The Romans at the spa: care, health and fashion [part 1]
With the Romanization, another fundamental aspect of the thermal water acquires importance: its beneficial and curative power is somehow detached from the strictly religious sphere and turns into promising economic “business”, as happens to Fons Aponi, but also in other renowned spa towns in Italy and in the provinces of the Roman Empire.
Thermal water becomes a resource to be exploited, both for its health and curative value as well as for the pure enjoyment or psycho-physical well-being: towns such as Baia in Phlegraean Fields, or the Euganean district became renowned tourist-curative resorts, well known in ancient literature.
In Baia, literary sources report the fashionable habit of the Roman middle-class who spent periods in complete relaxation, the so-called otia baiana, away from the burden of daily activities and often also from the rules of civil life. In the Roman imperial era, luxury, promiscuity and freedom became a way of life that was called mos baianum. It was a special place where people went occasionally just to enjoy themselves.
The same thing probably happened in Montegrotto: more and more new visitors arrived, no longer attracted by the mere presence of the Sanctuary of Aponus, but by the different organization of the structures aimed at providing customers with hospitality and well-being.
The landscape quickly changed and the numerous springs were systematically exploited with a number of facilities that were erected without a precise order, but following a simple but functional model: each source was directly connected to one or more tanks by means of tunnels and pipes, while, around them, structures for hospitality and free time, such as a small theater, were built.
The area, particularly between the 1st and 2nd century AD., acquired an increasingly residential aspect and turned into a sort of spa suburb of Patavium, from which it also depended administratively.
Text written by Prof. Paola Zanovello, Department of Ancient Sciences, University of Padua
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