My name is Victoria Harman. I am a freshman at Stanford and originally from New York City. Currently I am not sure what my major will be, but it will most likely be in the Humanities or Social Sciences. I have studied Art History in high school and at Cambridge University and am very much interested in the field. One of my friends in Branner (Robert Crook) recommended this class and from the first lecture I could tell that this class was really tailored to my interests. I'm looking forward to seeing where this project will take me.

---

Ten Things Project Proposal:

I will be researching the Roman Baths. This will also include the water systems used for their "plumbing system", aquaducts. I plan to look at how the Roman Bath has been transformed into a number of things in the modern world: mainly the gym or spa, but also how in the Roman Empire they served as restaurants, community centers, bars, and performance centers. These different functions will be seen through my close analysis of each room or separate architectural structure of a typical bath.

My focus will be on the site in Bath, UK because that adds the element of the expanding Roman Empire and how Roman culture was maintained abroad. I will also look into the remains of the Baths today. I will see how much we can learn from the ruins, but also how much is left unknown. One thing I have come across so far is how a PBS team recently tried to build their own "Roman" bath and found that much was left up to guesswork, as even the ruins of the Baths in Caracalla did not supply all the information they needed.

I also find it interesting how the baths were used by people of all walks of life: the Emperor, women, slaves -- and they all bathed in one another's company, naked. I think that this says a lot about Roman society and I may be able to come to some conclusions about what modern society has decided to uphold and reject from this culture and why. Was this society more egalitarian in some respects? Given the encouragement of public nudity, was it more sexual liberated?

Project: Roman Baths

Back to: Ten Things 2006: Projects

---

Posted at Feb 01/2006 04:32PM:
[Sebastian]: It might be interesting to look at a project done last year by a grad student here at Stanford. She was basically looking at urban infrastructures (water, grain, etc.) in ancient Rome: [link]

---

Posted at Feb 22/2006 12:58PM:
[klfsong]: You also might want to look into how modern spas are designed to look like Roman Baths.

---

Posted at Mar 01/2006 01:43PM:
roby: You might also check out literary sources for descriptions of the life that took place in the baths. There is, for example, a short bath scene in the "Satyricon" of Petronius (ch. 26-28) which you could check out (in the language of your choice).

Another interesting thing to look at is how thoroughly a part of Roman life the baths were not just in Rome itself, but in the way it was perceived in its colonies. For example, at the fortress of Masada in Israel, there are the remains of baths built by King Herod. Part of the baths complex is a mikvah, but a large part is a version of a Roman bath - because bath culture was high culture, and Herod wanted to be a part of it. Now, to put this in perspective, Masada is a fortress on an enormous mesa in the middle of the desert near the Dead Sea. Water is an EXTREMELY precious commodity there, and yet a lot of it went into these baths. It made a very deep impression on me about just how important a part of the Roman cultural image its baths were.