The grand-scale imperial baths presented the essence of Roman culture of the High Empire: opulent, tasteless and utterly attractive. Visiting the thermae, sometimes several times a day, was no longer a matter of getting a bath as in previous times; it was about pleasure. Decadence is also witnessed in the common phenomenon of mixed bathing - naked males and females in the same pool! Hadrian allegedly forbade such mixed bathing, and the prohibition was repeated by Marcus Aurelius and Alexander Severus,(1) for which reason we can assume that this practice was quite normal during the High Empire.

Besides being places of the most highly developed bathing culture ever seen in the world, as well as places of entertainment, the great public baths also became marvels of embellishment. Columns and wall facings of white and coloured marble, refined mosaic floors, and, added to this, a wealth of sculpture (2).

The early Christians normally accepted a visit to the baths as a natural part of life. About 200 AD, Tertullian, in his Apology, addressing the Roman governors, states that "the Christians are no different from other people: they go to the forum, to the marcellum, and to the baths". (3) And two centuries later, the Christian hardliner and patriarch of Constantinople, John Chrysostom, says: "Let food and baths and dinners and the other things of this life have their appointed time", but he goes on in the next sentence: "For the things of this life, baths, I mean, and dinners, even if they are necessary, yet being continually repeated, render the body feeble". (4)

Mixed bathing continued, in some cases still to be practised even by monks in the 7th century. However, the Church fathers condemned this practice, and were particularly worried about the morals of the female attendants. (5) At the Council of Chalchedon in 451, a bishop was criticised for bathing with females. Mixed bathing was gradually given up, eventually to be strictly forbidden, and when the Moslems took over the Roman bath as the hammam, mixed bathing became unthinkable. From an accepting start, Christian influence made it still more questionable to enjoy the full-scale Roman bathing tradition: "non ad luxuriam, sed ad necessitatem" as the ascetic church father Hieronimus phrases it, and he warns people not to bathe every day. (6) Pleasure is sinful! Christianity grew from Judaism blended with the philosophical tradition, represented by the sage or philosophers like Apollonios from Tyana. Such persons did not bathe much. Both the Jewish and this Greek-rooted philosophical tradition valued asceticism, and personal hygiene did not play any great role for persons inclined to this way of life. Of the hermit Antonios, who isolated himself in the desert of Egypt, we learn that he was such a holy man that he never washed, not even his feet.

Fig. 1: Venus from the Roman baths in Agnano. (Mon. Ant. 21 (1912) column 271/2 fig. 11; Manderscheid Kat. 118 Taf. 22)

Fig. 2: Marsyas dedicated by Claudius Peison from the South Baths in Perge. Antalya Museum. (fig. author)

Christian writers repeatedly condemn the temptations of the luxurious baths. It was not a good example to set that Sisinnios, who was bishop of Constantinople in the 4^th century, bathed twice a day and even wished to do so more frequently. (7) The Jews faced a similar problem, but it was caused by the presence of naked statues. An interesting story is related in the Mishnah, in the treaty on 'idolatry': "Proklos, the son of Philosophos (or the philosopher), asked Rabban Gamaliel in Acre while he was bathing in the Bath of Aphrodite, and said to him, 'It is written in your Law, And there shall cleave nought of the devoted thing to thine hand. Why [then] dost thou bathe in the Bath of Aphrodite?' He answered, 'One may not make answer in the bath' (it is forbidden to speak words of the Law while naked). And when he came out he said, 'I came not within her limits: she came within mine! They do not say, "Let us make a bath for Aphrodite", but "Let us make an Aphrodite as an adornment for the bath"'. (8) In the Jewish, the Christian, and later the Moslem realm, water played a different, but most important, role for ritual purposes. The Jews had the mikhwe, sometimes incorporated into a traditional bath, the Christians the baptistry, in its early form influenced by thermal architecture. And the Moslems had to wash before prayer.

Despite all hardship, the Roman bath survived Late Antiquity, most vigorously in the rich and fairly well protected eastern part of the Mediterranean. The hot areas became reduced in scale due to lack of fuel. The water supply could be a problem, owing to the collapse of aqueducts. Public funding from the city became sparse, and occasionally the church took over patronage, but still the Roman baths could be marvels of interior decoration, including sculpture in the old tradition such as mythological sculpture or statues of noble citizens who had supported building, restoration or running of the establishment.

