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Hershel Shanks

SUDS FOR THE SAINT. Just outside the walls of Hierapolis, along the processional way leading up to the martyrium, excavators discovered another, smaller octagonal building, which they identified as a bathhouse. Because it lacked the usual palaestra area for exercise and instead included numerous terra-cotta eulogiae (sacred mementos) bearing crosses and images of St. Philip, the excavators concluded that this was a ritual bathhouse for pilgrims to purify themselves before continuing up to the holy site of the martyrium.