Sweat Rituals in Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is often considered the mother of Western civilization. Its legacy in the arts and sciences are inestimable. The Greeks used a variety of baths, from hot water baths to hot-air baths, which were available throughout Greece states. According to archeologist, Monika Truemper, the Greeks sweated in rooms with circular designs that are found in agonistic buildings, public bath complexes, private dwellings, and other contexts. The 34 securely dated sweat baths were all installed in the 2nd or 1st centuries BC thus testifying to an emergence of this bathing form in the 2nd century BC. The geographical distribution of sweat baths demonstrates that they were not restricted to specific regions, but quickly spread all over the Late Hellenistic Mediterranean world (Truemper, 2005).
Improvement in bathing standards and differentiation of bathing forms in Greek bathing facilities began in the 3rd century BC with the installation of large pools for collective hot water baths in some public bath buildings of Sicily and Magna Graecia. Truemper explains that this new bathing form gained only regional importance and did not become popular in the remaining Mediterranean world. In contrast to this, the round sweat bath saw international success and initiated a permanent change in bathing habits (Truemper, 2005). From the existing archeological evidence, Truemper hypothesizes on the social and cultural meaningfulness of sweat bathing to the Greeks (2005):
The integration of sweat bathing in different contexts shows that it in no way served only medical purposes, but was predominantly conceived of as a luxurious, fashionable type of bathing for regular, daily use by a variety of social groups: Of the nine public bath buildings with sweat baths only two were located in sanctuaries of Asklepios (Gortys, Messene), one further in the sanctuary of the Olympian Zeus, and the others in public contexts such as the agora, the harbor, or residential quarters. The sweat baths in agonistic buildings and private dwellings that can all be identified as lavish elite houses were most likely reserved for exclusive social groups, such as the athletes and the house owner and his guests. By contrast, the social status of users of public baths cannot be determined with certainty. According to literary sources, Roman baths were used indiscriminately by all different social strata. The literary evidence for the use of Greek baths is too scanty to safely reconstruct the social spectrum of their users. The position of sweat baths in the urban context is conclusive in only very few cases: One example is a recently excavated bath building in the Macedonian city Pella with traditional sitz bathtubs and a modern sweat bath that is located in an artisans’ quarter and was most probably used by the inhabitants of this neighborhood. Despite its fairly broad distribution, the sweat bath did not become standard in agonistic buildings nor in private dwellings, but seem to have been installed on a more regular basis in public bath buildings. Greek public bath buildings were certainly not “fun and leisure baths” for masses as their Roman counterparts of the Imperial period, but they did pave the way for them: The integration of a collective, relaxing bathing form, the sweat bath, was an important step towards the concept of bathing as a significant social event that required leisure and time.
Truemper contends that the reason the sweat bath suddenly emerged in the 2nd century and spread so rapidly in all different contexts with bathing facilities, is due to a general increase in luxury and well-being that manifested itself in so many different areas of the Late Hellenistic world (2005).
REFERENCES
Truemper, Monika. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, February 2005: Tryphe in bathing: the emergence of sweat baths as a luxurious bathing form in the Late Hellenistic world.
