Glanum - The Residential Quarter and The Roman Baths

The Residential Quarter and The Roman Baths

The northern part of Glanum, at the bottom of the sloping site, was the residential quarter, the site of villas and of the extensive Roman baths. The baths were the center of social life, and helped serve to Romanize the local population.

• The Roman baths were built in about 75 B.C.. Later, during the reign of Lucius Verus (161-169 A.D.) they were rebuilt and the stone was clad with marble. Modest in size, they consisted of a pelastre, an open-air exercise area surrounded by an arcade of columns; a hall with cold baths; and two halls heated by a hypercaust, by which hot air was circulated under the rooms through brick channels. One was a hot air sweating room or laconicum; and the other was a caldarium, or hall with hot baths, including a masonry bathing pool. On the south, next to the pelastre, was a large swimming pool. Water was fed into the pool through the mouth of a stone theatrical mask.

• Hellenistic residences. The quarter contains the ruins of several villas and residences in the Greek style, pre-dating the Roman city. Between the baths and the forum was a house with a Doric peristyle, and another, called the House of Capricorn, with two surviving sections of mosaic floors, one section featuring a capricorn surrounded by four dolphins.

• The Market and the Temple of Cybele. Near the residences was a pre-Roman marketplace, surrounded by Doric columns, with four small shops on the west side. In Roman times half of the marketplace as transformed into a small temple to the Bona Dea, a goddess of the oracle, and later to Cybele. In springtime the priestesses of Cybele brought a sacred pine into the sanctuary, symbolizing the god Atys. In the temple there was also an altar dedicated to the priestess Loreia, with a stone carving of the ears of the goddess. so she could hear prayers.

• The House of the Antae was built in the style of Greek houses around the Mediterranean. A two story house with three wings and a portico of Tuscan columns, built around a small basin of water, fed by rainwater from the roof, which channelled the water into a cistern, then into the drains which ran under the pavement of the street. It is named after two fluted antae that line its doorway.

• The House of Atys (2nd century B.C.) was named for the castrated lover of Cybele, because of a marble relief of Atys that was found in the ruins. It had an atrium with a shallow basin, or impluvium, in the center. It had a well with a curbstone lip, stone benches, and was richly built. It was probably a schola, a reception hall for the college of Dendrophores, associated with the neighboring temple.