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Event details

installation	Baths of Zeuxippos
name	Baths of Zeuxippos – Construction
event type	Construction
start date	196
end date	196
date comments	Date after Müller-Wiener, 1977, p. 52.
persons	Septimius Severus - Founder (193-211)
description	Byzantion was razed to the ground for supporting Septimius Severus' opponent Pescennius Niger in the Year of the Five Emperors (193 CE). When Severus visited Byzantion years after, he decided to rebuild the city, including the baths of Zeuxippos. The origin of the name of the baths varies per author. According to Hesychius (6th century), it was because it was located close to the altar of Zeus Hippios, which was the grove of Herakles who tamed the horses of Diomedes (hence the name 'Zeuxippos'). Lydus (6th century, contemporary of Hesychius) recounts the origin of the bath after describing its damage in the Nika riot of 532. He claims that the forum also bore the name Zeuxippus, after King Zeuxippus who led the Megarians to Byzantion. He contrasts the name Zeuxippos of the Forum to that of Severus ("...a commander of the Romans"). Instead of referring to the destruction of Byzantion as a consequence of the civil war with Niger, Lydus claims Severus built the bath during the war for himself as he struggled with "an illness of the joints". According to Malalas (6th century), it was named after a bronze statue of Helios in the middle of the Tetrastoon. The statue carried an inscription 'To the horse-yoking (Zeuxippos) god'. These details are copied in the Chronicon Paschale (7th century). According to the Suida (10th century), Severus expropriated property to build the Hippodrome. The Zeuxippos baths were built in the temple of Zeus. Lydus (6th century), Chronicon Paschale (7th century) and the Parastaseis Syntomoi Chronikai (8th century) all maintain that the baths bore the name of Severus, its original founder.
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Literature connected to this Event

#	Code	Page	Excerpt
1	Chronicon Paschale 641 Krausmüller	221	(Dindorf 494-95) And when after many years Severus came from Rome to Byzantium in this year of his reign he saw that the setting of the city was beautiful and he rebuilt the city of Byzos and founded in it the public bath (demosion loutron) named 'Zeuxippos' and there stood in the middle of the Tetrastoon a brazen statue of Helios and underneath it he wrote the name of Helios Zeuxippos. The Thracians call the place 'Helios' whereas the people from the city of Byzantium themselves call the same 'Zeuxippian public bath' after the name that the place had before and they no longer, as the emperor had said, call it after his own name 'Severian'.
2	Hesychius 550	221	(Hesychius 37) When the wrath of Severus had abated they reverted to greater beauty after he had erected for them at great cost a huge bath by the altar of Zeus Hippios, that is, the so-called grove of Herakles (where they say that he tamed the horses of Diomedes and then named the place Zeuxippos). And he sumptuously erected also the place for racecourses that was next to it.
3	Lydus 550	245	(On the Magistracies 3.70) (On the Nika of January 532) ... the multitude rebelled and, having united in one ill-starred design, burned almost the entire city. And the Cappadocian disappeared, but the fire got its start at the gates of the court. Then from there it spread to the First Temple. From the latter it leapt to the council-house of Julian called Senatus after the Assembly Hall of Augustus. From this it proceeded to the forum called Zeuxippus after King Zeuxippus, under whom, in the thirty-eighth Olympiad, Megarians who had emigrated to Byzantium called the forum thus in his honour, just as the Megarians who had colonized Cyzicus named the Arcades of Charidemus after him. The latter, too, is mentioned as having reigned over the Greeks, as Castor recorded in his Epitome of Annals. As for the public bath, it was named Severeum after Severus, a commander of the Romans, who, because he was afflicted with an illness of the joints, had the bath built for himself while he was tarrying in Thrace on account of his dispute with Niger. When structures of such grandeur had been turned into flames, the colonnades which lined the city all the way up to the Forum of Constantine and shaded the broad street with graceful contours by the beauty and size of their columns were inescapably caught up.
4	Malalas 565	155	(Chronicle 12.20) When Severus came to Byzantion and found that the situation of the city was good, he restored Byzoupolis and built a public Bath known as the Zeuxippon because a bronze statue of Helios (the sun) stood there in the middle of the Tetrastoon. On its base was inscribed the mystic name of the sun, 'To the horse-yoking (Zeuxippos) god', for that is what the Thracians called the sun. So the people of the city of Byzas used to call the public bath Zeuxippon after the original name of the place, and they no longer used the name Severium which the emperor had given it after himself. The emperor Severus added the public bath, which he built, to the Tetrastoon, in the middle of which stood the statue of Helios.
5	Malalas 565	174	(Chronicle 13.8) Likewise he completed the public bath known as the Zeuxippon, and decorated it with columns and marbles of many colours and bronze statues. He had found the public bath unfinished; it had been begun formerly by the emperor Severus.
6	Müller-Wiener 1977	51
7	Parastaseis Syntomoi Chronikai 829	153	(Parastaseis Syntomoi Chronikai 73) The Zeuxippus bath is called Severus, for it was built by Severus (193-211). Together with this he undertook the first foundation of the Hippodrome in a short space of time.
8	Suda 976	221	Severus ... bought houses and gardens from some brothers who were orphans and cut down the trees around the hippodrome and arranged it in the shape that is now seen, having added to it also a bath in the temple of Zeus, which was called 'Zeuxippon'.