The Greek bath was a revivifying experience not limited to the bath tub. A hot bath was prepared at home with boiling water from a copper cauldron steaming on an open fire and cool well water, usually followed by anointing with olive oil, a clean tunic and a relaxing meal. Oil was applied to counteract the effects of the searing sun, and prevent stiffness after drying off. Bathing in the ocean was a popular activity thought to calm the nerves. Over time, bathing took on an almost ritual significance, so much so that Greek literature quite often warns against it becoming a public custom, even though it was a widely practiced private one.

Public baths
The style of bathing practiced by the Spartans (around 750 B.C.) was done in cold water only. This approach represented a frugal philosophy toward the body. On the other side were the Greek upper class, who followed the immoderate tradition of past aristocrats. Greek philosopher Plato (427—347 BC) provides the necessary perspective. During his time, he wrote, hot bathing was a privilege reserved for the kings and their aristocratic court. During the ensuing three or four centuries, the growing number of high-class citizens in Greek society emulated their royal habits. It was from these social habits of the Greeks that the Romans inherited their love of the bath.

It was in the loutron of the Greek gymnasium that washing and bathing took place. This was an open-air space, and exclusively used for this purpose. Roman vase paintings depict scenes from the loutron involving men and women (although not together) showering, washing, rubbing, scraping their skin with strigils, and anointing each other. The loutron was nearly always a cold-water bathing room.

Later, during the Roman era, hot bathing became available. The concamerata sudatio, laconicum and calda lavatio were specialized rooms added to the gymnasium as hot baths rose in popularity. These were, respectively, a wet-steam room, dry-steam room and warm bathing room.

The first Greek gymnasiums did not have bathing facilities, as they were civic facilities devoted primarily to academic and institutional purposes. Many of the original Greek gymnasiums were later renovated to include hot-water facilities such as those mentioned above. Bathing facilities during the early Greek period were, when they were built, made separate from the gymnasium and were usually public baths. Greek literature provides evidence of sharp criticism aimed at Greek youth who spent their time chit-chatting at the public baths instead of exercising at the gymnasium. Slowly, though, the heated baths at public facilities and the gymnasium replaced the home bath and its ritual was lost.

The aleipterion, well-known within the first Roman bath facilities, were dry, heated rooms also used in the early days of the Greek gymnasium. It was here that warm-oil massage was given after exercise in the gymnasium. Architectural historians studying Greek and Roman baths believe the Greek aleipterion served as the prototype for the technologically advanced facilities made later for heated rooms and hot-water bathing by the Romans.

Massage at the baths
At one time there were actually three sites where baths were found, that is, after bathing in one's home had been virtually replaced by the other facilities. Along with the baths associated with the gymnasiums and the public baths, which became more and more popular as thermal technology advanced, were baths in the religious sanctuaries of ancient Greece. Hot-bath facilities are said to have existed in these locations as early as 600 B.C. These were not, however, extravagant bathing facilities. They were small, windowless rooms with charcoal heaters and poor ventilation. The earliest baths are known to have used red-hot rocks for heating and steam making. Thermal-heating systems developed during the ensuing five or six centuries became efficient and technically advanced. No evidence has been found which might point to massage being offered at the sanctuary baths, although anointing with oil was a common ritual practice, even with priests and pilgrims who visited these places.

Some evidence from architectural remains points to a table made of marble, slate or other stone, being used for massage. It seems evident that Greek baths, even the later ones which were quite large and palatial, provided massage within the steam rooms, hot-bath rooms, or the lounge areas where skin scraping and anointing with oil and powder were offered. Some earlier baths contained tubs that were only a few feet deep, with steps leading out of the water or ledges along their sides. Perhaps the aliptae, as the slave massager was called, worked on patrons while they were standing in the water or sitting or lying on the ledges or steps as well.

Towels were commonly used and taken to the bath. One school boy’s notebook tells about how he grabs his towel, follows his slave and meets up with his friends on the way to the bath. Towels were also used to apply friction by rubbing the body with them; the course texture of the towel reddened the body, after which oil was applied for remedial purposes.

Greek anatripsis
It was the Greeks who first took the idea of exercise to its highest form. Greek physicians were well-schooled in all the magico-religious cures, but found them inconsistent with the emerging new philosophies of rational thought. Hippocrates was the first to separate the physician from the historical roots of cosmological speculator and philosopher of nature. Hippocrates narrowed the focus of the physician away from magic, ritual and speculation to strictly medicine marked by keen observation, logical thought, principles of diagnosis and treatment and a humble relationship with the patient.

Hippocrates used the word anatripsis to designate the process of rubbing. Douglas Graham, M.D.,  cites the following quote from writings attributed to Hippocrates: "The physician must be experienced in many things, but assuredly also in rubbing (his word, anatripsis)." The complete text containing this quote is said by Graham to be "the earliest definite information about massage."

Hippocrates described anatripsis as stroking the extremities upward (toward the heart) and returning with a light stroke back up again to push the venous and lymph upward toward the heart. These strokes could be hard, soft or moderate, depending on the condition of the tissues and the effect desired.

Graham comments, “The observations of Hippocrates must have been very accurate to discern that rubbing upward in the case of the limbs had a more favorable effect than rubbing downward, and doubtless in this manner he had experience in promoting the resorption of effusions; for it is now well known that upward friction on the limbs favors the return of the circulation, relieves blood stasis, and makes more room in the veins and lymphatics for the carrying away of morbid products. This affords an illustration of ‘science following art with limping pace,’ which so frequently happens in the practice of medicine.”

This simple description of anatripsis by Hippocrates appears to be nothing more than effleurage, except when we keep in mind the variety of hand directions given by Claudius Galenus (Galen). He writes, "The rubbings should be of many sorts, with strokes and circuits of the hands, carrying them not only from above down and from below up, but also subvertically, obliquely, transversely and subtransversely ... But I direct that the strokes and circuits of the hands should be made of many sorts, in order that so far as possible all the muscle fibers should be rubbed in every direction."

Massage, or rubbings, were also performed in Greek culture during the time of Hippocrates as part of the ritual preparation for incubation or temple sleep, whereby the ailing person would sleep in the temple and dream that the mythical god Aesculpius and his daughters Hygiea and Panacea would appear to cure him.