And finding down at Clusium what they want Or Gabii, say, make that their winter haunt."

Epist., i. 15, Conington's Transl.

Here we find our modern fashion portrayed which makes a place popular for a few seasons and then neglected. Here we find in Horace's account of a cold bath in winter, which he evidently did not like, an allusion to the cold-water cure which came into fashion under Musa, the physician of Augustus, as a revulsion from the excessive luxury of hot baths. Pliny* tells us how he had seen aged gentlemen of consular dignity making an ostentation of shivering in their cold baths. and we read how the advocates of the system agreed with the ancient Germans in immersing newly-born children in cold water- -a practice alluded to by Virgil. We learn also from Horace how the Romans had their favorite health resorts, whether in the mountains or along the coast. Martial and many other writers give whole lists of such places; but the limpid Baia was the great favorite for many centuries. No Montpellier, or Nice, or Pau, has enjoyed nearly as long-lived a reputation, or has offered such attractions to visitors.

Horace, too, mentions the vapor and the sulphur baths of Baiæ, but no drink ing-wells. It was, in truth, hot bathing in its various forms of heated air, hot vapor and hot water, that the Romans were so fond of. They had borrowed its use from the Greeks, while they improved on their simpler arrangements, the Greeks them selves having probably only followed the usage of Asia Minor and more Eastern nations, among whom bathing has always been regarded as a matter of primary importance.

From the earliest ages, indeed, all peculiarities of smell, of taste, or of temperature in the wells attracted the attention of mankind; and, like all things that were unusual and incapable of ready explanation, they were referred to the immediate influence of the gods. The idea of a local deity dwelling in the spring is well illustrated, by the fact of the word lympha "water" being only a variety of nympha, or water goddess.

Most oracles of importance were situated close to sacred springs or to natural escapes of gas. The temple of Jupiter Ammon, in its Libyan oasis, had † Eneid, ix. 603.

* xxix. c. 5.

an intermitting fountain.* Delphi had not only its fountain of Cassotis, but the Pythoness, when delivering her responses, seems to have been placed on a tripod over a cleft in the rock,t whence issued a gas that inspired her, and, in case of accident, three priestesses where always present. There was something similar at the oracle of Trophonius, in Booția, where Pausanias§ says, from personal experience, that a gas was extricated which caused people to become insensible at first, and then to laugh as they gradually recovered consciousness. Hard by were the fabled waters of Mnemosyne and of Lethe. In various parts of India escapes of inflammable gas (such as may be seen now at La Porretta, near Pistoia) have been used for preserving undying fires in the temples of the gods.

Similar instances might easily be multiplied; but this subject we cannot pursue any further, as our main object at present is to give a few sketches of bath life in different ages, making the actors speak as much as possible for themselves.

Baiæ and Puteoli

"Baix the golden shore of pleased Venus,

Baix the charming gift of stately Nature" — were in the times of the Roman emperors by far the most important bathing-places, though others along the coast were not neglected. The enervating Sinnuessa, celebrated for the softness of its air and the salubrity of its waters, is perhaps the best known, owing to the emperor Claudius having sought to restore his broken health there, and to the miserable Tigellinus, in the midst of its warm baths, and luxuries and dissipations, having very unwillingly put an end there to his worthless life.

Besides its singularly beautiful scenery, the country about Baia was connected with the earliest associations of Roman history. Near it were the most ancient city of Cume, with its Sibyl-the lake of Avernus, with its entrance to hell-the Phlegræan fields and the Forum Vulcani-the Elysian plains the promontory of Misenum, with its harbor-not to mention the remarkable natural phenomena of

Herodot, iv. 181. Pausanias, x. 24, § 7. Plutarch, Quæst. Græc. c. 9; De Orac. Def. c. 51. Six. 39, § 5 seqq. Martial, xi. 80. Tacitus, Histor., i. 72.

extinct volcanoes, craters, and lakes, with hot springs, and hot vapors, and mineral waters which were in themselves so striking. The great Roman nobles, too, began to build their villas here long before the days when, for want of space, the foundations of their new buildings had to be laid in the sea. The writers of the Augustan Age, and for a century afterwards, absolutely teem with notices of the delights of Baix, and it must be confessed that at the same time they do not spare its vices. Immoralities were practised openly at Baix, which could only be indulged in at Rome in private. Cicero, Propertius, Horace, Ovid, all write in the same strain; and a little later Martial, who was certainly no stickler for morality, appears almost to be shocked at the doings of the place. But, for our purpose, the account given by Seneca will answer best. He was, indeed, somewhat of a laudator temporis acti, and regretted the days when the Romans washed only their faces and hands daily, and had a bath once in eight days: he preferred the ruder and less luxurious baths of Scipio at Linterum, who was not very particular as to the quality of his water, to the effeminate arrangements of Baie and Puteoli.* Still, as he only confirms in detail what had been long before said by Cicero, his evidence is not fairly open to exception.

Seneca, when he paid his visit to Baiæ, lived above the great bath, and was greatly annoyed by its noisiness. He heard, early in the morning, the splashing of bathers in the water, for people bathed at all hours. He was disturbed by the excited cries of those playing at ball, and by the deep-drawn sighs of those who swung heavy leaden weights. Here one person was trying his voice at a song-there another was engaged in a loud dispute, or perhaps a cry was raised at the detection of a thief caught stealing the clothes of one of the bathers-no unusual occurrence. There were the shrill cries of the vendors of various eatables, especially of the liba or sweet cakes, which have been long popular among bathers, and a remnant of which is to be still found in some of the German baths. Seneca tells us also that it was common to see tipsy people wandering along the seashore-and to hear the shores of the Lucrine lake resounding with

the songs of pleasure-parties of men and women, who skimmed about in gayly painted boats of every variety of shape and color, decked out with crowns and chaplets of roses. All ancient writers describe those aquatic excursions as scenes of voluptuous pleasure: there was also abundance of gambling; and on the whole Seneca described Baiæ as a sort of vortex of luxury and a harbor of vice.

