Balnea (βαλναία), large ornamented buildings erected by the ancients for the sake of bathing. Baths formed a part of the ancient gymnasia, though they were frequented more for the sake of pleasure than of health.

The most magnificent baths were those of Agrippa, Nero, Titus, Caracalla, Paulus Emilius, and Diocletian. The baths of Agrippa, or Thermae Agrippinae, were built of brick, but painted in enamel. Those of Nero, Thermae Neronianae, were not only furnished with fresh water, but had the sea brought into them; those of Caracalla were adorned with 200 marble columns, and furnished with 1600 marble seats; and which, Lipsius assures us, were so large, that 1800 persons might conveniently bathe in them at the same time. But the baths of Diocletian, Thermae Diocletiani, surpassed all the rest in magnificence; 140,000 men having been employed many years in building them. A considerable portion of this vast structure, as well as of the baths of Caracalla, still remains; and, from the dimensions of the arches, the beauty of the pillars, the profusion of foreign marble, the curious moulding of the roofs, the multitude of spacious apartments, and a variety of other circumstances, these ruins may be regarded as among the most remarkable relics of ancient luxury and splendour. It is said that at Rome there were 856 public baths. Fabricius justly observes, that the excessive luxury of the Romans appeared in nothing more than in their baths. Seneca complains that the baths of plebeians were filled from silver pumps, and that the freedmen trod on gems; and Valerius Maximus and Pliny make mention of one Sergius Orata, who had baths suspended in the air. This, however, appears to have reference to the invention of the vapour bath, in which the flooring of the chamber was suspended over the hollow cells of the hypocaustum. (See Ausonius, Mosellae.)

According to Dion Cassius (iv. 7), Macenas was the first who erected warm swimming baths at Rome; but there were public baths prior to his time, although they were small, poorly decorated, and of cold water only. Agrippa, while residing, built 160 places for bathing, where the citizens might be accommodated either with hot or with cold water gratis; and, following his example, Nero, Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, Severus, Caracalla, Gordian, Aurelian, Maximian, Diocletian, and most of the emperors who studied to gain the affections of the people, erected baths inlaid with the richest marble, and wrought according to the rules of the most delicate architecture. The wealthy had baths, frequently of great magnificence, at their own residences, especially after the practice of pillaging the provinces had commenced; but these they only used on extraordinary occasions. The great men, and even the emperors themselves, sometimes bathed in public with the rest of the people. Alexander Severus was the first who allowed the baths to be opened in the night-time during the heats of summer.

The Greek baths were usually annexed to the palestra or gymnasia, of which they were considered a part; and consisted of seven different apartments, usually separated from one another, and intermixed with other buildings belonging to different sorts of exercises. These were, the cold bath, frigida lavatio; the eleotherium, or room where they were anointed with oil; the frigidarium, or cooling room; the propugnaculum, or entrance of the hypocaustum or stove; the vaulted room for sweating in, or vapour bath, called concamerata sudatio, or tepidarium; the laconicum, or dry stove; and the hot bath, called calida lavatio. With respect to the baths disjoined from the palestra, they appear to have been usually double; one for men and another for women, but so near that the same furnace heated both. The middle part was occupied by a large basin, which received water by several pipes, and was surrounded by a balustrade, behind which there was an area for the reception of those who waited to use the bath. These baths were vaulted over, and only received light from the top.

In the Roman baths, the first part which appeared was a large basin, called καρποβάθρον in Greek, and natatio or piscina in Latin. In the middle was the hypocaustum, which had a row of four apartments on each side, called balnearia; these were the stove, hot bath, cold bath, and tepidarium. The two stoves, called laconicum and tepidarium, were circular, and joined together; and their floor was hollow and suspended, in order to receive the heat of a large furnace, which communicated with the stoves through the vacuities of their floor. This furnace also heated another room called reservatorium, in which were three large brazen vessels called millaria, containing respectively hot, warm, and cold water, and so disposed that, by means of siphons and pipes, the water might be made to pass out of one or other of them into the bath, in order to adjust its temperature. Such is the description given by Vitruvius.

