emi-circular niche, rose the well parapet of which I spoke; it was a
_labrum_, constructed with the public funds. An inscription informs us
that it cost seven hundred and fifty sestertii, that is to say,
something over thirty dollars. Yet this _labrum_ is a large marble
vessel seven feet in diameter. Marble has grown dearer since then.

On quitting the stove, or warm bath, the Pompeians wet their heads in
that large wash-basin, where tepid water which must, at that moment,
have seemed cold, leaped from a bronze pipe still visible. Others still
more courageous plunged into the icy water of the frigidarium, and came
out of it, they said, stronger and more supple in their limbs. I prefer
believing them to imitating them.

Have you had enough of it? Would you leave the heating room? You belong
to the slaves who are waiting for you, and will not let you go. You are
streaming with perspiration, and the _tractator_, armed with a
_strigilla_, or flesh brush, is there to rasp your body. You escape to
the tepidarium; but it is there that the most cruel operations await
you. You belong, as I remarked, to the slaves; one of them cuts your
nails, another plucks out your stray hair, and a third still seeks to
press your body and rasp the skin with his brush, a fourth prepares the
most fearful frictions yet to ensue, while others deluge you with oils
and essences, and grease you with perfumed unguents. You asked just now
what was the use of the tepidarium; you now know, for you have been made
acquainted with the Roman baths.

A word in reference to the unguents with which you have just been
rubbed. They were of all kinds; you have seen the shops where they were
sold. They were perfumed with myrrh, spikenard, and cinnamon; there was
the Egyptian unguent for the feet and legs, the Phoenician for the
cheeks and the breast, and the Sisymbrian for the two arms; the essence
of marjoram for the eyebrows and the hair, and that of wild thyme for
the nape of the neck and the knees. These unguents were very dear, but
they kept up youth and health.

"How have you managed to preserve yourself so long and so well?" asked
Augustus of Pollio.

"With wine inside, and oil outside," responded the old man.

As for the utensils of the baths (a collection of them is still
preserved at the Naples museum on an iron ring), they consisted first of
the strigilla, then of the little bottle or vial of oil, and a sort of
stove called the _scaphium_. All thes