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Thanas wrote: - Every roman citizen bathed at least once a day.

Kanastrous wrote:

Thanas wrote: - Every roman citizen bathed at least once a day.

This stood out to me because I have long been puzzled by the post-Roman distaste for bathing and hygiene for which (rightly or wrongly) Europeans seem famous.

Was this the work of the Church? Did Christians dispense with bathing because they associated it with the pagan aspects of Roman culture?

Samuel wrote:

Kanastrous wrote:

Thanas wrote: - Every roman citizen bathed at least once a day.

This stood out to me because I have long been puzzled by the post-Roman distaste for bathing and hygiene for which (rightly or wrongly) Europeans seem famous.

Was this the work of the Church? Did Christians dispense with bathing because they associated it with the pagan aspects of Roman culture?

I think one of the major reasons was how hard it was to warm up water and the danger of sickness from bathing. I'm pretty sure the church contributed though.

TheLegion wrote: It was thought that to disregard the body was the highest ideal, so average people would go without bathing for extended periods of time. That was the least on the scale of bodily denial, the other end being the kinds of things that happen in the Phillipines with people whipping themselves. The ascetic ideal is fueled by the belief that the body is evil and a source of sin, so the person must punish the body to clense it. It may seem bizzare to people today, but that is how it was in many Catholic and even pagan nations.

Tribble wrote:As another example, the Romans had the theoretical knowledge required for steam power in the 1st century AD and invented devices which used it (the Aeolipile being one example). However for various reasons it was never really developed, and the knowledge was lost completely after the Empire fell.

Think about it: Roman's knew how to use steam to produce work. We didn't regain that knowledge until what, the 18th century?

Samuel wrote:What about the plows they got that could brake up the thicker soil of Northern Europe? Didn't they invent them during the Dark Ages?

Kanastrous wrote:

Thanas wrote: - Every roman citizen bathed at least once a day.

This stood out to me because I have long been puzzled by the post-Roman distaste for bathing and hygiene for which (rightly or wrongly) Europeans seem famous.

Was this the work of the Church? Did Christians dispense with bathing because they associated it with the pagan aspects of Roman culture?

Thanas wrote:
Well, to be honest, despite any ideological reasons, there was no way they could bathe. Let me just give you a quick overview about the difficulties in keeping a Therme running. Not only do you need enormous amounts of water (see the above quoted figures for that), but you also need an enormous amount of wood. There are some theories out there that argue that due to the need of the Thermae of the cities of the province germania, said province was deforested to the extent of the romans being unable to find quality wood for the limes. You need to heat a Therme constantly, otherwise it is worth nothing. All of that involves thousands of slaves, which are not around anymore either.

And now we come to the most precious resource of them all: glass. It was the glass window that allowed for the construction of the Thermae in the first place - and try to find a glass manufacturer in post-roman western europe. There are none until the venetians.

Kanastrous wrote:It doesn't appear to explain a refusal to take a dip in the nearest stream, river, or lake, or to make the comparatively minimal investment in some water vessels with which one could at least douse one's self every so often.

It's sometimes claimed that European Jews' ritually-motivated bathing habits (mikvehs, etc) helped them stay healthier than the general population during outbreaks of disease (being separated from that population to some degree or another by law probably helped, too). If medieval Jews found themselves capable of washing at least occasionally, it seems reasonable to suppose that the unpopularity of bathing in the larger population might have had reasons beyond immediate practical ones...

Well, bathing in the rivers was not a good idea. Same if you live in a city due to no canalization. I would like a source for the Europeans abandoning bathing and washing altogether though.

Samuel wrote:

Well, bathing in the rivers was not a good idea. Same if you live in a city due to no canalization. I would like a source for the Europeans abandoning bathing and washing altogether though.

Not to mention that it is a bad idea to bathe in the same rivers your sewage runs into.

Thanas wrote:

Kanastrous wrote:It doesn't appear to explain a refusal to take a dip in the nearest stream, river, or lake, or to make the comparatively minimal investment in some water vessels with which one could at least douse one's self every so often.

Well, bathing in the rivers was not a good idea. Same if you live in a city due to no canalisation.

Thanas wrote:I would like a source for the europeans abandoning bathing and washing altogether though.

Thanas wrote:
The Jews also had larger resources available than the general population, so I am not sure how much is applicable to the fact.

Samuel wrote: The Greeks had working clockwork computers and the Minoans had printing presses, while the Babylonians had batteries. There is alot of lost tech throughout history- mostly due to the fact they didn't have the gear in widespread use. It is really easy to lose something if no one uses it but a couple people and only for obscure purposes that can easily be eliminated.

This capacity was well beyond the capabilities of the nations that arose after it fell, and even today there are not many standing armies that approach that size.

I suppose that one could draw water upstream...if one has the mobility and time to do it. Plus, with the Germ Theory so far in the future, do we know that medieval bathers worried about getting sick from the water? Wasn't the prevalent thinking of the period that 'miasmas' (and of course Jews) were the cause of illness?

The communal nature of ritual baths in Jewish communities, plus a cultural directive to make use of them, seems more likely to play there, than greater wealth. And leads me back to wondering why Christians who were masters of their own nations, couldn't accomplish something so seemingly simple, that their ghettoized and handicapped Jewish populations did.

Samuel wrote: Also I am pretty sure that people have an aversion to bathing in water with... stuff in it. You don't need germ theory to know that it is a bad idea. And most of the population didn't live by the source of rivers.

