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by paintings found in the Thermæ of Titus, on which the denomination of each object is inscribed.

Perfumes used after the bath, were deposited in the Elæotherium or Unctorium, and were contained in small alabaster vases, filled with scented oils, which in fact formed the basis of all perfume'. The finest and most fragrant ointment was brought from Syria, and was I called Nardum. It was not only used after bathing, but sometimes at public entertainments,―a practice to which Horace alludes

The oils of which the Romans made use after bathing, were more pure and valuable than those used before exercise; and the people were so extremely fond of these ointments, that the most popular gift any man could bestow, was a present of oil to the public baths. Stobæus, an ancient Greek author, relates that the servants of Archimedes were obliged, at bathing time, to take him by force from his library table, where he studied mathematical figures with such fixed attention, that he continued drawing diagrams with his fingers on his anointed body, while his servants were pouring ointments upon him, and preparing him for the bath.-Lord Orrery's Essay on the Life of Pliny.

in the ode to Quintius, 11th of his second

book:

While Assyrian essence sheds

Liquid fragrance on our heads,

While we lie with roses crown'd,

Let the cheerful bowl go round.—Francis. 1

The furnaces for heating the baths stood in the Hypocaustum, a place of some extent; and being surmounted by several large vessels of

I With this particular sort of ointment,-called also unguentum spicatum, from the pointed leaves of the aromatic plant of which it was made,-Jesus Christ was anointed, in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat. St. Mark, chap. xiv. verse 5. It had been kept in a box of alabaster; which accords with Horace's invitation to Virgil ;

Virgil, 'tis thine with noble youths to feast,

Yet since the thirsty season calls for wine,
Would you a cup of generous Bacchus taste,
Bring you the odours, and a cask is thine.
Thy little box of spikenard shall produce
A mighty cask that in the cellar lies;

Big with large hopes shall flow th' inspiring juice,
Powerful to soothe our griefs and raise our joys.
Francis, ode 12, book 4.

I

bronze, by that means served to impart the requisite degree of heat to the water. The first vessel most distant from the furnace received the water from a general reservoir, and conveyed it either to the hot or cold baths, to modify the degree of temperature the bathers might require. The second, which only received a part of the heat of the furnace, supplied the Tepidarium. The third vessel stood immediately over the fire, and emptied itself into the adjoining Caldarium. Heated steam was circulated, by means of tubes concealed under the pavement and all round the room in the thickness of the wall, till it found a vent in the Laconicum'.

The Romans had also their separate winter baths, divided, like the others, into hot and tepid, cold ones not being at that season required. All the adjoining corridors and dependent rooms were then properly warmed

1 See the baths in the suburban villa of Pompeii, of which views will be found in Mazois' Ruines de Pompeii, vol. ii.

by heated tubes; and, like those attached to the summer baths, were adorned with pictures, statues, bronze lamps, and vessels of silver and of gilt earthenware. Seneca compares the baths of Scipio Africanus, at his villa of Liternum, with the magnificence of the public baths of the city of Rome, long before the stupendous Thermæ of Antoninus and Diocletian were erected1. Gibbon, the historian of Rome, writing of the public baths, affirms, on the authority of Olympiodorus, that those of Antoninus Caracalla contained above sixteen hundred seats of marble, and that more than three thousand were reckoned in the baths of Diocletian. The walls of the lofty apartments, according to his authority, were covered with curious mosaics, that imitated the art of the pencil in the elegance of design and the variety of colours: the Egyptian granite was beautifully encrusted with the precious green marble of Numidia. A perpetual stream of hot water

Epist. 86.

was poured into capacious basins through many wide mouths of bright and massy silver, displaying a scene of pomp and luxury which might excite the envy of the kings of Asia'. Wilkins, in his translation of Vitruvius, says there is perhaps no instance remaining of Roman baths which will so well illustrate the description Vitruvius gives of them, as those at Baden in Germany; and his erudite work contains a plan copied from that by Rode in the Berlin edition of the same author. The baths described by Vitruvius were buildings of much less importance than the celebrated Thermæ of Domitian, Antoninus, and Diocletian, which contained not only apartments for bathing, but likewise Exhedræ, Xysta, and every other part of a Greek Palestra2.

1 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. xxxi.

2 Civil Architecture of Vitruvius p. 195. The description of the baths of Baden by Poggio in a letter to Niccoli, exhibits an interesting picture of a fashionable watering-place of the fifteenth century.-Shepherd's Life of Poggio Bracciolini, p. 67.

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