Roman baths as locations of religious practice

Abstract

: From a present-day perspective, Roman baths may appear as pure lei-sure-time environments, dedicated mainly to the cult of the body and only sec-ondarily to activities of other types. In the Eastern part of the empire, however, strong links between thermae and the gymnasion-tradition existed. Thus, we can trace a veneration of the ‘ resident gods ’ of the palaestra and of divine rulers even within bath-complexes. In these cases, we can suppose also a specific connection with agonistic festivals, and inasmuch as festivals of such a kind were present also in some Western cities, athletes-guilds seem to have transferred similar cult practices. Another field in which bathing-establishments are closely connected to the religious sphere is the cult of sacred springs and waters, especially where the ancients attributed a healing power to the water. This issue of Roman ‘ thermalism ’ , neglected for a long time, has become subject of a whole range of recent studies. My special interest, however, is directed towards evidence that cannot easily be filed into the aforementioned categories: inscriptions dedicating bath-buildings to the gods or to the welfare of the emperor as well as more ‘ workaday ’ -phenomena like votive-altars and statues put up in the thermae (par-ticularly within service areas) or mithraea established in the underground-corri-dors of the Baths of Caracalla at Rome and the Terme del Mitra at Ostia. A closer examination may shed new light also onto the discomfort that some Jewish and Christian authors felt with regard to the bathing culture of their times.