-shops, on the public
promenade and in the cemeteries. I shall now endeavor to come upon them
in their private life, and, for this end, to peep at them first in a
place which was a sort of intermediate point between the street and the
house. I mean the hot baths, or thermae.

V.

THE THERMAE.

THE HOT BATHS AT ROME.--THE THERMAE OF STABIAE.--A TILT AT SUN
DIALS.--A COMPLETE BATH, AS THE ANCIENTS CONSIDERED IT; THE
APARTMENTS, THE SLAVES, THE UNGUENTS, THE STRIGILLAE.--A SAYING OF
THE EMPEROR HADRIAN.--THE BATHS FOR WOMEN.--THE READING ROOM.--THE
ROMAN NEWSPAPER.--THE HEATING APPARATUS.

The Romans were almost amphibious. They bathed themselves as often as
seven times per diem; and young people of style passed a portion of the
day, and often a part of the night, in the warm baths. Hence the
importance which these establishments assumed in ancient times. There
were eight hundred and fifty-six public baths at Rome, in the reign of
Augustus. Three thousand bathers could assemble in the thermae of
Caracalla, which had sixteen hundred seats of marble or of porphyry. The
thermae of Septimius Severus, situated in a park, covered a space of one
hundred thousand square feet, and comprised rooms of all kinds:
gymnasia, academic halls where poets read their verses aloud, arenas for
gladiators, and even theatres. Let us not forget that the Bull and the
Farnese Hercules, now so greatly admired at Naples, and the masterpieces
of the Vatican, the Torso at the Belvidere, and the Laocoon were found
at the baths.

These immense palatial structures were accessible to everybody. The
price of admission was a _quadrans_, and the _quadrans_ was the fourth
part of an _as_; the latter, in Cicero's time, was worth about one cent
and two mills. Even this charge was afterward abolished. At daybreak,
the sound of a bell announced the opening of the baths. The rich went
there particularly between the middle of the day and sunset; the
dissipated went after supper, in defiance of the prescribed rules of
health. I learn from Juvenal, however, that they sometimes died of it.
Nevertheless, Nero remained at table from noon until midnight, after
which he took warm baths in winter and snow baths in summer.

In the earlier times of the republic there was a difference of hours for
the two sexes. The thermae were monopolized alternately by the men and
the women, who never met there. Modesty was carried so far that the son