Abstract

From a present-day perspective, Roman baths may appear as pure leisure- time environments, dedicated mainly to the cult of the body and only secondarily to activities of other types. In the Eastern part of the empire, however, strong links between thermae and the gymnasion-tradition existed. Thus, we can trace a veneration of the ‘resident gods’ of the palaestra and of divine rulers even within bath-complexes. In these cases, we can suppose also a specific connection with agonistic festivals, and inasmuch as festivals of such a kind were present also in some Western cities, athletes-guilds seem to have transferred similar cult practices. Another field in which bathing-establishments are closely connected to the religious sphere is the cult of sacred springs and waters, especially where the ancients attributed a healing power to the water. This issue of Roman ‘thermalism’, neglected for a long time, has become subject of a whole range of recent studies. My special interest, however, is directed towards evidence that cannot easily be filed into the aforementioned categories: inscriptions dedicating bath-buildings to the gods or to the welfare of the emperor as well as more ‘workaday’-phenomena like votive-altars and statues put up in the thermae (particularly within service areas) or mithraea established in the underground-corridors of the Baths of Caracalla at Rome and the Terme del Mitra at Ostia. A closer examination may shed new light also onto the discomfort that some Jewish and Christian authors felt with regard to the bathing culture of their times.