Baie and Puteoli retained their popularity for a long period; but after a time we lose sight of them, as of most healthresorts during the middle ages. When bath-life began to revive in Europe, the wells in this favorite corner were among the first to attract attention, but the convulsions connected with the production of Monte Nuovo, and the unhealthiness of the district, have prevented any great success in the attempts to restore their former glory. Ischia, scarcely known for such purposes to the ancients, although Pliny mentions its mineral waters, has, with its immense natural resources, taken their place, and though the stufas or hot-vapor baths of San Germano and of the baths of Nero have always been employed, and the baths at the temple of Serapis have been restored and are in use, yet the ancient fame of Baie has never been equalled.

A very spirited attempt is, however, being made at present, to convert the villa Cardito, close to Puteoli, the modern Pozzuoli, and its extensive grounds, into an establishment fit to receive a large number of visitors; old springs are being opened up, an immense piscina, or reservoir of water, is to be cleared out, and we even hear that arrangements are to be made, to enable patients to inhale the sulphur vapors which rise in one corner of the adjoining crater of the Solfatara. The experiment is a bold one, and its success is quite feasible if the district were less feverish and malarious; and it is to be hoped that the feat of draining Lake Agnano, now nearly accomplished, may contribute towards its salubrity.

But the public baths of Rome far exceeded those of Baiæ in extent and importance. The stupendous aqueducts replenished the baths which were constructed in all parts of the city with imperial magnificence. There were the public baths of Agrippa, of Titus, and of Nero, besides numerous private ones. The baths of Caracalla, open at stated hours for the indiscriminate use of the

senators and of the people, counted about 1,600 seats of marble, and there were more than 3,000 seats in the baths of Diocletian. The walls of the lofty apartments were covered with curious mosaics, that imitated the art of the painter, in their elegance of design and variety of colors. The Egyptian syenite was beautifully encrusted with the precious green .marbles of Numidia-the rooms were full of statues, and of pillars supporting nothing, but placed merely for ornament.* A perpetual stream of water was poured into capacious basins, through many wide. mouths of lions of bright and polished silver water issued from silver and was received on silver.t And finally, says Seneca, such a pitch of luxury have we reached, that we are dissatisfied if we do not tread on gems in our baths; and these luxuries at least those of the public baths, the poorest might partake of for a small copper coin in value less than a farthing. Their use was speedily followed by their abuse. The idle and the profligate spent many hours in the hot baths, and found it necessary to relieve by draughts of wine the exhaustion which they produced.

The Romans carried their fondness for baths with them to distant countries, and wherever they found hot springs they built baths or thermæ. The following are some of the countless places where their remains have been found out of Italy :—at Aix in Savoy and Aix in Provence; at Dax, Bagnères de Bigorres and Bagnères de Luchon in the Pyrenees; Alhama and Caldas in Spain, where the Moors were only too glad to revive the Roman baths; at Baden in Switzerland; at Wiesbaden; and at our own Bath or Aqua Solis; not to mention Baden, near Vienna; and the baths of Hercules in Mehadia, in the Banat. The Roman aquæ still remains in the various forms of Acqui, Aigues, Aix, Ax, Dax.

The ancients did not resort to their baths merely for the purposes of ablution or health: they went also to meet their friends in the porches or inner rooms of the baths, to hear the last news, and to plan fresh amusements. And here, too, literary people assembled and poets enIdeavored to find hearers for their latest works. In close contiguity, and often in

the same building with them, were gymnasia for wrestling, for various games at ball, theatres, and arenas for the fights of gladiators and of wild beasts. It was this character of baths, as places of amusement, that led to their being placed, in common with theatres, under the ban of the early Christians, who also steadily protested against the two sexes bathing together.

In the earlier ages of Rome men and women bathed separately, and even in the times of the emperors, the more respectable matrons would not enter a common bath, although they seem sometimes to have frequented public ones, which had probably separate rooms; but that the practice of promiscuous bathing was frequent, and that its evils were understood, is abundantly evident from the many edicts directed against it by the emperors Hadrian, Trajan, M. Aurelius, and Alexander Severus. Heliogabalus again perInitted the practice, and the Emperor Gallienus actually bathed along with women.

After the two first centuries our notices

of bath life become very scanty, and the denunciations by some of the early fathers of its vicious excesses are the more interesting to us. Clemens of Alexandria, about the beginning of the third century, protested against the luxury and indecency of the Alexandrian ladies in their bathing; they used to eat and get drunk in their baths. They had swinging, or pensile baths (which, though there has been a good deal of difference of opinion on the subject, seem merely to have been vapor baths suspended, i.e. built over flues), and used all kinds of gold and silver bathutensils. Clemens declared that there were four causes for bathing-cleanliness, warmth, health, and pleasure. The last was utterly to be forbidden; women may bathe for cleanliness or for health, men for health only. To bathe for the sake of warmth he considered to be a piece of superfluity; besides, the frequent use of the warm bath was weakening. clear that the denunciations of Clemens did not put an end to the warm baths of Alexandria; and the baths which so many an eastward bound traveller has enjoyed on landing in that city are the direct successors of those denounced by the Fathers. That Clemens expressed the general Chris

But it seems

Pædagog., L iii. c. 5.