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Baths and Bathing in Classical Antiquity by Fikret Yegl
Review by: Richard BrilliantThe American Historical Review, Vol.
98, No. 4 (Oct., 1993), pp. 1214-1215Published by: Oxford
University Press on behalf of the American Historical
AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2166638 .
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7/27/2019 Fikret Yegul bookreview
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1214 Reviews of Booksgeographically from the caves of southern
Spain andFrance to ancient India.I am torn because of a conflict
between duty to theprofession and consideration for the reader.
There isthe duty to summarize the conclusions but, in reveal-ing
those detections, the reader of this review wouldbe robbed of the
extraordinary pleasure of being ledby Greene's clever logic in
reconstructing the facts. Amurder mystery reviewer should not
reveal the killer.This scientist-author assembles the facts of each
case,reviews the findings of others, reveals the details
leftunexplained, and reassembles the data into a logicalexplanation
based on understanding of science and arespect for the law and
order of scholarship. I amtempted to suggest that one who intends
to read thisbook should read no more of this review.The first
essay, on prehistory, is a caution that inour search for beginnings
we reconstruct achieve-ments on the basis of preserved findings.
Greeneargues that the soft artifacts that were lost would giveus a
picture of discoveries far more remote in timethan present
scholarship's claims of "firsts."The nextessay is less iconoclastic
because it explains better theaccepted wisdom that the Egyptians
were poor ab-stractmathematicians. By showing that fractions
werethe product of scribal devices for craft and construc-tion
activities, the author surmises that the craft-based, practical
arts "forestalled mathematical inven-tion" (p. 44).The third and
fourth essays are related. Hesiod'sdescriptions of battles between
Zeus and the Titansand Typhoeus show how volcanic activity might
bedescribed as sequences of events, sounds, and effects.Hesiod is
sufficiently accurate in locating specificvolcanoes and eruptions
that his work could havebeen employed in antiquityas places for
travelersandcolonists to avoid. Greene counsels classicists
"neverto accept textual emendations of such passages madeon purely
philological grounds" (p. 72). Similarly,thestories of the
Cyclopes, sometimes described as one-eyed giants, are descriptions
of volcanic activities bythose who did not see "humans as 'we' and
nature as'it"' (p. 86).
The historic or legendary Thales's alleged assis-tance to
Croesus's army is shown to be the act of anengineer. According to
the incredible story, the army"crossed the river" by having the
river bed divertedfrom the front to the army's rear. Greene
identifiesthe river as the Haly. In the general location of
theriver crossing, the Haly meanders in ox-bows thatenabled a
clever observer to cut a silted, restrictedchannel thus changing
the river's course with rela-tively little effort. No longer is the
story incredible.The sixth puzzle provides an identification of
theelusive soma, the herbal brew of some plant that isdescribed in
Vedic and Avestan works, and possiblyin some Western rituals.
Recently R. Gordon Wassonproposed that a mushroom was the ancient's
soma,but Greene points to finger millet. Rather than usinga
botanical approach, Greene employs the pharma-
ceutical characteristicsnamed in the sources to iden-tify
lysergic acid, a product of fungi, probably asfound on
Elewsinecoracanaor finger millet. Finally,Greene analyzes Plato's
use of myth, especially inPhaedruswhen myth is rhetorically told in
our termsof "physiologicalpsychology."To explain his views onthe
soul's transmigration, Plato employs optical andpsychological
imagery to reveal inward truth. Theauthor achieves his purpose: we
learn that the an-cients' wisdom can better be understood by
modernscience.JOHN M. RIDDLENorth CarolinaStateUniversity
FIKRET YEGUL. Baths and Bathing in ClassicalAntiquity.Cambridge:
MIT Press or The Architectural HistoryFoundation, New York. 1992.
Pp. ix, 501. $65.00.The famous, if cynical, slogan, "bread and the
circus,"defines some of the palliatives freely given to theRoman
people to keep them quiet. The slogan, how-ever, omits an equally
important item, the baths andthe public bathing associated with
them, that enteredno less deeply into the fabric of Roman urban
life andprobably had a greater physical presence in theRoman city
than any other institutionalized activity.Public bathing was a
popular cultural institution, amajor constituent of the Roman
concept of humanitas,the esteemed quality that distinguished
civilized menfrom savages and made life much more than
merelybearable. Public bathing appealed to all levels ofsociety and
to both sexes. Because this activity washoused and serviced in
large structures, the Romanbaths provided opportunities for
commercial exploi-tation by private entrepreneurs in the
entertainmentbusiness, for the relatively free mixing of
socialclasses, for politically useful expressions of largess onthe
part of important or would-be important publicfigures, including
the emperor, and for original de-velopments in Roman architecture
and engineering.Publicbathing took place either in private
facilities,called balnea,which were operated for profit, or
inpublic baths, thermae, wned and maintained by pub-lic
organizations, ranging from the municipality andits officers to the
imperial treasury. Whether or notthe facility was private or
public, Roman bathing wasa public activity, involving large numbers
of personswho were getting wet, swimming, sweating, exercis-ing,
and, above all, socializing with friends. All theseactivities were
contained within the precinct walls ofthe bath establishment, some
of them like the Bathsof Caracalla in Rome of vast extent, and
were, thus,bodily removed from the affairs and cares of
dailylife.Despite the acknowledged importance of the Ro-man baths
in the history of ancient architecture andthe magnificence of their
