pire.

It would employ me a whole month to describe the thermae or baths, the
vast ruins of which are still to be seen within the walls of Rome, like
the remains of so many separate citadels. The thermae Dioclesianae
might be termed an august academy for the use and instruction of the
Roman people. The pinacotheca of this building was a complete musaeum
of all the curiosities of art and nature; and there were public schools
for all the sciences. If I may judge by my eye, however, the thermae
Antonianae built by Caracalla, were still more extensive and
magnificent; they contained cells sufficient for two thousand three
hundred persons to bathe at one time, without being seen by one
another. They were adorned with all the charms of painting,
architecture, and sculpture. The pipes for convoying the water were of
silver. Many of the lavacra were of precious marble, illuminated by
lamps of chrystal. Among the statues, were found the famous Toro, and
Hercole Farnese.

Bathing was certainly necessary to health and cleanliness in a hot
country like Italy, especially before the use of linen was known: but
these purposes would have been much better answered by plunging into
the Tyber, than by using the warm bath in the thermae, which became
altogether a point of luxury borrowed from the effeminate Asiatics, and
tended to debilitate the fibres already too much relaxed by the heat of
the climate. True it is, they had baths of cool water for the summer:
but in general they used it milk-warm, and often perfumed: they
likewise indulged in vapour-baths, in order to enjoy a pleasing
relaxation, which they likewise improved with odoriferous ointments.

The thermae consisted of a great variety of parts and conveniences; the
natationes, or swimming places; the portici, where people amused
themselves in walking, conversing, and disputing together, as Cicero
says, In porticibus deambulantes disputabant; the basilicae, where the
bathers assembled, before they entered, and after they came out of the
bath; the atria, or ample courts, adorned with noble colonnades of
Numidian marble and oriental granite; the ephibia, where the young men
inured themselves to wrestling and other exercises; the frigidaria, or
places kept cool by a constant draught of air, promoted by the
disposition and number of the windows; the calidaria, where the water
was warmed for the baths; the platanones, or delightful groves of
sycamore; the stadia, for the performance