Chedworth Roman Villa 2012 - North bath house

The ''laconicum'' (i.e.

Sparta Sparta was a prominent city-state in Laconia in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon (), while the name Sparta referred to its main settlement in the Evrotas Valley, valley of Evrotas (river), Evrotas rive ...

n, ''sc.'' ''balneum'', "bath") was the dry sweating room of the

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

thermae In ancient Rome, (from Greek , "hot") and (from Greek ) were facilities for bathing. usually refers to the large Roman Empire, imperial public bath, bath complexes, while were smaller-scale facilities, public or private, that existed i ...

'', sometimes contiguous to the ''

caldarium image:Caldarium.JPG, 230px, ''Caldarium'' from the Roman baths at Bath, Somerset, Bath, England. The floor has been removed to reveal the empty space where the hot air flowed through to heat the floor. A (also called a ''calidarium'', ''cella ca ...

'' or hot room. The name was given to it (

Laconia Laconia or Lakonia (, , ) is a historical and Administrative regions of Greece, administrative region of Greece located on the southeastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula. Its administrative capital is Sparti (municipality), Sparta. The word ...

: Sparta) since it was the only form of warm bath that the Spartans admitted. The ''laconicum'' was usually a circular room with niches in the axes of the diagonals and was covered by a

conical roof A conical roof or cone roof is a cone-shaped roof that is circular at its base and terminates in a point. Distribution Conical roofs are frequently found on top of towers in medieval town fortifications and castles, where they may either sit d ...

with a circular opening at the top, according to

Vitruvius Vitruvius ( ; ; –70 BC – after ) was a Roman architect and engineer during the 1st century BC, known for his multi-volume work titled . As the only treatise on architecture to survive from antiquity, it has been regarded since the Renaissan ...

(v. 10), from which a brazen shield is suspended by chains, capable of being so lowered and raised as to regulate the temperature. It is similar to a '' sudatorium'', or steam bath, where water is added to produce steam. Sometimes, as in the old baths at

Pompeii Pompeii ( ; ) was a city in what is now the municipality of Pompei, near Naples, in the Campania region of Italy. Along with Herculaneum, Stabiae, and Villa Boscoreale, many surrounding villas, the city was buried under of volcanic ash and p ...

, the ''laconicum'' was provided in an apse at one end of the ''caldarium'', but as a rule it was a separate room raised to a higher temperature and had no bath in it. In addition to the

hypocaust A hypocaust () is a system of central heating in a building that produces and circulates hot air below the floor of a room, and may also warm the walls with a series of pipes through which the hot air passes. This air can warm the upper floors a ...

under the floor, the wall was lined with ceramic

flue A flue is a duct, pipe, or opening in a chimney for conveying exhaust gases from a fireplace, furnace, water heater, boiler, or generator to the outdoors. Historically the term flue meant the chimney itself. In the United States, they a ...

pipes. The largest ''laconicum'', about in diameter, was that built by

Agrippa Agrippa may refer to: People Antiquity * Agrippa (mythology), semi-mythological king of Alba Longa * Agrippa (astronomer), Greek astronomer from the late 1st century * Agrippa the Skeptic, Skeptic philosopher at the end of the 1st century * Ag ...

in the Baths of Agrippa on the south side of the Pantheon, and is referred to by

Cassius Dio Lucius Cassius Dio (), also known as Dio Cassius ( ), was a Roman historian and senator of maternal Greek origin. He published 80 volumes of the history of ancient Rome, beginning with the arrival of Aeneas in Italy. The volumes documented the ...

,Cassius Dio 53.27.1 who states that, in addition to other works, he constructed the hot bath chamber which he called the ''Laconicum Gymnasium''. All traces of this building are lost; but in the additions made to the ''thermae'' of Agrippa by

Septimius Severus Lucius Septimius Severus (; ; 11 April 145 – 4 February 211) was Roman emperor from 193 to 211. He was born in Leptis Magna (present-day Al-Khums, Libya) in the Roman province of Africa. As a young man he advanced through cursus honorum, the ...

, another ''laconicum'' was built farther south, portions of which still exist in the so-called ''Arco di Ciambella''.

References

Ancient Roman baths Rooms {{AncientRome-struct-stub

See also

References