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Tepidarium Anywone?
North Miami Beach, Florida 2-7-2000 Aaron H. Schectman
THINKING ALLOWED
Essays on issues, ideas and reflections on the times. Published now and
then. Opinions pro or con are welcome.
TEPIDARIUM ANYONE?
Carol and I get into a hot pool on Monday and Wednesday mornings. We do
exercises in the hot water and this is good for arthritic bones. When the
exercises are over however, I get woozy with the heat as I tie my laces.
This got me to thinking. What if we were as advanced as the Ancient Romans?
If my memory is correct, the public baths in Ancient Rome were equipped far
better than any of ours today. Of course there are few public bathhouses
left in the world as we know it and the ones in that far off time were kept
up for citizens only by slaves. Thermostats and gas and electric water tanks
have replaced the slaves. But those Romans did know how to provide for
creature comforts.
This morning I would have liked to have a "Tepidarium" available after the
"Calderium". I would forgo the "Frigiderium" since tepid water after the
hot water would cool me down enough. I am not one of the polar bears who
plunge into icy streams or the ocean in mid-winter. Yes, I think that a
cooling off pool would do me nicely after the hot water experience.
When you think of it, we have adopted the Roman system of roads leading to
and from our major cities, their love of law and organization of government.
We tried to meld this with the Greek ideas of democracy and found that there
is a balancing act needed to get legislative, executive and judicial parts
to function. Ancient Rome dispensed with real democracy and its Republic
failed, replaced by a dictatorship and an Imperial Royal head of state.
Bread lines and entertainment kept the citizenry quiet.
Yes, and then there were the Baths. I'm resorting to memory again, but I
believe those baths were attended by men and women and while in the baths
you were not to notice that nudity was the rule. Men and women soaked in
the hot water, cooled off in the tepidarium and the hardy then plunged into
the cold water of the frigiderium. I would take the baths but politely
refuse their system of governance.
Carol's Evaluation: 9 out of 10.
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