The Greek Baths of

Gela Gela (Sicilian and ; grc, Γέλα) is a city and (municipality) in the Autonomous Region of Sicily, Italy; in terms of area and population, it is the largest municipality on the southern coast of Sicily. Gela is part of the Province of Ca ...

are ancient baths which were discovered in 1957, near the Ospizio di Mendicità on via Europa, Capo Soprano, which date to the

Hellenistic period In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...

. Like the rest of the city, the baths were demolished in 282 BC after the conquest of the city by the Akragantine tyrant Phintias.

Structure

The complex consists of two rooms, originally separated by a crude

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4). Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay par ...

brick wall, which was probably plastered. It was probably covered by a terracotta roof, in line with a building technique which was very common in the city from its foundation (examples in the Bosco Littorio archaeological area).

Room 1

The first of the two rooms (located at the northwest) contains two groups of tubs, arranged in radial groups and linked by a system of water pipes. The first of these two groups (1 on the plan) contains fourteen tubs arranged in a horseshoe pattern. Only two of the tubs in this group have been lost. These tubs are designed to be sat up in, as is normal for Greek bath tubs. There is a semicircular cavity below the tubs which must have been intended to catch water which overflowed the tubs. Since there is no drain, this water must have been removed from the room by hand. The tubs are mostly made from a conglomerate cement made of sherds of

terracotta Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic where the fired body is porous. In applied art, craft, construction, and architecture, terracotta ...

and

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates ...

rubble, although a few of the baths furthest to the west are entirely made in terracotta and are portable (perhaps they belong to the same period as the pavement and, like this, belong to the most ancient period of the bathhouse). The second group (2 on the plan) consists of twenty-two tubs arranged in a circle on a conglomerate pavement, but they were all damaged by the destruction of the site and may never have been completed.

Room 2

The second room (east) consisted of a complex heating system with a small room (4 on the plan) with two corridors branching off from it, where fires were lit, and of an upper room whose floor must have rested on the walls of the heating complex, in order to create a

hypocaust A hypocaust ( la, hypocaustum) 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 th ...

room, perhaps for a sauna.

Date

The complex, the only example of its type in Sicily, has parallels only in Delphi, Colophon, Olympia, and .For the type at these sites, see, for example, A. Ambrogi, ''Vasche in età romana in marmi bianchi e colorati'', Roma 1995, pag.22. The structural similarity and the items discovered (perfume bottles, Italic and

Punic The Punic people, or western Phoenicians, were a Semitic people in the Western Mediterranean who migrated from Tyre, Phoenicia to North Africa during the Early Iron Age. In modern scholarship, the term ''Punic'' – the Latin equivalent of t ...

amphorae, as well as Syracusan, Geloan and Siculo-Punic coins from the time of

Timoleon Timoleon ( Greek: Τιμολέων), son of Timodemus, of Corinth (c. 411–337 BC) was a Greek statesman and general. As a brilliant general, a champion of Greece against Carthage, and a fighter against despotism, he is closely connected ...

) all help to date the site between the fourth and third centuries BC. The structure experienced several renovations: the creation of the conglomerate tubs in the first group of tubs in the first room, the creation of the second group tubs in the first room, the creation of the second room, the reinforcement of the northwestern part of room 1 with a stone wall.

References

Bibliography