Public bath systems of Late Hellenistic period in Macedonia
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Ημερομηνία
2017-05-12
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This dissertation was written as part of the MA in the Classical Archaeology and Ancient History of Macedonia aiming to focus on the development of hydraulic and bathing technology in Macedonia during the late Hellenistic period, an era of material and cultural wealth for Macedonia.
Although we dispose a large amount of information from written sources from the origins down to the 5th cen. BC, archaeological evidence is scarce and indirect concerning mainly in depictions on vases of bathing scenes. But excavations revealed the first bathing facilities of the 4th cen. BC: an important part of the bathing culture has been held by the Greek gymnasia, where the presence of baths was necessary for the cleansing of young athletes. Given the prestige of such institutions among the Greeks, it is not casual that the first excavated evidence comes from that environment. Only with the pass of time, when a more sophisticated way of life prevailed, baths were developed as independent units excavated all over the Hellenistic world.
It is the period of the Macedonian supremacy in the Greek mainland translated not only in military campus but also in cultural field. Macedonia is situated in the Greek avant-garde of technological experimentation and achievements, that’s why an extensive corpus of the hydraulic works can be found all around the kingdom. What is important to the aims of this dissertation has to do with recent finding of establishments quite different from Greek similar cases. It is pretty obvious that Macedonian engineers tried to find solutions in technical problems such as the heating of the water and the air. This aspect of the bathing technology has an extra interest, because it may give answers to the problem of the origin of the “ὑπόκαυστον” or hypocaust heating system, considered in general till today a Roman invention. For this reason Roman bathing systems are extensively examined and compared to the Greek ones, so that some preliminary conclusions can be extracted.
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Λέξεις-κλειδιά
Public bath systems, Bathing technology, Ηydraulic technology