Cathedrals of the Flesh (9 page)

Dr Christopher's reputation preceded him. According to sources in the surprisingly lurid and gossipy world of academe, Dr
Christopher was reputed to have a 'dig girl' each summer and to be charming and irascible. The hard-drinking, womanizing classics
professor is practically a Jungian archetype, at least where I went to college, so I had a ready mental image of Dr Christopher.
His reputation, however, was based on the pre-happily married man. He was not, I discovered, just your run-of-the-mill harmless
asocial misanthrope.

I suffered through the first bizarre dinner listening to Dr Christopher obsess about his cistern. It was clearly a pet project
with which he'd been boring Garrett for years. Garrett nodded and responded appropriately: 'I thought you solved the sealant
issue last year.' Dr Christopher wasn't quite a drone - he wasn't forthcoming enough - and he wasn't a bore because he was
too elliptical. He was dismissive yet careful — without ever saying anything overtly cruel, he could shovel scorn in any direction.
He was the kind of guy who emitted infinitesimally brief rays of charm only to retreat back into his tortoise shell of academic
arrogance for hours.

Luckily for me, there was Garrett, with whom I felt an instant camaraderie. After dinner, he invited me to accompany him to
the Platea, the town square, for a beer. It was only 9:30. We walked down the hill, inhaling the heavy honeysuckle air, past
a convenience store and a small church with a cross like a tall antenna. The Platea was almost triangular. Along the base
were the shops — the cluttered laundry, the village grocery store, and a bread and baklava store. The main road, congested
with tour buses during the day, was lined with restaurants and souvenir shops. The tourists stayed in hotels in the modem
city of Korinth or farther down the Peloponnese. That night, like most nights, was quiet. After 5:00 P.M., only the locals
and the rival packs of archaeologists remain. And the locals have a second siesta between 6:00 and 7:00, when the surprisingly
sinister Greek version of
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
is shown.

Garrett and I sat outside at Nikos's Place. Nikos's was the favorite that summer; Themis, the owner of Themis's Place, had
hit the ouzo hard, and his taverna had fallen to seed, or so went the local lore. And Nikos was Ancient Korinth's youngest,
most charismatic taverna owner, and he spoke the best English, which made his place the taverna of the moment.

We ordered two Mythos beers, a watered-down version of Heineken. In the six years since I'd graduated from college, the experience
of sitting across from a professor had changed completely. I no longer worried about saying the right thing or asking the
right questions. When Garrett noticed a horde of the students coming down the hill toward Nikos's, he said, 'Ugh. The kids.
I hope they're not coming over to ask about tomorrow.' I was now considered adult company. Between the teetotaling Baptist
students and our acerbic host, Garrett and I were set up to become the best of friends.

'So what
are
we doing tomorrow?' I asked, using my adult dispensation to ask the annoying question.

Garrett smiled. 'Christopher's going to give us an overall introduction to the Olympic site: the athletic stadium and track,
the theater, and the Temple of Poseidon. And, of course, the bath. In the coming weeks we'll devote more specialized attention
to each structure. And there'll be some housekeeping duties at the dig house.'

'I can only imagine,' I said, thinking of Christopher's cistern. My mind rushed to the bath, which I imagined as a vast marble,
labyrinthine structure with various chambers containing plunge pools, benches, mosaics, and columns. Finally I would see an
example of the stunning bath architecture and brilliant engineering I had heard so much about. The imperial baths, after all,
had been used as architectural laboratories to test wider and wider vaults and domes. Why anger the gods with faulty temple
architecture when a few bathers can be sacrificed during a test run?

'I've read so much about the Roman devotion to bathing, and still it's hard to wrap my head around the extent of the obsession.'

Garrett nodded. 'Yes, it's difficult for us to imagine what an integrated role the baths played in the life of the average
Roman. We live in such compartmentalized worlds by comparison. The baths were a daily pleasure, the setting in which they
washed, exercised, socialized, relaxed, gazed upon art, politicked, scrounged-up dinner invitations, had sex . . .'

'Had sex?' I asked. I'd read contradictory accounts about the level of overt sexuality in the baths.