Samuel wrote:

Kanastrous wrote:The communal nature of ritual baths in Jewish communities, plus a cultural directive to make use of them, seems more likely to play there, than greater wealth. And leads me back to wondering why Christians who were masters of their own nations, couldn't accomplish something so seemingly simple, that their ghettoized and handicapped Jewish populations did.

Because if they did it they would be acting Jewish. And that is just something that isn't done.

Samuel wrote:The army of Iraq was larger- it is mostly that people don't need to have such large standing armies.

Kanastrous wrote:

Thanas wrote: - Every roman citizen bathed at least once a day.

This stood out to me because I have long been puzzled by the post-Roman distaste for bathing and hygiene for which (rightly or wrongly) Europeans seem famous.

Was this the work of the Church? Did Christians dispense with bathing because they associated it with the pagan aspects of Roman culture?

Tribble wrote: On a related note, one could view the post-Roman Europe as the "Dark Ages" due to the steep decline in European military capacity. The Romans at their height were able to field a well trained and equipped army that numbered in the hundreds of thousands.

Thanas wrote: - a steep decline in population, the effects of which Western Europe had not recovered of until the 18th century (only then was any economy able to support a city with a million inhabitants; for those who are guessing, it was London who broke the barrier at the end of the 18th century. Yeah, that's right, it took 13 centuries and industrialization to achieve a feat the romans managed to do, and even then it was only focused in one city and not in five or six as the romans managed).

Information and opinions about pre-seventeenth century attitudes toward washing and bathing are quite mixed in the historical community. The general consensus seems to be that bathing as a social ritual was quite popular; in fact, any church regulations on bathing were designed to combat excessive indulgence in the habit. The Roman baths were a daily social activity, in the same way that modern teenagers frequent the local swimming pool, and adults the exercise club. Deprived of sophisticated Roman plumbing, most medieval and renaissance people appear to have bathed less often, but with the same social enjoyment. Most modern authors suggest that bathing was more a matter of social mores than hygiene. Whether oft-repeated injunctions in the period manners books to wash hands and face every day and avoid having noisome breath, etc. support that allegation or not is a question for debate.

Like the nonsensical idea that spices were used to disguise the taste of rotten meat, the idea that bathing was forbidden and/or wiped out between the fall of Rome and the Enlightenment has been touted by many gullible writers, including Smithsonian magazine. However, even the Smithsonian in the person of Jay Stuller has to admit that "Gregory the Great, the first monk to become pope, allowed Sunday baths and even commended them, so long as they didn't become a 'time-wasting luxury' . . . medieval nobility routinely washed their hands before and after meals. Etiquette guides of the age insisted that teeth, face and hands be cleaned each morning. Shallow basins and water jugs for washing hair were found in most manor houses, as was the occasional communal tub..."

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:

ray245 wrote:

I wonder how clean the water is, given that there is no modern sanitation that can make a swimming pool clean.

Clean enough that Rome was very well populated, disease was manageable and could support large populations that no city in Europe could achieve again for hundreds of years, with the exception of cities in the East like Constantinople.

Kanastrous wrote:The communal nature of ritual baths in Jewish communities, plus a cultural directive to make use of them, seems more likely to play there, than greater wealth. And leads me back to wondering why Christians who were masters of their own nations, couldn't accomplish something so seemingly simple, that their ghettoized and handicapped Jewish populations did.

Thanas wrote:I think it is a fair comparison WRT to the technological prowess of a nation.

Tribble wrote:Which leads to my next question: did the quality of training and equipment available to European armies significantly decline after the Roman Empire fell? If so, it could be seen as a "dark age" of sorts in that sense.

hongi wrote:Aside from the total size of the army, the Roman Republic or early Principate could quite easily field armies of 30,000 on the battlefield. The numbers dropped significantly in Western Europe after the fall of the WRE. An army of 10,000 was very impressive, mainly because it was so hard to support large armies logistically. Bigger forces such as the Norman invasion of England or even the First Crusade, needed lots and lots of forage and plenty of money for transport.

John H. Pryor in Logistics of Warfare in the Age of the Crusade suggests (although I've been looking up his sources and I can't find his reference) that there were about 70 million people in 200 AD Roman Europe, falling to 30 million in the eighth century and only rebounding to Roman figures in the 13th century.

Elfdart wrote:

Like the nonsensical idea that spices were used to disguise the taste of rotten meat, the idea that bathing was forbidden and/or wiped out between the fall of Rome and the Enlightenment has been touted by many gullible writers, including Smithsonian magazine. However, even the Smithsonian in the person of Jay Stuller has to admit that "Gregory the Great, the first monk to become pope, allowed Sunday baths and even commended them, so long as they didn't become a 'time-wasting luxury' . . . medieval nobility routinely washed their hands before and after meals. Etiquette guides of the age insisted that teeth, face and hands be cleaned each morning. Shallow basins and water jugs for washing hair were found in most manor houses, as was the occasional communal tub..."

Adrian Laguna wrote:

Thanas wrote:I think it is a fair comparison WRT to the technological prowess of a nation.

You said modern society is "unable" to match Roman water usage, if that is true it's because there is not enough water for the much larger population, and I do not believe this so much a case of "unable" as "unwilling" in any case. Just as we and everyone else are unwilling to build gigantic piles of rock like the Pyramids of Giza.