balaneion

English

Etymology

From Ancient Greek βᾰλᾰνεῖον (balaneîon). Doublet of bagnio, bain, and banya.

Noun

balaneion (plural balaneia)

1. An ancient Greek bathhouse.
   • 1910, E[dward] Norman Gardiner, “The Gymnasium and the Palaestra”, in Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals, London: Macmillan and Co., […], pages 479–480:

     But these balaneia had nothing to do with the gymnasia, and are indeed sharply contrasted with them. To frequent them was considered, at all events among old-fashioned folk, to be a sign of effeminacy. Aristophanes bitterly complains that the effect of the new-fashioned education was to empty the wrestling schools and fill the balaneia, and Plato considers hot baths only suitable for the old and feeble.

   • 1990, Inge Nielsen, translated by Peter Crabb, “[The development of baths in Italy] Balaneion”, in Thermae et Balnea: The Architecture and Cultural History of Roman Public Baths, volume I (Text), Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, →ISBN, page 7, columns 1–2:

     The reason that there were originally no publicly owned balaneia in Greece was presumably, again, that they were not really approved of, and that they stole some of the popularity from the gymnasium. But in the Hellenistic period, after the balaneion institution had been accepted as a service provided by the community, it was gradually placed more and more centrally in the town.

   • 2019 December, Allison Smith, “Colonial Waters: An Examination of Bathing Culture in Mid-Republican Colonies”, in Andrea U. De Giorgi, editor, Cosa and the Colonial Landscape of Republican Italy (Third and Second Centuries BCE), Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, →ISBN, page 207:

     Individual hip-baths and tholoi are supplanted by communal immersion tubs or pools that can also be found at balaneia such as Megara Hyblaea, although these communal pools do not appear to be the focal point of Greek style bathing.