230px, Caldarium from the Roman Baths at Bath, England. The floor has been removed to reveal the empty space where the hot air flowed through to heat the floor.
A caldarium (also called a calidarium, cella caldaria or cella coctilium) was a room with a hot plunge bath, used in a
Roman bath
In ancient Rome, (from Greek , "hot") and (from Greek ) were facilities for bathing. usually refers to the large imperial bath complexes, while were smaller-scale facilities, public or private, that existed in great numbers throughout ...
complex.
This was a very hot and steamy room heated by 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 ...
, an
underfloor heating
Underfloor heating and cooling is a form of central heating and cooling that achieves indoor climate control for thermal comfort using hydronic or electrical heating elements embedded in a floor. Heating is achieved by conduction, radiation and ...
system using tunnels with hot air, heated by a furnace tended by slaves. This was the hottest room in the regular sequence of bathing rooms; after the caldarium, bathers would progress back through the
warm bathroom to the
cold water room.
In the caldarium, there would be a bath (alveus, piscina calida or solium) of hot water sunk into the floor and there was sometimes even a
laconicum
The ''laconicum'' (i.e. Spartan, ''sc.'' ''balneum'', bath). Cf. Greek ''pyriaterion to lakonikon'' "the Laconian vapour-bath"; , . was the dry sweating room of the Roman ''thermae'', contiguous to the ''caldarium'' or hot room. The name was given ...
—a hot, dry area for inducing sweating.
The bath's patrons would use
olive oil
Olive oil is a liquid fat obtained from olives (the fruit of ''Olea europaea''; family Oleaceae), a traditional tree crop of the Mediterranean Basin, produced by pressing whole olives and extracting the oil. It is commonly used in cooking: f ...
to cleanse themselves by applying it to their bodies and using a
strigil
The strigil ( el, στλεγγίς, translit=stlengis, probably a loanword from Pre-Greek substrate) is a tool for the cleansing of the body by scraping off dirt, perspiration, and oil that was applied before bathing in Ancient Greek and Roman cu ...
to remove the excess. This was sometimes left on the floor for the slaves to pick up or put back in the pot for the women to use for their hair.
The temperature of the caldarium is not known exactly: however, since the Romans used sandals with a wooden sole, it could not be higher than .
The bather would wait long enough for the perspiration to start, in order to guard against the danger of passing too suddenly into the high temperature of the next room.
See also
*
Ancient Roman bathing
References
External links
Greek and Roman bathsat the
Perseus Project
The Perseus Project is a digital library project of Tufts University, which assembles digital collections of humanities resources. Version 4.0 is also known as the "Perseus Hopper", and it is hosted by the Department of Classical Studies. The proj ...
Ancient Roman baths
Rooms
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