'Yes, there's a delicious body — or collection, I should say — of bath graffiti. For example, a duo from Herculaneum left
many explicit clues at the Suburban Baths. Apelles and Dexter were their names, and they'd write subtle things like "Apelles
and Dexter had lunch here most pleasantly and fucked at the same time." '

'Hmm, a full-service
balneum.
Who did they "fuck"? Men or women?'

'Good question. They left us a more specific line: "We, Apelles the Mouse and his brother Dexter, lovingly fucked two women
twice." Also from the same room at the Suburban Baths, we find: "Two companions were here and, since they had a thoroughly
terrible attendant called Epaphroditus, threw him out onto the street not a moment too soon. They then spent 1051/2 sesterces
most agreeably while they fucked."'

The distinction between bathhouse and bordello has always been murky. Eight erotic frescoes were discovered at another of
Pompeii's neighborhood baths in 1986. Scholars can't agree on what the two-thousand-year-old porn aims to suggest. Depicted
in exaggerated, and some argue comical, form are various sexual acts, including the only known rendering of cunnilingus from
Roman times. Are the eight sexual scenarios a menu of services available upstairs? Or, as other scholars insist, were they
meant to be funny and even to serve as a mnemonic device (e.g., it's easy to remember that you left your toga under the man
with the engorged testicles)?

Most baths, however, were wholesome places that often doubled as healing centers. Based on medical and nonmedical writers,
we learn that the Romans considered visiting the baths indispensable to good health. Vitruvius explained that 'sulfur springs
cure pains in the sinews, by warming up and burning out the corrupt humours of the body.' Galen, the ancient physician, prescribed
sweat bathing to all his patients, most famously to Emperor Augustus, who apparently recovered from a life-threatening illness
after frequent visits to the baths.
Placebo
does come from the Latin word for 'I will please,' but placebo or not, sweating out illnesses in the baths proved efficacious
for many and was probably an excellent antidote to all the lead they were consuming. Roman aqueducts contained lead piping,
and wine was stored in lead vessels; the mental instability of later Romans (think Caligula) has often been blamed on lead
poisoning.

Prostitutes were not the only people pushing their wares. There's convincing evidence that medical masseurs, eye doctors,
dentists, and possibly surgeons plied their trades at the baths. Lunch, a quickie, and a molar extraction could all be found
under the same roof.

Garrett explained that the baths were the great social leveler in Roman society. What went on behind the scenes at the Roman
baths varied and depended on that bath's specific clientele, the neighborhood, and the proclivities of the emperor at the
time. Early on, during the disciplined days of the Republic, the baths were single sex, or so the architecture and literature
indicate. During the second century B.C., a social revolution was under way in Rome, and women enjoyed greater liberty.

The gravitas and severitas of the Republic slowly yielded to the comparatively lighter, frolicsome mood of Augustus' empire.
The first-century Stoic philosopher Seneca complained bitterly of this new laxity and effeteness. 'Yes, pretty dirty fellows
they evidently were!' he said, referring to his idea of the 'good old days' when men were men. 'How they must have smelled!
But they smelled of the camp, the farm, and heroism. Now that spick-and-span bathing establishments have been devised, men
are really fouler than of yore.'

Ultimately, the baths were the death of Seneca. At one point, Seneca had lodgings over a bath where he daily suffered the
noise from below. He describes in one of his famous letters from
Epistulae
ad Lucilium,
'the hair remover, continually giving vent to his shrill and penetrating cry in order to advertise his presence, never silent
unless it be while he is plucking someone's armpits and making the client yell for him!' At the end of his life, when ordered
by the emperor to commit suicide, Seneca first cut his veins. When this did not kill him, he tried hemlock. Still alive, he
was brought to a bath, where he finally suffocated on the steam.

During the long, colorful period of Augustan succession, business at the baths boomed. Spa towns like Baiae near Naples boasted
floating hotels on stilts, and baths were built with such care and grandeur that archaeologists later confused them with temples.
Roman life was more permissive than ever, and men and women bathed together — indeed, during this period after the Republic
until the time Christianity took hold, the female sex enjoyed a greater personal, sexual, and economic freedom than would
be known again until the latter half of the twentieth century.

