Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Aliptes

Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary, and Greek Lexicon (Rich, 1849)

ALIPTES or ALIPTA (ἀλείπτης). Properly a Greek word, but used by the Romans in the same sense as by the Greeks, to designate a person who combined in himself the several duties and authority of a lanista and unctor. It was his business to anoint and rub the bodies of the Athletae with oil and fine sand mixed together before and after a contest in the Palaestra, or of young persons in the gymnastic schools; as well as to direct and preside over their training and exercises (Aristot. Eth. N. 2. 6. 7. Pindar, Olymp. viii. 54-71.); and also to give them advice respecting their diet and mode of living, which he was enabled to do from the knowledge he possessed of their muscular conformation, and general state of bodily health. Cic. Fam. i. 9. Celsus, i. 1.

2. A slave attached to the baths, for whom the genuine Latin term is unctor, whose business it was to rub the bather dry, scrape off the perspiration with the strigil, and then anoint the body with unguents. (Seneca, Ep. 56. Juv. Sat. vi. 422.) The illustration (Aliptes/2.1) is taken from a fresco which represents a bathing room painted on the walls of a sepulchral chamber on the Appian Way, discovered in the last century (Ficoroni, La Bolla d'Oro, p. 45.). It was undoubtedly copied from some celebrated original, for Juvenal must have had a similar one in his mind's eye when he wrote the passage above referred to.

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  Aliptes/2.1