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The bathing experience was taken very seriously, with a very definite room for every aspect of bathing. The basilica was an open area with a pillar-supported roof. Bathers would use this as their gym - exercise and fitness was very important to young legionaries. After their workout, bathers undressed in the apodyeria. The richer of the bathers had servants to attend to their clothes, and some bathhouses provided attendants for a fee.
Unsavoury bathing habits
Next, the frigidarium was entered through double doors. On either side of the frigidarium were cold plunge baths, certain to wake up even the most fuzzy-headed Roman. Bathers then had a choice of two warm rooms known as the tepidaria - one steamy, like a sauna, and one dry - before entering the ferocious dry heat of the laconica. Thus the Roman bather moved gradually from very cold to very hot. Each room had its own underfloor furnace to generate the necessary heat. To protect the feet from the intensely hot floors, bathers would don thick sandals which were often supplied at the baths.
Oil treatment followed bathing. Oil was rubbed on the skin, and attendants scraped off the grimy mixture of oil, sweat, and dirt using a curved metal scraper called a strigil. This was a remarkably effective cleaning technique, even by today's standards. Of more dubious effectiveness was the fashionable practice of Roman ladies, who used the sweaty fluid left over from athletes and gladiators as face packs, believing it to have special properties - not a cosmetic product that is likely to catch on today.
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