Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Balineum

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

BALIN'EUM or BAL'NEUM. A private bath, or the suite of bathing rooms belonging to a private house (Varro, L. L. ix. 68. Cic. Fam. xiv. 20.); as contradistinguished from the plural Balineae, applied to the public establishments, which commonly comprised two sets of baths, with distinct and separate accommodation for both sexes, and consequently more extensive and numerous dependencies. In other respects the distribution and arrangements of the several apartments were upon a similar principle in both cases, as will be seen by comparing the members in the annexed wood-cut (Balineum/1.1), which presents the ground-plan of the baths belonging to the suburban villa of Arrius Diomedes at Pompeii, with those of the public baths described and illustrated in the preceding article. The baths and their appurtenances occupied an angle at one extremity of the whole pile of building, and were entered from the atrium through a door at a. Immediately on the right of the entrance is a small room (b), perhaps used as a waiting-room, or intended for the slaves attached to this department of the household. Beyond this is the apodyterium, or undressing-room (A), situated between the cold and hot baths, and having a separate entrance into both of them.

B is a small triangular court, partially covered by a colonnade on two of its sides; in the centre of which and in the open air, excepting that it had a roof over head, supported upon two columns at opposite angles, was the cold water bath (c) — piscina in area. Plin. Ep. v. 6. 26.

C is the tepid chamber (tepidarium), with a seat in one corner, upon which the bather sat to be scraped and anointed after the bath.

D. The caldarium, or thermal chamber, arranged exactly as in the public baths, with the Laconicum at the circular end, and an alveus, or hot water bath, at the opposite extremity.

d is the reservoir, which contained a general supply of water from the aqueduct; e, a room for the use of the slaves who served the furnaces, which had a stone table in it (e), and a staircase leading to an upper story, or to the roof; f, the cistern for cold water; g, the boiler for tepid water; h, the boiler for hot water; i, the furnace; all of which are disposed in the same manner as those of the public establishments, and with the same regard for the saving of fuel and water. See CALDARIUM, TEPIDARIUM, FRIGIDARIUM.

2. Sometimes the same word is used in a more confined sense for the hot water bath (alveus); seen at the square end of the room D in the last wood-cut, and at the letter h in the preceding one. Cic. Att. ii. 3. Pet. Sat. 72. Celsus, iii. 24.

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  Balineum/1.1