Some square blocks of lead, that were the yotting of bars of metal, rather favour this idea, and suggest that these metal bars were a portion of the machinery by which a brazen shield (clipeus) was suspended, or secured, so that by raising or lowering it the temperature of the hall might be regulated as described by Vitruvius.  In the excavations we found an ante-fixa that must have fallen from some portion of the roof.  It appears to be intended for a lion, but it is much broken.

I have prepared a sketch section of the bath (which I hope to communicate on a future occasion), transversely and a part longitudinally, in order that a description may the more readily be understood, adopting, in my restoration, the established rules of proportion of Classical architecture, which may, more or less, have been strictly adhered to when the baths were built; indeed, in the best specimens of Roman work a licence was given to the architect as to detail and proportion, that was refused him on the Classical revival.  The pilasters of these baths spring, as I have said before, from an Attic base, of somewhat coarse proportions, 14in. high.[23] The attached pilasters that supported the arcade that was carried longitudinally along the bath are without a base; they must have been, within a few inches, more or less, not lower than 10ft. in height, including the impost moulding, of which there are fragments.  The arches springing from them would be about 14ft. wide.  I have not been able to find any fragments of the archivolt.  The pilasters that supported the arches which crossed the schola have bases similar to the larger pilasters.  I can hardly speak positively of their elevation or that of the arches, but I am inclined to think the height of the impost moulding was raised, so that the arch, although a smaller span, was the same in height as the longitudinal arches.

[Footnote 23:  The bases of the columns found, on the contrary, are most carefully designed and of most delicate proportions, which appear to justify the belief that the bases of the pilasters were never completely worked, or that they were coated with plaster and decorated as in the western bath, now being excavated.]

The great pilasters, fronting the bath, stand on plain pedestals, breaking forward into the water, on which rested the Attic base, the shaft with Doric (?) capital rising 18ft. above.  A complete cornice, the architrave (which we have) and frieze, gave an additional height of nearly 5ft.  This cornice ran over the arcade horizontally, but breaking forward the projection of the pilasters about 2ft. 7in.  Over this cornice, I conclude, were semi-circular openings, of the same span as the arch beneath, with an architrave of 5 in. to 6 in.  A circular vault crossed the bath from pilaster to pilaster, groined with the semi-circular arches just mentioned.  Light may have been admitted divisionally in the centre of this great vault, as