STABIAN BATHS - POMPEII

The town’s oldest bath complex opens onto Via dell’Abbondanza at the corner of Via Stabiana, not far from the Forum and probably dates from the 2nd century B.C. The establishment covers a total surface area of over 3,500 square metres and is divided into two adjacent section, respectively reserved for men and woman and includes a courtyard which was used as a gymnasium. Three sides of the courtyard have colonnades with stuccoed tuff-stone pillars, while the fourth side borders onto a large swimming-pool one and a half metres deep. Separated from the gymnasium by a low wall, the latter could be reached from two side-rooms where the bathers would probably get changed for the bathing rite. The bathing establishment proper occupies the longer side of the peristyle. A door in the right-hand corner of the colonnade leads to the men’s section. The first room on the left is a chamber for cold bath (frigidarium), which is round in shape, with four corner niches and a pool in the centre. The water used to feed the pool flowed from another niches in the north-facing wall. The fact that this room came before the one where the bathers undressed may suggest that it was actually used as a laconicum, a steam room in which the air was heated by means of bronze braziers. From the entrance hall the bather entered the changing room (apodyterium), which is plastered in white except for a red band running all round the lower half of the walls. The next room is the tepidarium, in which warm bath were taken. It was heated by hot air which circulated under the floor and trough cavities in the walls themselves. Follows the calidarium, where the tube on the right-hand side was used for hot baths. Walking along the gymnasium colonnade, we reach the entrance door to the women’s section. Here the rooms follows the same sequence as in the men’s section, but there’s no frigidarium.

 

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This house, with its classical layout around an atrium and a peristyle, belonged to the banker of Pompeii, and his entire archives consisting of 154 waxed writing tablets dating between 53 and 62 A.D. were found intact. These consisted of sale contract for land, animal or slaves and receipts for the payment of colonial taxes, as L.C. Jucundus was also the official tax collector.
The bronze portrait – commissioned by the freedman Felix – found in the tablinum of the house gives us a clear image of what his father looked like. In this house, researchers found two marble bas-reliefs (both subsequently stolen). One of them depicts the Temple of Jupiter which whose d ... continue

(Apic. 9, 11) Ingredients:

• 20 oysters (tinned will do if you can't find fresh)
• 20 venus clams
• 40 mussels
• 8 small squid cleaned and cut into rings (keep the tentacles intact to garnish)
• 100 g roasted pine nuts, roughly chopped
• 2 celery sticks
• Rue, finely chopped
• 10 pitted dates, chopped
• Liquamen (or salt)
• 50 ml passum (or white wine)
• Olive oil
• Pepper
• Ground coriander seed
• Ground cumin

Instructions:
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Soak the oy ... continue

Love was a common topic of conversation in Pompeii. Feelings, passions, poetic love, sex, homosexuality, prostitution and so forth were all part of daily life and not a source of prejudice. The concept of “obscenity” seems to have been unknown. Love and sex were considered earthly practices of a man’s life that were encouraged by the benevolence of Venus. The thousands of examples of graffiti found on the town’s walls are unequivocal proof of what the people of Pompeii thought about love and sex.