There are essentially two threads to be addressed here, the disappearance of the Roman thermae and the emergence of the hammam.

Roman thermae became a central component of Rominitas, "Romanism", the cultural components by which Romans defined themselves^1. They were modelled after early Hellenestic baths within the gymnasium complexes, which would also form the basis for the bathing rituals practiced throughout the Roman empire. Pompeii's Forum Baths, some of the best-preserved examples of thermae, illustrate the complexity of those rituals, sequencing cold and hot baths punctuated by heated rooms to mute the shock of transition. The public baths, thermae, in contrast to the smaller bathhouses balnea (privately-owned but accessible to the public), were massive infrastructure projects. The Baths of Diocletian, built near the summit of the Viminal in Rome, could hold up to 3,000 bathers, according to Olympiodorus, although this figure has since come under question. Nevertheless, the project was ambitious enough that the water supply of the entire city was augmented under the order of Diocletian. Around the end of the 4th century AD, 19 aqueducts supplied 11 thermae, 965 balnea and 1,352 fountains, according to building catalogs.

Despite these efforts, concerns persisted nonetheless about the salubrity of the baths. Even with the extensive works to supply water, it was not renewed sufficiently often, and Celsus, a Roman encyclopaedist, recommended against bathing with open wounds to avoid contracting gangrene. With the fall of the Roman Empire, the aqueducts fell in disrepair, or were deliberately sabatoged, as when the Ostrogoths besieged Rome in 537. The thermae were abandoned to disuse. Similarly in Constantinople, as political and military pressures mounted over the next centuries, public bathing transformed from a frequent and accessible luxury to a rare and unjustifiable expense.

Public bathing thus disappeared from Rome and Greece because the hegemonic empire that supported the underlying infrastructure all but collapsed. However, the spirit of the thermae would live on through the hammam.

The first hammams were built modelled on the thermae that had existed in Roman colonies in North Africa, but adapted to the needs of Islamic culture. The spiritual requirements to perform ablutions, wudu, the partial cleaning of face, arms, head and feet, or ghusl, the full cleaning of the body, helped propel their spread throughout the Muslim conquest of the Middle East. Their adoption was not uncontroversial, initial objections addressing whether they were clean enough to allow proper purification, and around sexual practices that might arise within. Nonetheless, Islamic bathers usually bathed in running water, dispelling some of the early Roman concerns around stagnant squalor. With the Turkification of Anatolia following the Battle of Mazikert in 1071, the swirling blend of cultures, Turkic, East Roman and Persian, further influenced the rise of bath culture in what would become Ottoman society. With Constantinople becoming Istanbul, the Ottomans constructed monumental hammams such as the Çemberlitaş Hamamı or the Hagia Sophia Hurrem Sultan Bathhouse, restoring the glory and sumptuousness of Byzantine bathing culture. As the Romans did, the Ottomans exported the hammams throughout their empire, including Hungary, where there persist to this day Turkish baths built in the 16th century.

Heiken, G., Funiciello, R., De Rita, D., The seven hills of Rome, Princeton University Press

Rautman M. L., Daily Life in the Byzantine Empire, Greenwood Press

Fagan G, Bathing in Public in the Roman World, University of Michigan Press

Erdoğan, N., Alik, B., T. Akarsu, Hikmet, The Ottoman-Turkish Hamams in Urban History and Culture in Balkan Countries, 14th International Conference in "Standardization, Prototypes, and Quality: A Means of Balkan Countries' Collaboration

Kuban, D., Ottoman Architecture, Antique Collectors' Club

^1: It should be noted that the usage of the word is fairly anachronistic, being uncommon in classical Roman sources, and was first used by Tertullian, a Christian author from Carthage

Public baths, hammams, were popular when i was a Peace Corps volunteer in Tunisia in the mid-1970s. Most homes had very limited bathing or shower facilities, usually just sinks, and weekly visits to the hammam were normal. By the time of my last visit in the early 1990s, Tunisia had become a middle income countey. Far more people could afford houses with bathrooms equipped with showers and tubs. Whether people found it more convenient to bathe at home, or more prestigious, use of hammams declined. However, the hammam experience was an important social experience, a time for exchange of news ( gossip) as well as storytelling and other experiences that brought people together. I found it rather sad.