At three in the afternoon, which Pliny calls hora octava et nona, the Romans repaired to the baths, public or private. This was called the hora balnei, or the "bath hour." In summer the earliest hour of admission was eight, and in winter nine; whence the expression of Pliny applied to the hour of general resort. The public baths were opened at the sound of a bell, and always at the same hour. Those who came too late stood a chance of obtaining only cold water. The bathers commenced with hot water; but when the pores had been thus opened, and a profuse perspiration produced, they thought it prudent to close them again, either with the cold bath, or at least with a sprinkling of cold water. During the bath the body was scraped with a kind of blunt knife or strigil, such as may still be found in the cabinets of the curious. Bathing was succeeded by unction and perfuming, after which they went fresh to the concameratum.

The Romans, when they found their stomachs overcharged, proceeded to the bath. This we learn from Juvenal, who inveighs against those who, having gorged themselves with eating, were forced to go into the baths to seek relief. They also repaired to a bath to refresh themselves after any considerable fatigue or travel; and hence Plautus says, on one occasion, that all the baths in this world were not sufficient to remove the weariness he felt. After Pompey's time the passion for bathing was carried to such excess that many were ruined, and some had brought themselves to such a state that they could not take food without first bathing. The Emperor Titus is said to have lost his life in consequence of the artificial habit thus induced. Hence Pliny inveighs against those physicians who held that hot baths aided digestion; and the Emperor Hadrian laid a restraint on the immoderate humour of bathing, by a public edict prohibiting all persons from bathing before the eighth hour.

Modern. The modern baths consist of hot, warm, tepid, and cold baths, shower baths and vapour baths, in which the water and vapour used are either pure or variously medicated. With the exception of Russia and Turkey, baths are not used to any great extent among the inhabitants of Europe. It is chiefly in warm countries that the bath is an indispensable luxury to the people, and in these countries the necessity of frequent ablutions and of attention to personal cleanliness is so recognized, that it has been embodied in the religious ceremonies of the Mahometans, Hindus, &c., and constitutes an essential part of their worship.

The Turkish and Persian baths, in their general construction, make a close approach to the ancient Roman baths. Lane, in his Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, has given a full description of the Turkish baths as they exist at Grand Cairo. In that city there are between 60 and 70 public baths, some of which are kept exclusively for the men, others for the women, while others are used in the forenoon by the men, and in the afternoon by the women. "The building," says Lane, "consists of several apartments, all of which are paved with marble, chiefly white, with an intermixture, in some parts, of black marble, and small pieces of fine red tile. The inner apartments are covered with domes, which have a number of small round glazed apertures for the admission of light. The bather, on entering, if he has a watch and a purse containing more than a trifling sum of money, gives these in charge to the mallim or keeper of the bath, who locks them in a chest; his pipe and sword he commits to a servant of the bath, who takes off his shoes, and supplies him with a pair of wooden clogs, the pavement being wet. The first apartment is called the meshulh. It generally has two, three, or four leewans (raised part of the floor used as a couch), cased with marble, and a fountain of cold water, which rises from an octagonal basement, constructed of stone cased with marble, in the centre. One of the leewans, being designed for the accommodation of persons of the higher and middle orders, is furnished with mattresses and cushions; upon the other or others, which are for the lower orders, there is usually no furniture except mats. In many baths, there is also in the meshulh a small kind of stall for coffee.

