For the Roman, bathing was a social event. Public baths, in fact, were one of the few places where large numbers of Romans gathered daily in an informal context.

This book is the first to study the Roman public bathing experience primarily as a historical, social, and cultural phenomenon rather than a technological or architectural one. The focus here is on the bathers not the baths.

Fagan reconstructs what a trip to a Roman bath was like, and he asks when and why the baths became popular at Rome, who built and maintained the abundant bathing establishments, what the physical environment was like, what the social components of the bathing experience were, and what the sociological function of the baths was in the Roman empire's rigidly hierarchical social order.

Since comparative evidence from other bathing cultures is also employed, it will be of interest to social anthropologists and historical sociologists.