Martial, the high-living wit of late-first-century Rome, wrote of coed bathing establishments as if they were a common part
of life. He wrote to Galla, the object of his quest, 'When I compliment your face, when I admire your legs and hands, you
are accustomed to say, Galla, "Naked I shall please you more," yet, you continually avoid taking a bath with me. Surely, you
are not afraid, Galla, that I shall not please you?' Need we greater proof of coed bathing establishments? Whereas previously
scholars assumed that prostitutes were the only women to frequent the baths, literary evidence of concerns about adultery
and illegitimate children proves that married or marriageable women must also have frequented the baths. Augustus even banned
coed bathing temporarily because of the number of illegitimate children sired at the baths who were abandoned on the Aventine
Hill.

Garrett explained all this while I sipped my Mythos and ignored the attention-seeking ploys of Nikos, the proprietor. It was
amazing to have Garrett synthesize all this information, and I wondered if academics had differently wired brains.

'How is it that we end up with a Roman bath here in Greek Isthmia?' I asked.

'The Romans built baths as far as the Pax Romana extended. During the go-go days of the Roman Empire - say, the first and
second centuries A.D. - the Romans had brought the Greeks to heel and conquered most of Asia and Africa. After the fall of
the Greek city-state, Greece itself became a Roman province, though it always maintained its cultural superiority. But one
area where the Romans excelled with just the slightest germ of Greek inspiration was in their enormous
thermae
complexes.'

'And did all Romans get to bathe or just the wealthy?'

'Everyone went, even the slaves. Not to bathe would be un-Roman, so barbarians, philosophers, and Christians were often considered
fringe citizens. The imperial
thermae
were dubbed "people's palaces" or "pagan cathedrals." It was the one way that even the poor could share the empire's wealth.
There's no equivalent in today's society.'

God, Garrett was clever. He was a virtual encyclopedia and yet also capable of insightful commentary. And he never sounded
bored with what he was saying, the way professors so often do. I could be happy with a man who possessed Garrett's knowledge,
Kemal's physicality, and Charles's emotional depth, I thought, suddenly realizing the truth of the Russian saying 'A woman
needs three men: one for her mind, one for her body, and one for her heart.'

We stared at our empty beer glasses. 'Do you want to see the Odeon? It's just down the road,' said Garrett.

'I'd love to.' We settled up with Nikos ('Don't leave - it's so early') and strolled down the dark, deserted street past shuttered
souvenir shops. Shortly we came upon a barbed-wire fence with a hole just large enough to accommodate a human body, and we
both climbed through into the Odeon. The theater, a semicircle with at least forty rows of steep seating, was a smaller and
more intimate venue than a coliseum. Here the Romans staged mock naval battles (a favorite Roman entertainment) and the latest
works of the playwrights Terence and Plautus. Garrett and I sat high in the nosebleed seats and stared down at the steppes
of vine-covered farmland. From underneath the stage, a testament to marvelous acoustics, we heard dogs loudly nuzzling each
other.

'Why did the baths die out?' I asked. It seemed an appropriate question in the darkness.

'In the case of the Isthmian bath, and the baths of Rome, for that matter, everything changed in the fifth century. The Roman
Empire's influence, especially in the provinces, was waning. The Goths, Visigoths, and Vandals were attacking from the north
and destroying the aqueduct system in the process. Paganism's end was at hand. Zeus and Hera and the entire Olympian family
went into exile, and the Christian Church began demanding a lot more than hecatombs of cattle from its subjects. The church
mandated a certain standard of behavior in which bathing nude each afternoon was not a part.'

'The beginning of the Dark Ages,' I offered.

'Exactly,' said Garrett, and he explained that in Isthmia, the Temple of Poseidon and the Roman bath both display unrepaired
cracks, broken pipes, and fire damage from around this time. In fact, the abandonment of the temple and the bath occurred
simultaneously in roughly 400 A.D. The bath-and-banquet lifestyle that the security of the Pax Romana allowed was a thing
of the past.

Conversation had at last exhausted itself. Tomorrow would be a long day on-site. We headed back up the hill, stopping to peer
through the barbed wire protecting the other side of the Korinthian site. The moon bathed the forty-foot Corinthian columns
in dim yellow light. We listened to the crickets hiding in the flowers and inhaled rich bouquets of honeysuckle.