Bathing Beauties. Hygiene, Hydrotherapy, and the Female Nude: An Early Hellenistic Bronze Case-Mirror from Elis

A Greek bronze case-mirror showing four naked young women showering under a waterfall in a rocky landscape, discovered in a late 4th-century grave at Stafidokampos near the ancient city of Elis, and published by Xeni Arapoyanni in 1999, raises a number of questions about women’s health, hygiene, and personal care in early Hellenistic Greece. After remarks on the scene’s embossing or toreutic technique, its origins and typology are discussed and its participants identified with the aid of Pausanias, who visited the area around 170 CE. They are the Ionides, four nymphs worshiped at a healing spring that fed into the river Kytheros at Eleian Herakleia, about fifty stades from Olympia. Presumably this mirror was specially crafted to market to women seeking a cure there, and was bought by or for the occupant of the grave in which it was found. Analysis in July 2016 of the associated human remains revealed that they belonged to an adult female about 30-35 years old and a child about 10. The woman’s skeleton shows that she suffered from a chronic inflammatory joint disease, possibly rheumatoid arthritis. The resulting pain and swelling of her joints evidently drove her to the Ionides’ spring in search of a cure. At the very least, the warm water would have eased her joint pain and given her some relief from her symptoms.