Baiae

Name

Baiae was said to have been named after Baius (Greek: Βαῖος, Baîos), the helmsman of Odysseus's ship in Homer's Odyssey, who was supposedly buried nearby. The adjacent "Baian Gulf" (Latin: Sinus Baianus) was named after the town. It now forms the western part of the Gulf of Pozzuoli.

The settlement was also mentioned in 178 BC under the name Aquae Cumanae ("Cumaean Waters").

History

Baiae was built on the Cumaean Peninsula in the Phlegraean Fields, an active volcanic area. It perhaps originally developed as the port for Cumae. The bathhouses of Baiae were filled with warm mineral water directed to its pools from underground sulfur springs. Roman engineers were also able to construct a complex system of chambers that channeled underground heat into facilities that acted as saunas. In addition to their recreational function, the baths were used in Roman medicine to treat various illnesses and physicians would attend their patients at the springs.

Baiae was particularly fashionable towards the end of the Roman Republic. Marius, Lucullus, and Pompey all frequented it. Julius Caesar had a villa there, and much of the town became imperial property under Augustus. With its large swimming pools and domed casino, it continued to be a getaway for the elite. Nero had a notable villa constructed in the middle of the 1st century and Hadrian died at his in AD 138. It was also a favorite spot of the emperor Septimius Severus. The resorts sometimes capitalized on their imperial associations: Suetonius mentions in his history that the cloak, brooch, and gold bulla given to the young Tiberius by Pompey's daughter Pompeia Magna were still on display around AD 120.

According to Suetonius, in AD 39, Baiae was the location for a stunt by the eccentric emperor Caligula to answer the astrologer Thrasyllus's prediction that he had "no more chance of becoming emperor than of riding a horse across the Gulf of Baiae". Caligula ordered a 3-mile-long pontoon bridge to be built from impounded ships of the area, fastened together and weighted with sand, stretching from Baiae to the neighboring port of Puteoli. Clad in a gold cloak, he then crossed it upon a horse. Cassius Dio's Roman History also includes the event, with the detail that the emperor ordered resting places and lodging rooms with potable water erected at intervals along the bridge. As late as the 18th century, scattered fragments were still being shown to tourists as the "Bridge of Caligula". Malloch has argued that Suetonius's account was likely colored by his bias against Caligula; instead, he claims that “the act of bridging the Bay of Naples was an excellent—and safe—means by which to lay the foundation for [Caligula’s] military glory.”

Baiae was notorious for the hedonistic lifestyle of its residents and guests. In 56 BC, the prominent socialite Clodia was condemned by the defense at the trial of Marcus Caelius Rufus as living as a harlot in Rome and at the "crowded resort of Baiae", indulging in beach parties and long drinking sessions. An elegy by Sextus Propertius written in the Augustan Age describes it as a "den of licentiousness and vice". In the 1st century, "Baiae and Vice" formed one of the moral epistles written by Seneca the Younger; he described it as a "vortex of luxury" and a "harbor of vice".

It never attained municipal status, being administered throughout by nearby Cumae. Under the later Roman Empire, Baiae also formed part of Port Julius, the base of the western fleet of the Roman Navy.

Baiae was sacked during the barbarian invasions and again by Muslim raiders in the 8th century. It was deserted owing to recurrent malaria by 1500, but Pietro di Toledo erected a castle, Castello di Baja, in the 16th century.

Because the coast subsided, largely due to local volcanic activity, most of Baiae is now under water in the Bay of Naples.

The site has occasionally revealed Roman sculptures. The Aphrodite of Baiae, a variant of the Venus de Medici, was supposedly excavated there sometime before 1803, when the English antiquary Thomas Hope began displaying it in his gallery on Duchess Street in London. A cache of plaster casts of Hellenistic sculptures was discovered in the cellar of the Baths of Sosandra at Baiae; they are now displayed at the town's archaeological museum. The collection includes parts of several famous sculptures, including Athens's Harmodius and Aristogeiton and the Athena of Velletri. It suggests that the area had a workshop mass-producing marble or bronze copies of Greek art for the Italian market.

Ruins

The most remarkable ruins are those colloquially known as the Temple of Mercury, the Temple of Venus, and the Temple of Diana, which were traditionally credited to some of the more famous residents of the towns' villas.

The town's misnamed "Temple of Mercury" is now known as the Temple of Echo, after the acoustical properties of its 21.5 m (71 ft) diameter dome, the largest in the world prior to the construction of Rome's Pantheon in AD 128.

Some of the items excavated on site are preserved at the town's archaeological museum, the Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei (Phlegraean Fields Archaeological Museum).

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