Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

secular architecture 935
Constantinople by a.d. 400. Ostia, Athens and Timgad each had more than
a dozen. Whether state owned or privately owned, both thermae and balnea
were open to all for a small entrance fee. 25 By the fifth century, the church
started to provide baths exclusively for the poor and for the clergy. At
Rome, pope Hilarus (461–8) built two such baths at a monastery and pope
Symmachus (498–514) built others. At Ravenna, clerical baths were available
to both orthodox and Arians; those of the former were rebuilt by the
bishop Victor (537–45). 26 The bishop of Gerasa built a bath in 454 which
was restored in 584. Justinian restored the bath ‘for soldiers’ enjoyment’ in
the garrisoned city of Circesium. Texts mention the existence of distinct
summer baths and winter baths at Antioch, Tripolis, Edessa, Gaza,
Epiphania (Hama) and Thuburbo Majus. Although the architectural
differences between the two are unclear, some distinctive features set seasonal
baths apart: in sixth-century Epiphania a normal bath was converted
into a winter bath. A summer bath built at Edessa in 497–504/5 had two
basilicas and a tepidarium; the local winter bath also had at least two basilicas.
The winter bath at Gaza had a dome decorated with a tabula mundi. 27
At Rome, the thermae of Agrippa still functioned in the fifth century, the
baths on the Aventine were restored in 414 and those of Constantine in
443, while Theoderic restored the Baths of Caracalla (Fig. 39). Of the eight
thermae at Constantinople listed in the Notitia urbis Constantinopolitanae of
c. 425, four were built, completed or rebuilt in the fifth and sixth century:
the Thermae Constantianae, built 345–427; the Honorianae, finished in 412; the
Baths of Achilles, rebuilt in the fifth century; and the Baths of Zeuxippus,
rebuilt after 532 (Figs. 40, 43). The bath of Dagistheos north-west of the
Hippodrome was started by Anastasius and completed in 528 by Justinian,
who also built a marble colonnaded seaside promenade, decorated with
statues, at the Arcadianae Baths. Unfortunately, these baths are known only
from written sources, aside from parts of the sixth-century Zeuxippus
baths, which have been excavated (Fig. 43). Constructed of opus mixtum,
these included a domed structure and another with a large apse (12 metres
wide) facing an extensive court which was possibly a palaestra. Two vaulted
chambers were excavated separately, as were two granite columns set 27
metres apart and two spiral staircases, of a type often found in imperial
thermae connecting the caldarium with the hypocaust below and the upper
storey above. The original Zeuxippus baths had contained eighty classical
statues, which were celebrated by a series of epigrams composed by
Christodoros of Coptus shortly before the fire of the Nika riot, which
destroyed the building in 532. Two inscribed statue bases and a marble slab
25 Yegül (1992) 1–5, 314–23. 26 Ward-Perkins, Public Buildings 135–46.
27 Mango, M. M. (1984) Gazetteer, vii.a.7 454, 584 (Gerasa); xv.a.17 527–60 (Circesium); i.a.1 360
(Antioch); iv.a.7 450(Tripolis); xv.a.1 497, 500 (Edessa); vii.a.21 500, 536 (Gaza); ii.a.2 6th c.
(Epiphania); Yegül (1992) 43, 222, 226–30, 238.
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