The Syrian bishop Theodoret, who in the mid-5^th century complains about pagan sculpture still being produced and displayed in public, was himself a bath builder. Theodoret's main aversion was Dionysos: "that limb-loosener and effeminate creature". (9) When Theodoret speaks of pagan sculpture displayed in public, he is probably referring to the baths. His own building was hardly furnished with this type of sculpture, despite the fact that Dionysos and his attendants, by tradition, were particularly favoured for the baths; rather he installed some decent philosophers, who could also be met in such surroundings. The above-mentioned Apollonios from Tyana, who is frequently reproduced in sculpture in Late Antiquity, could have been present. (10)

When Constantine the Great in 330 restored the Baths of Zeuxippos, one of the capitals oldest and grandest thermae, he furnished them with a very fine traditional collection of sculpture: images of gods and demigods, figures of mythological heroes, mostly related to the Trojan cycle, and portraits of famous Greeks and Romans. (11) Very little has been found during excavation; a fragment of a classical female head of colossal size demonstrates that re-use of older sculpture made up at least part of the decorative scheme. The Egyptian poet Christodoros of Koptos records at the end of the 5^th century the sculptural program and the embellishment of the baths, which was much admired until it was finally destroyed by fire in 532. (12) More than a hundred years after Constantine's restoration of a bath in Constantinople, John Malalas informs us that in Tripolis of Phoenice, Maritima, a bath which had collapsed owing to an earthquake, was restored by the emperor Marcian (453-57). It was known as 'the Ikaros', because "there were two bronze statues in it, which are also a wonderful sight, of Ikaros and Daidalos, and of Bellerophon and the horse Pegasos". (13)

As Bishop Theodoret tells us, the production of pagan sculpture continued beyond the period of the decisive victory of Christianity. Pagan motifs appeared in other art forms as well, and it is evidenced from private context that sculpture in the classical tradition was still produced for the decor of stately homes throughout the 5^th century. (14) In some cases it is evidenced that traditional sculpture was also created for the baths. The torso of a small-scale fisherman, to be dated to the 4^th century, has thus been found in the Hadrianic baths in Aphrodisias. (15)

However, most of the sculpture found in late baths was either created for the baths of an earlier phase or came from other areas. Public space, like the forum or the agora, was gradually emptied of mythological sculpture when such open areas became clustered with churches; public buildings fell into disrepair, and the temples went out of use, to be formally closed by the edict of 386. In 399, Honorius forbade the destruction of disused temples and ordered statues to be transferred elsewhere without being destroyed, and much was transferred to the baths. Identical measures were enacted in 407 and 458 by Majorian. Such re-use is evidenced by the mixed collection exhibited in the baths of Caracalla (16) and the above-mentioned Baths of Zeuxippos.

Sometimes it can be testified to by inscriptions; in Caesarea (Chercell), in Mauretania, the city authorities had four statues transferred to the baths, "transferred from sordid places" as the new inscriptions phrase it. Two of the statues can, due to the old inscriptions, be identified as Hercules and Juno Regina. Similar inscriptions testifying transfer are recorded from Verona (between 379 and 383), Liternum in Campania in the same period, and Beneventum in 425 (or later). (17)

In general, Christians were not iconoclasts. (18) Only when they considered sculpture to be daemonic, might they act with fury. The case of the Sperlonga grotto is an exception, presumably to be explained by the mysterious and gloomy setting, in the centre of which, Scylla, the man-eating dragon, was represented. Indeed, this must have been a place of evil worship. (19) Nudity, however, became less acceptable, also in statues, and as time went on, was restricted to mythological sculpture. From the mid- 3^rd century, male portrait statues in heroic nudity disappear, as well as females disguised as Venus. (20) One could say that the Greek tradition faded away. Pliny the Elder is very specific, when he states that it was "the Greek practice to leave the figure entirely nude". (21)

When nude mythological statues were transferred to the baths, they were not as safe as they were when they were acquired for stately homes. The hot and damp bath was always considered a place of daemons, and superstition grew with growing Christianity. (22) To appear naked, and thus unprotected, to the daemons could be frightening. In pagan times, apotropaic eyes or phallic symbols, mainly in mosaics, offered protection; in Christian times, the cross appeared. A metal cross could be inserted above the entrance door, and you had to cross yourself before entering a bath. Stories about exorcism are numerous, and pagan statues could be considered to represent daemons. In particular, they could present a threat if naked. To make such statues harmless or impotent (in the strict sense of the word) they could be sexually mutilated. The males were castrated, and occasionally another protruding point, the nose, could also be hammered away. Likewise, the females could be sexually molested.

It can, of course, be difficult to distinguish between what could have been simple vandalism and what was deliberate sexual molestation. The topic of the sexual molestation of naked sculpture in Antiquity has, to my knowledge, never been investigated systematically, and is not often mentioned in catalogues. No wonder the phenomenon has not caused the same attention as the much more widely used and definitely more refined fig leaf, invented in the Renaissance to hide male shame (23) - even the Vatican never felt offended by the classical (and fairly abstract) female nudity. People of Late Antiquity simply - and rather crudely - hammered away the offensive parts. The way this was conducted can, for the male statues, vary from a hammering off of the genitals (fig. 2), which sometimes looks as if it could be accidental damage, to an almost clinical chiselling away of any trace of the offensive parts (fig. 6). The treatment of the females demonstrates a similar pattern; the pudenda could be merely scratched (fig. 3) or radically cut away, hollowing out the marble surface (fig. 1). The breasts were only scratched, sometimes with some cuttings on the outer parts, but never entirely removed. If the female statues were partly dressed, their breasts were not touched. Accordingly, decently dressed males were never harmed. Asclepios, for example, who was the god of cure (and for this made the iconographic model of the very early type of Christ), is frequently met in the baths, and he could feel safe.