Reflections on Water, Its Use, and Its Meaning for Society from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period

This review of The Nature and Function of Water, Baths, Bathing, and Hygiene from Antiquity through the Renaissance, edited by Cynthia Kosso and Anne Scott, considers the wider context for the nature and function of water reflected in previous scholarship for Rome and elsewhere, and then highlights some of the major ideas from a small selection of the more nuanced essays in the volume. These papers provide a significant contribution to water studies, not so much for the questions that are answered as for the expanded boundaries of the inquiry. While the history of water requires further research, this volume has done much to inform us on such issues as gender roles and water usage; attitudes, practices, and innovations in baths and bathing; water and the formation of identity and policy; ancient and medieval water sources and resources; and water imagery in religious and literary texts.