The bath of reliefs found at New Tralleis escavations

During the excavations, some of the carved panels that constitute the subject of thisstudy, were discovered as broken and scattered around under the soil and others were found assubstitute materials used in later era?s buildings, or structures. For this reason, the brokenpieces of these carved panels, which decorated the caldarium room of the Empire?s Bath, areclassified among themselves in order to explain general condition of these panels. For thisreason, the focus has been primarily on typological and functional structures of these panels.All of the panels found at Tralleis excavations were made up of white marble with bluepatterns and middle grin. These panels, which look like wall panels, are rectangular in shapeand its edges were surrounded by profiled frames.The panels have been classified in terms of themes that engraved on them: based onthe descriptions, Marine Thiasos and Competition scenes were identified as the two mainthemes, and then these main themes were broken down into their sub-categories, or headings.In Roman art, both in carved sculptures or in small artistic works (Gemme, Cameo,Silver Utensils etc.) or in mosaic floors, it is common to see the marine festival such as Ketos,Hippocampus, Tritons, Marine Cantors, Nereid that were carried by mixed sea creatures likesea-lions, or sea-tigers were portrayed as half-naked with their waving scarves. Based on theexamination of themes on the carved panels found at Tralleis, it is argued that from the scenesof Marine Thiasos iconographically represented nakedness of bath culture, joy of the water,love and peaceful nature of ancient life and mythological image of bodily pleasure for thepeople of the ancient city. In addition, other panels that depicted competition scenes providesnapshots of daily life of ancient people. The presence of these two themes together was oneof most popular tradition on Roman art.