not know how to swim,
but I have enjoyed the social life that exists at a nice pool party! One difference is
that the men and women had separate baths, making it an early form of a fraternity
or sorority.
Interesting.. I don't think I have ever thought of public baths in terms of a pool party. Usually I think I'm too disgusted by the concept of everyone bathing in the same water at the same time. But I guess I shouldn't pass my modern judgments on an ancient civilization's traditions. It probably wasn't weird for them at all and realistically it was cleaner than medieval civilizations' practice of not bathing at all.
ReplyDeleteI feel like I may never be able to look at swimming the same way again haha now that I see the weird correlation it may have to ancient roman public baths the whole concept seems . . . weird! Looking at your link, I also thought it was interesting that the public baths were a social scene and conveniently the baths/ pools were in the center and not at the back of the buildings like we are used to now. This layout just further suggests that the public baths did in fact have a social factor.
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