standing ruins, little work ofa synthetic nature has been done on
them sinceDaniel Krencker's magisterial study of the imperial
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW OCTOBER 1993
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Ancient 1215baths at Trier (Die TriererKaiserthermen1929]),
al-though piecemeal studies of their typology and con-struction and
of individual buildings abound. Withthe exception of K. Dunbabin's
and J. DeLaine'sarticles in the late 1980s, little has been done on
theinstitution of public bathing in the Roman worlddespite its
centrality to the exercise of leisure (otium),its close association
with the theater, arena, and circusas the principal loci for the
pursuit of leisure by theurban masses, and its great demand on the
financialand water resources of the state. But now two majorstudies
have appeared. The first, by Inge Nielsen(Thermae
tBalnea:TheArchitecturend CulturalHistoryof Roman Public Baths
[1990]), developed the institu-tional complexity of the social
forces involved in thecreation, support, and use of the baths. The
secondstudy, and the subject of this review, is by FikretYegul, an
experienced Roman architecturalhistorianand field archaeologist. He
attempts to integrate thecultural components of bathing into the
architectureof the Roman baths and to analyze that
architecturetypologically and historically throughout the empire.In
this ambitious and timely undertaking he largelysucceeds, providing
the historical and physical devel-opment of the institution from
its Greek origins to itstriumphant prominence in the Roman and
earlyByzantine world. The architectural ontology of thebath is
fully revealed and so too its subsequent evo-lution, with special
attention given to the relationbetween bathing practices and the
particular build-ings that housed them, as manifested in Rome,
NorthAfrica, and Asia Minor. Yegiil's abundant illustra-tions and
informative architectural drawings, manyoriginal to this volume,
themselves constitute an im-pressive body of evidence; his careful
analysis of thepractical elements of construction, of regional
varia-tion in building techniques, and of the heating andwater
systems of the baths make a distinct contribu-tion, fully grounded
on a thorough knowledge of themonuments and of the recent
excavations. The bookcontains numerous references to pertinent
ancienttexts and inscriptions, nicely complementing the
frag-mentary remnants of the rich decorations in stucco,mosaic,
colored stones, and statuary that onceadorned the Roman baths. What
is missing, perhaps,is the intensity of the Romans' delight in
spectacle asa staple of their public lives, even when mixed
withwater and steam.
RICHARD BRILLIANTColumbiaUniversityAMY RICHLIN, editor.
Pornography nd Representationin Greeceand Rome. New York: Oxford
UniversityPress. 1992. Pp. xxiii, 317. Cloth $45.00,
paper$18.95.Since Sarah Pomeroy's Goddesses,Whores,Wives,
andSlaves(1975), no overview of the history of women inthe
classicalsocieties has been published. The subject,
however, is now enjoying such a renaissance thathundreds of
articles on its different facets have ap-peared, many of them in
single-topic volumes such asthis. By now the meager evidence has
been pressed tothe limit and beyond, and redundancy and
overinter-pretation are rife. This collection edited by AmyRichlin,
while not free of these defects, neverthelessshows that imaginative
scholarship can stillyield freshinsights. Masterminded by Richlin,
the author of anexcellent study of obscenity in Latin literature
(TheGardenof Priapus[1983]), it bears in part the stamp ofher
incisive thought and robust style. The title of thevolume alludes
to Susan Kappeler's PornographyofRepresentation1986).Able
contributions by Robert F. Sutton,Jr., and H.A. Shapiro, exploring
the iconography of heterosex-ual and homosexual courtship in Attic
vase painting,largely tread ground they and others have
alreadystaked out. Sutton'sobservation, however, that "inthesecond
half of the fifth century, female eroticism notonly becomes
respectable, but is portrayed as a meansof personal happiness and
social stability on vesselsintended largely for feminine eyes" (p.
33), is signif-icant enough to warrantrestatement, inasmuch as
theliterary sources of the period give us no inkling ofsuch a
development.Two essays deal with female figures on the Athe-nian
stage. Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitch argues thatGreek tragedy, while
featuring incongruously eman-cipated heroines, nevertheless serves
the politics ofrepression, a not very persuasive argument.
BellaZweig tackles a thorny problem, namely that of thestrange,
nonspeaking female, and nude or seminudecharacters that make brief
appearances in Old Com-edy. She concludes, rightly, I believe, that
they areessentially pornographic, that is, emblematic of
thedegradation of women in Attic society.Holt N. Parkeruncovers the
vestiges of ancient sexmanuals, all of them lost, but reflected in
literature,most notably in Ovid's Ars Amatoria,a poem thatParker
considers both a sample and a parody of thegenre. Poignant is his
observation that ancient au-thors invariably attribute such manuals
to femaleauthors, a practice which Parker views as a kind of"sexual
slander." In an appendix Parker provides auseful catalogue of the
little-known sources for suchmanuals.The weakest part of the
collection are two studies,by Helen E. Elsom and Holly Montague, of
genderissues in the difficult-to-document so-called Greekromances.
These erotikoi ypotheseis,s they are calledin Greek, are the first
manifestation of prose fiction inthe Western tradition and have
come down to us in avacuum, since we know nothing about their
authorsand their readership. Elsom considers them "master-pieces of
literary subtlety for an educated (male) elite"(p. 212); Montague
more aptly likens them to "Har-lequins" (p. 231), mass-market love
and adventurestories. Ignoring the most salient aspect of
thesenovels, namely the relative independence and cour-
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW OCTOBER 1993
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