"In warm weather the bathers mostly prefer to undress in the meshulh; in winter they undress in an inner closed apartment, called beytowwal, between which and the first apartment is a short passage with two or three latrines on one side. Beytowwal signifies 'first chamber;' and this name is given to the chamber here mentioned, because it is the first of the warm apartments; but it is less warm than the principal apartment, of which it is the ante-chamber. In general it has two mustabahs (raised seats). The bather receives a napkin in which to put his clothes, and another to put round his waist; this reaches to the knees or a little lower, and is termed makhliz; a third, if he requires it, is brought to him to wind round his head, in the manner of a turban, leaving the top of the head bare; a fourth to put over his chest, and a fifth to cover his back. When the bather has undressed, and attired himself in the manner above described, the lawinge (attendant) opens to him the door of the inner and principal apartment, which is called khararah. This, in general, has four leewans, like those of most rooms in private houses, which gives it the form of a cross, and in the centre a fountain of hot water rising from a small shallow basin in the middle of a high octagonal seat, cased with white and black marble, and pieces of red tile. The khararah, together with several chambers connected with it, may generally be described as occupying almost an exact square. The beytowwal is at one of the angles; two small chambers which adjoin each other, the one containing a tank of warm water, the other containing a trough, over which are two taps, one containing hot and the other cold water, termed the khanafeeyeh, occupy two other angles; while the fourth angle of the square is occupied by the chamber which contains the fire, over which is the boiler.

"The bather having entered the khararah, soon perspires profusely from the humid heat, which is produced by the hot water of the tanks and fountain, and by the boiler. The operator of the bath, called mookeyyisatec, immediately comes to him. The bather sits on one of the marble seats, or lies on a napkin on one of the leewans, or by the edge of one of the tanks, to submit to the first operation, which is that of cracking his joints. The operator cracks almost every joint of his frame; he wrings the body first one way and then the other, to make several of the vertebrae crack. Even the neck is made to crack twice by wrenching the head round, which produces a sensation rather alarming to an inexperienced person. Each ear is twisted round until it cracks; the limbs are twisted with apparent violence, but with such skill that an untoward accident is never heard of. The object of this process is to render the joints supple. The operator also kneads the bather's flesh. After this he rubs the soles of the feet with a kind of rasp of baked clay. There are two kinds of rasps used for the purpose, one very porous and rough, and its rasping surface scored with several lines, the other of a fine close clay; and those used by the ladies are usually encased in thin embossed silver. The next operation is rubbing the bather's flesh with a small coarse woollen bag, after which the bather dips himself in one of the tanks. He is next taken to a khanafeeyeh, and a napkin having been hung before its entrance, the operator lathers the bather with loof (fibres of the palm tree), and soap and sweet water. The soap is then washed off with water from the khanafeeyeh, when the bather, having finished washing, and covered himself with dry towels, returns to the beytowwal, and reclines on a mattress provided with cushions. Here he generally remains from half an hour to an hour or more, sipping coffee and smoking, while an attendant rubs the soles of the feet, and kneads the body and limbs; then dresses and goes out. One piastre is the common sum to pay for all the operations above described."

The Persian bath, and the processes followed there, as described by Sir R. Ker Porter, are almost entirely the same as those of the Turkish bath, so that it is unnecessary to enter into details on the subject.

The Russian bath is more properly a vapour bath, and is well described by Kohl in his Russia. His description is graphic and complete, though what he styles the "torture" of the process is considerably exaggerated. "On Saturday evening," he says, "an unusual movement may be seen among the lower classes in St Petersburg; whole companies of poor soldiers who have got a temporary furlough, troops of mechanics and labourers, whole families, men, women, and children, are eagerly traversing the streets with towels under their arms, and birch twigs in their hands. From the zeal and haste manifested in their movements, they would seem to be engaged on important business, as in fact they are, the most important and agreeable of the whole week. They are going to the public baths, to forget, in the enjoyment of its vapours, the sufferings of the past week, to make supple the limbs stiffened with past toil, and invigorate them for that which is to come. The Russians are such lovers of vapour baths, that Petersburg contains an immense number of these establishments. Before the door the words, 'Entrance to the Baths,' in large letters, invites the eye; within the doorway, so narrow that only one at a time can work his way in, sits the money-taker, who exchanges a ticket for the bath for a few copecks. Men, women, boys, and girls, all hurry to secure their tickets, as if proceeding to some favourite show.

