“May the gods exterminate the man who first invented the hours!” he exclaims, “who first placed a sun-dial in this city! the traitor who has cut the day in pieces for my ill-luck!  In my childhood there was no other time-piece than the stomach; and that is the best of them all, the most accurate in giving notice, unless, indeed, there be nothing to eat.  But, nowadays, although the side-board be full, nothing is served up until it shall please the sun.  Thus, since the town has become full of sun-dials, you see nearly everybody crawling about, half starved and emaciated.”

The other thermae of Pompeii are much smaller, but better adorned, and, above all, in better preservation.  Would you like to take a full bath there in the antique style?  You enter now by a small door in the rear, and traverse a corridor where five hundred lamps were found—­a striking proof that the Pompeians passed at least a portion of the night at the baths.  This corridor conducts you to the apodyteres or spoliatorium, the place where the bathers undress.  At first blush you are rather startled at the idea of taking off your clothes in an apartment with six doors, but the ancients, who were better seasoned than we are, were not afraid of currents of air.  While a slave takes your clothing and your sandals, and another, the capsarius, relieves you of your jewels, which he will deposit in a neighboring office, look at the apartment; the cornice ornamented with lyres and griffins, above which are ranges of lamps; the arched ceiling forming a semicircle divided off in white panels edged with red, and the white mosaic of the pavement bordered with black.  Here are stone benches to sit down upon, and pins fixed in the walls, where the slave hangs up your white woollen toga and your tunic.  Above there is a skylight formed of a single very thick pane of glass, and, firmly inclosed within an iron frame, which turns upon two pivots.  The glass is roughened on one side to prevent inquisitive people from peeping into the hall where we are.  On each side of the window some reliefs, now greatly damaged, represent combats of giants.

Here you are, as nude as an antique statue.  Were you a true Roman, you would now step into an adjoining cabinet which was the anointing place (elaethesium), where the anointing with oil was done, and, after that, you will go and play tennis in the court, which was reached by a corridor now walled up.  The blue vault was studded with golden stars.  But you are not a true Roman; you have come hither simply to take a hot or a cold bath.  If a cold one, pass on into the small room that opens at the end of the hall.  It is the frigidarium.