The Bathing Process

Bathing in ancient Greece was an important aspect of everyday life (Hornblower 236). Based on ancient texts it seems Greeks looked fondly on being clean. A clean man was looked on with respect sometimes to the point of appearing god like.

Homer states in The Odyssey that "a Sicilian handmaid bathed great-hearted Laertes in his house and anointed him oil and about him cast a cloak" where upon Laertes "came forth from the bath and his dear son marveled at him, seeing him in presence like unto the immortal gods" (Hom. Od. 24. 370). In this respect, one can gather that unclean people were of lesser class. Aristophanes states that "men of such frugal habits... never shave, nor use your precious ointment, nor go to baths to clean themselves" (Ar. Nub. 835ff).

A bather would undress either in a dressing room or in the main part of the bath, then depending on the bath set up, would step into a large bath or an individual tub (Gulick 174). Polybius tell us that sometimes baths would have the option for either type of bath.

"When the festival of the Antigoneia was being celebrated in Sicyon, and all the baths had their large public-tubs open, and smaller ones next to them, which the more genteel people would enter privately, whenever any of the party of Callicrates and Andronidas went in to them, none of those who ere waiting their turn ventured to enter the water after them before the bathkeeper had let it all run off and poured in fresh. They did this because they considered that they would be as it were, polluted by entering the same water as those people" (Polyb. 30.29).

Once at the bath, these bathing attendants would be present with olive oil and other liquids for the bather to rub into his skin in lekythoses or carrying vessels (Gulick 135). The attendants would also pour water on the bather’s body (Gulick 174). Ancient sources refer to a person called a “bathman" which could possibly be the attendant. “After this Thrasymacus was minded to depart when like a bathman he poured his speech in a sudden flood over our ears" (Pl.  Resp. 1.344d).

Bathing in general relaxed individual's muscles after exercise or strenuous activities (Yegül 6). Young men who attended gymnasia would have put sand and oil on their body before exercising. Afterward an athlete would remove this mixture with a "metal scraper" called a strigil which was used to scrape of the access amount of oil as part of the bathing process (Connolly 34).

It seems that bathing did not require a lot from the bather, but for social acceptance and a healthy body it was required.

Primary Sources

Ar.  Nub. 835ff
Hom.  Od. 24. 370
Pl.  Resp. 1.344d
Polyb. 30.29