"The passage is divided into two behind the check-taker's post, one for the male, and one for the female guests. We first enter an open space, in which a number of men are sitting in a state of nudity on benches, all dripping with water and perspiration, and as red as lobsters, breathing deep, sighing, puffing, and gossiping, and busily employed in drying themselves and dressing. These have already bathed, and now, in a glow of pleasurable excitement, are puffing and blowing like Tritons in the sea. Even in the winter, I have seen these people, all melting from the hot Baths, drying and dressing in the open air, or, at most, in a sort of booth forming an outhouse to the bath. Round this space or apartment are the doors leading to the bathing-rooms, large wooden apartments, in which a heat of 40° or 50° Réaumur (122° to 145° F.) is maintained. Dr Robert Lyall mentions, that the heat is maintained by means of a large stove filled with stones, which are heated by means of burning wood, and over which water is thrown. The steam thence raised fills the apartment, which is surrounded with a wooden platform of ascending stairs or steps, and according to the degree of heat desired the person ascends the higher.

"The first sensations on entering this apartment are very singular, chiefly from the difficulty of breathing such a hot and moist atmosphere... On the platforms, which are raised in the form of an amphitheatre, lie an immense number of persons apparently inflicting torture on themselves; if not dead, they actually seem struggling with death, for the air they are breathing can only serve to stifle. Other persons, their tormentors, are employed in scourging them with birchen rods, steeped in cold water, as if to increase the smart. Others, standing by the glowing stoves, and steaming at every pore, have ice-cold water poured over them by bailiffs. When the first disagreeable effect of the heat is overcome, and the transpiration commences in full activity, then a beneficial spirit of warmth pervades the whole frame, and a divine sense of pleasure is all that remains to us of our existence, our whole being seeming dissolved in fleeting vapour. All pains and stiffnesses vanish from the limbs, and we feel light and buoyant as feathers. The rubbing and flogging with birchen twigs increases the transpiration, and consequently the enjoyment. All bodily pain, be it what it may, disappears in these baths; of headache, toothache, cramps, convulsions in the limbs or face, gout, or rheumatism, there remains not a trace. It is an extraordinary excitement, a kind of intoxication of the whole nervous system. By one of these baths a man is washed out like a sponge; for a sensual people I can imagine no higher enjoyment." (See also Acerbi's Travels.)

The baths in Germany, France, Italy, and Britain, are simply hot baths, in which the person, by himself, immerses the body for a longer or shorter time; and are chiefly used for purposes of personal cleanliness. The baths used by the modern Europeans and by the Americans, differ essentially from the Turkish and Russian baths, in that the vapour of water or steam is rarely made use of during the process of bathing; the operation being limited to washing or immersing the body in water of varied temperature, according as the person wishes a tepid or a hot bath. The form of the bath, therefore, differs essentially from those above described, consisting of a large or smaller building, containing a number of separate dressing-rooms, in each of which, or adjoining it, is an oblong trough of marble, slate, metal, or wood, furnished with two taps, one for the supply of the cold, the other for that of the hot water. The demand for these baths is very small over the greater portion of Europe, so that even large and populous towns cannot support above one or two bathing establishments of moderate dimensions.

One of the greatest improvements in modern times would be the general introduction of the Russian bath into the towns of Great Britain, &c. The vapour bath is infinitely superior to the warm bath for all the purposes for which a warm bath can be given; and as a medical agent in the removal and alleviation of certain chronic diseases can scarcely be over-praised. An effective vapour bath may be easily had in any house, and applied even to the greatest invalid at little cost or trouble. A pretty large firebrick is made red hot in the kitchen fire, and placed on an iron tray, which is raised on short feet. Over this is set a wooden chair, on which the person who is to take the vapour bath is seated; a four-leaved screen covered with painted canvass or cloth is then put round him, and a blanket or thick sheet thrown over the top of the screen, so as to convert it into a narrow closet or chamber. The person being provided with a small jug or watering-pot of hot water, pours the water very slowly over the red-hot brick, when, being converted into steam, it fills immediately the limited space, and almost instantaneously induces the most violent and general perspiration. We have for many years had experience of this mode of procuring an effective vapour bath, and can confidently recommend it.