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Baiae
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Baiae (in modern Italian only Baia) is a frazione of the comune of Bacoli, in the Campania region of Italy on the Bay of Naples.
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Baiae (in modern Italian only Baia) is a frazione of the comune of Bacoli, in the Campania region of Italy on the Bay of Naples. It was named after Baius, who was supposedly buried there. It was for several hundred years a fashionable coastal resort, especially towards the end of the period of the Roman Republic. Baiae was even more popular than Pompeii, Naples, and Capri with the super-rich, notorious for the hedonistic temptations on offer, and for rumors of scandal and corruption. Baiae was an integral part of Portus Julius, home port of the western Imperial Fleet of ancient Rome. Baiae was sacked by Muslim raiders in the 8th century AD and was deserted because of malaria in 1500. Most of Baiae is now under water in the Bay of Naples, largely due to local volcanic activity.
Baiae's medicinal springs
Excavations at the ancient site of Baiae show that the city was arguably host to the most important region for thermo-mineral bathing in antiquity. Baiae had been built on the Cumaean peninsula, which was an active volcanic area, known as the Phlegraean Fields (fields devoured by fire). Baiae consisted of numerous baths, filled with warm mineral water directed to pools from sulfur springs underground. Roman engineers were even able to construct a complex system of chambers that channeled heat beneath the land’s surface into bathing facilities that acted as saunas. However, these baths were not only used for relaxation purposes—they were also often used as medicinal remedies to various illnesses. It is noted that Roman physicians would often attend to their patients at these hot springs as well.
One of the bathing complexes on the hillside included the Temple of Echo (erroneously, since the seventeenth century, also called the Temple of Mercury) housing a pool. The building was so named due to the way that sound echoed around the dome which, at about 21.5 m (71 ft) in diameter, was the largest dome in the world until the construction of the Pantheon in Rome in 128CE.
Baiae as a resort
The topographical wonders of Baiae, along with the help of Roman engineers, made the city a perfect candidate for a resort for the ultra wealthy. Many elaborate villas were built in Baiae, including those of Julius Caesar and Nero. In fact, a large part of the town became imperial property under Augustus and later emperors—it was often a getaway for the elite with its large swimming pools and its domed casino. It was at his villa near Baiae that the Emperor Hadrian died in AD 138.
Reference to Baiae in modern literature
One of the few references to Baiae in modern literature is the short story "The Procurator of Judea" (original French title "Le Procurateur de Judée") by Anatole France (1902).
In Procurator of Judea, the by-then aged and retired Pontius Pilate is shown spending time at the seaside resort of Baiae. One day, he had a chance meeting with Aelius Lamia, a fellow-Roman and old acquaintance of his time in Judea. They discuss the characteristics and eccentricities of Jewish people. Pilate is very harsh in his assessment of them while Lamia is sympathetic. The discussion is long but we find no mention of the Messiah affair. Before the story climaxes, Jesus is mentioned just once, without naming, as just some mad fellow who took upon himself the task of driving merchants out of the Jerusalem temple. Towards the end, the pleasure-loving Lamia spoke of a bewitching Judean beauty with liquid-fire eyes and supple hips (perhaps Mary Magdalene), later rumored to have joined a little band of men and women following a young preacher from Galilee called Jesus the Nazarene who was later crucified for some crime or other.
In Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ode to the West Wind," stanza III includes the line: "Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay."
Baiae is the site of a murder in the mystery Under the Shadow of Vesuvius by John Maddox Roberts, one of his SPQR series, featuring Decius Caecilius Metellus.
The Roman emperor Hadrian makes several trips to the Baiae, including his last, in Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian.
Baiae as a sculpture workshop
A cache of plaster casts of Hellenistic sculpture has been found in a cellar room of the Baths of Sosandra at Baiae and is now on display in the Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei at Baiae. It suggests a workshop mass-producing marble or bronze copies of Hellenistic and Greek sculptures for the Roman market from bronze original sculptures. These casts include parts of many famous sculptures such as the Harmodius and Aristogeiton. and the Athena of Velletri.
Bibliography
- Paolo Amalfitano et alii, I Campi Flegrei, Venice 1990.
- Fabio Maniscalco, Ninfei ed edifici marittimi severiani del Palatium imperiale di Baia, Naples, 1997.
- Piero Alfredo Gianfrotta, Fabio Maniscalco (eds.), Forma Maris. Forum Internazionale di Archeologia Subacquea, Puteoli, 1998.
- "Puteoli. Studi di Storia Romana."
- Steven Saylor: Fiction. Arms of Nemesis (1992). Novel about roman detective Gordianus the Finder, unfolds in Baiae, at the time of the Spartacus rebellion.
See also
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