place this, compared with the Roman thermae!' said Lepidus,
disdainfully.

'Yet is there some taste in the ceiling,' said Glaucus, who was in a
mood to be pleased with everything; pointing to the stars which studded
the roof.

Lepidus shrugged his shoulders, but was too languid to reply.

They now entered a somewhat spacious chamber, which served for the
purposes of the apodyterium (that is, a place where the bathers prepared
themselves for their luxurious ablutions). The vaulted ceiling was
raised from a cornice, glowingly colored with motley and grotesque
paintings; the ceiling itself was paneled in white compartments bordered
with rich crimson; the unsullied and shining floor was paved with white
mosaics, and along the walls were ranged benches for the accommodation
of the loiterers. This chamber did not possess the numerous and
spacious windows which Vitruvius attributes to his more magnificent
frigidarium. The Pompeians, as all the southern Italians, were fond of
banishing the light of their sultry skies, and combined in their
voluptuous associations the idea of luxury with darkness. Two windows
of glass alone admitted the soft and shaded ray; and the compartment in
which one of these casements was placed was adorned with a large relief
of the destruction of the Titans.

In this apartment Fulvius seated himself with a magisterial air, and his
audience gathering round him, encouraged him to commence his recital.

The poet did not require much pressing. He drew forth from his vest a
roll of papyrus, and after hemming three times, as much to command
silence as to clear his voice, he began that wonderful ode, of which, to
the great mortification of the author of this history, no single verse
can be discovered.

By the plaudits he received, it was doubtless worthy of his fame; and
Glaucus was the only listener who did not find it excel the best odes of
Horace.

The poem concluded, those who took only the cold bath began to undress;
they suspended their garments on hooks fastened in the wall, and
receiving, according to their condition, either from their own slaves or
those of the thermae, loose robes in exchange, withdrew into that
graceful circular building which yet exists, to shame the unlaving
posterity of the south.

The more luxurious departed by another door to the tepidarium, a place
which was heated to a voluptuous warmth, partly by a movable fireplace,
principally by a suspended pavement, benea