This caldarium is a long room at the ends of which rises, on one side, something like the parapet of a well, and on the other a square basin.  The middle of the room is the stove, properly speaking.  The steam did not circulate in pipes, but exhaled from the wall itself and from the hollow ceiling in warm emanations.  The adornments of the walls consisted of simple flutings.  The square basin (alveus or baptisterium) which served for the warm baths was of marble.  It was ascended by three steps and descended on the inside by an interior bench upon which ten bathers could sit together.  Finally, on the other side of the room, in a semi-circular niche, rose the well parapet of which I spoke; it was a labrum, constructed with the public funds.  An inscription informs us that it cost seven hundred and fifty sestertii, that is to say, something over thirty dollars.  Yet this labrum is a large marble vessel seven feet in diameter.  Marble has grown dearer since then.

On quitting the stove, or warm bath, the Pompeians wet their heads in that large wash-basin, where tepid water which must, at that moment, have seemed cold, leaped from a bronze pipe still visible.  Others still more courageous plunged into the icy water of the frigidarium, and came out of it, they said, stronger and more supple in their limbs.  I prefer believing them to imitating them.

Have you had enough of it?  Would you leave the heating room?  You belong to the slaves who are waiting for you, and will not let you go.  You are streaming with perspiration, and the tractator, armed with a strigilla, or flesh brush, is there to rasp your body.  You escape to the tepidarium; but it is there that the most cruel operations await you.  You belong, as I remarked, to the slaves; one of them cuts your nails, another plucks out your stray hair, and a third still seeks to press your body and rasp the skin with his brush, a fourth prepares the most fearful frictions yet to ensue, while others deluge you with oils and essences, and grease you with perfumed unguents.  You asked just now what was the use of the tepidarium; you now know, for you have been made acquainted with the Roman baths.

A word in reference to the unguents with which you have just been rubbed.  They were of all kinds; you have seen the shops where they were sold.  They were perfumed with myrrh, spikenard, and cinnamon; there was the Egyptian unguent for the feet and legs, the Phoenician for the cheeks and the breast, and the Sisymbrian for the two arms; the essence of marjoram for the eyebrows and the hair, and that of wild thyme for the nape of the neck and the knees.  These unguents were very dear, but they kept up youth and health.

“How have you managed to preserve yourself so long and so well?” asked Augustus of Pollio.

“With wine inside, and oil outside,” responded the old man.

As for the utensils of the baths (a collection of them is still preserved at the Naples museum on an iron ring), they consisted first of the strigilla, then of the little bottle or vial of oil, and a sort of stove called the scaphium.  All these, along with the slippers, the apron, and the purse, composed the baggage that one took with him to the baths.