The Suburban Baths are a building in Pompeii, Italy, a town in the Italian region of Campania that was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, which consequently preserved it. The Suburban Baths were publicly owned, as were also the Stabian, Forum, and Central baths in the city. They were built in the early empire, possibly under the Emperor Tiberius, much later than the others and thus were located outside the walls where land was more easily available; by this time the walls had lost their defensive role. The baths also benefitted from the increased supply of running water after the connection of the city to the Aqua Augusta aqueduct in 30–20 BC. The bathhouse was renovated after the earthquake of 62 AD, in which a piscina calida, a heated swimming pool, was added to the north of the complex. They were originally discovered in 1958, much later than the rest of the city, though a systematic excavation had to wait until 1985–1987, which gave us valuable new insights into aspects of social and cultural workings of Roman life in Pompeii. Although publicly owned, these baths seem to have been reserved for a private clientele unlike the other public baths. The building is notable for its surviving erotic wall paintings, the only set of such art found in a public Roman bath house.
Structure
The building was a two-storey structure: the upper floor, as in the Palaestra/Sarno baths, was subdivided into three apartments for rent, with views towards the port and the Bay of Naples through the large glass windows. These rooms may also have provided space for the selling of sexual services. This upper floor was either accessed by a staircase from the floor below or via a door on the Via Marina. The baths were built to a higher standard of luxury and thermal effectiveness than the earlier baths in the town and have many hallmarks of the “newer” bath architecture of the 1st century AD: "single-axis row" type , large windows facing southwest, and an outdoor pool with a fountain. Construction was first limited to the apodyterium, frigidarium, tepidarium, laconicum and calidarium ; the natatio was added later as three rooms, including a nymphaeum with a water cascade, providing an alternative route to the existing one of the tepidarium followed by the calidarium. The entrance to the bathhouse is through a long corridor that leads into the apodyterium. The bathers would also have had access to a latrine, seating between six and eight people. Only one apodyterium has led to speculation by archaeologists that both men and women shared this facility, or that it was male-only or time-shared. The apodyterium contains the erotic wall paintings.
The erotic wall paintings in the Suburban Baths are the only set of such art found in a public Romanbath house. Explicit sex scenes are depicted in these paintings that cannot be easily found in collections of erotic Roman art. As the sexual acts portrayed are all considered "debased" according to the customs of ancient Rome, it is possible that the intention behind their reproduction was to provide a source of humour to visitors of the building. The paintings are located in the apodyterium and each scene is located above a numbered box. These boxes are thought to have functioned as lockers in which bathers put their clothes. It is speculated that the paintings possibly served as way for the bathers to remember the location of their box. The presence of these paintings in a public bathhouse shared by men and women gives some insight into Roman culture and suggests that people would not have found this offensive, and possibly humorous. The images are as follows:
two images showing generic male-female coital scenes
