fore two o'clock. The thermae were by a few emperors allowed to be continued open so late as five in the evening. Martial says, that after four o'clock they demanded a hundred quadrantes of those who bathed. This, though a hundred times the usual price, only amounted to about nineteen pence English, or about thirty cents. We learn from the same author, that the baths were opened sometimes earlier than two o'clock. He says, that Nero's baths were exceedingly hot at twelve o'clock, and the steam of the water immoderate. Alexander Severus, to gratify the people in their passion for bathing, not only suffered the thermæ to be opened before break of day, which had never been permitted before, but also furnished the lamps with oil for the convenience of the people. We are told of many citizens of distinction who were in the habit of bathing four, five, and even eight times a-day.

Bathing constituted part of the demonstrations of public rejoicing, equally with the other spectacles, and like them was prohibited when the country suffered under any calamity. They who had been convicted of crime before the tribunals were, also, deprived of the use of the bath. All classes resorted to the baths, and the emperors themselves, such as Titus, Hadrian, and Alexander Severus were occasionally seen among the bathers. The price of admission was very small, amounting to not more than half a cent. In fact, it may be said to have been gratuitous, and hence the Therma were sometimes, as by Cicero (pro Cælio), called Xenia or gift-offerings-to the people.

There was a double suite of apartments in the public baths, one for each sex. In this respect the Romans preserved, at least for some time, more decency than the Lacedemonians, among whom the individuals of the two sexes bathed together promiscuously. Cicero tells us, that fathers could not bathe with their sons, after the latter had attained the age of manhood, nor a man with his sonin-law; and to such an extent was this reserve carried, at the first institution of public baths, that some of these were set apart for the exclusive use of the females. Among the latter, those of Agrippina, the mother of Nero, were in such a style of splendour as to surpass all the rest. In the general increasing corruption of manners, under the emperors, bathing ceased to be used with the reserve im

HEATING WATER ON A LARGE SCALE. 93

posed by modesty; and to such a height had the evil reached, that Hadrian found it necessary to forbid the women, under penalty of repudiation, and the loss of their dowers, from bathing with the men; and to condemn to the punishment of death those of the latter who should dare to enter the baths reserved for the use of the females. These restrictions were removed by Heliogabalus, and renewed by Alexander Severus.

A good picture, in a small compass, of the divisions of a Roman Therma and their several uses, together with that of the various itinerant venders of toys, cakes, comfits, &c., and retailers of news, is presented in the work of M. Dozobrey, Rome au Siecle d'Auguste.

The water required for such lavish use in the eight hundred and fifty-six public baths of Rome, was brought by aqueducts from the springs and streams of the hills, many miles distant from the city. So numerous were these aqueducts, that at one time it was supposed they furnished no less a quantity of water than half a million of hogsheads in the twenty-four hours. At the present day, although many have been destroyed, there remains enough, not only for every domestic purpose, but also for the supply of those numerous and beautiful fountains in which modern Rome excels all other cities.

Mode of Heating the Water in the Large Thermæ. -Nothing, says Cameron, relating to the therma has more exercised the attention of the learned, than the man ner of supplying the great number of bathing vessels made use of in them with warm water. For supposing each cell of Diocletian's baths large enough to contain six people, yet, even at that moderate computation, 18,000 persons might have been bathing at the same time; and as no vestiges remain of any vessels in the thermæ, to give the least foundation for conjecturing in what manner this was performed, it has been generally believed that the method described by Vitruvius was that in use. By the assistance of two sections of the castella of Antoninus given by Piranesi, Cameron thinks that he is able to clear up this mystery and to show that the Romans, from the time of the invention there described, could be under no difficulty in heating the greatest bodies of water that their most extensive thermae required. The following abridged description

will, in connection with the engraving which follows, it is to be hoped, convey a general idea of the contrivances resorted to in the great public baths of Rome for heating water on a large scale.

CASTELLUM OF A GREAT BATH.

95

The water from the aqueduct (A) was received first in a cistern (B), whence it flowed into a spacious reservoir (D) not very deep but extending the whole length of the castellum, in which it was exposed to the sun and lost a portion of its coldness. In this reservoir there was an aperture (C) through which the water passed into a series of vaulted rooms, twenty-eight in number: they were arranged in two rows, fourteen on a side, and all communicated with each other. Under these were other twentyeight rooms, placed immediately over the hypocaustum or furnace; having likewise communication with each other, but only one of them communicated with the chambers above through an aperture (E).

By the reservoir receiving its water from the cistern, rather than from the aqueduct direct, a more gentle flow into the reservoir was effected, so that the surface of the water was not ruffled nor the power of the sun to heat its contents diminished. When there was no efflux from the inferior chambers to supply the baths, there could be no demands for water from the reservoir, which would have been liable to overflow but for an aperture in the side of the cistern through which the waste water ran off in a different direction from that in which the baths were situated.

The economy of fuel by which all the heat, including even that of the smoke from the furnace, was expended in warming these vast collections of water is worthy of particular notice, and we must hope, that it will be, some of these times, thought worthy of imitation. The water in the chambers placed immediately over the furnace or hypocaustum, would, of course, soon begin to be heated. But in addition to this source of supply of heat, there were flues (NN) which ran up through the side and party-walls of these chambers to increase the facility of heating so vast a body of water. The upper series of rooms were, also, supplied with flues from the hypocaustum, and their contents were thus rendered tepid and furnished a ready supply to those below, for being promptly heated.

When the time for bathing was come, the cocks were turned to admit the hot water from the lower chamber into the labra of the baths, to which it would run with great velocity, and ascend a perpendicular height in the therma, to a level with the surface of the receptacle in the castellum.

The current would be accelerated by the expansive force of the steam confined in the castellum. To prevent the water cooling as it passed through the tubes under ground, they were all carefully surrounded with flues from the præfurnium; and always considerably heated before the water entered them. Each of these chambers was, within the walls, forty-nine feet six inches long, by twenty-seven feet six inches wide, and about thirty high, the number of superficial feet in the whole floor of twenty-eight rooms being 38,115. If we allow thirty feet for the mean height, the whole quantity of water in these lower rooms will amount to 1,143,450 cubic feet. And the like quantity must be allowed for the upper rooms, making the whole quantity heated by fire 2,286,900 cubic feet, sufficient, allowing eight cubic feet of hot water to each man, for the accommodation of 285,862 persons. We have no intimation from the ancients when they first fell upon this expedient for heating such large bodies of water; whether it was an invention of the Romans or brought from the East. We may reasonably suppose, that, as it was not necessary before the public warm baths were built in Rome, it was not more ancient than the time of Augustus, in whose reign, we are told by Dion Cassius, that Mæcenas first instituted a swimming bath of warm water, or a calida piscina.

The hypocaustum, so often mentioned in preceding descriptions, was a furnace under ground (F), the bottom of which formed an inclined plane; the internal side sloping gradually to the mouth of the furnace, where the fuel was put in. The reason which Virtruvius gives for this method of construction is, that the heat might be more equally conveyed to the vessels above. Mouths of the furnace (OO). There were communications from the back of these furnaces to the several rooms of the baths, by means of flues fixed in the walls (P), which were more or less numerous as the purposes to which the rooms were appropriated required. These flues all proceeded from the back, or roof of the furnace, which was supported by pillars of brick (M) two feet high. Arrangements similar to these have been discovered at Pompeii, and at Wroxter in Shropshire. (K) a double floor of strong mortar, resting on the pillars. (L) a square tile on the head of every pillar.