re is in the
Vatican a magnificent porphyry labrum found in one of the imperial
baths; and Baccius, a great modern authority on baths, speaks of labra
made of glass.

This apartment, like the others, is well stuccoed and painted yellow;
a cornice, highly enriched with stucco ornaments, is supported by
fluted pilasters placed at irregular intervals. These are red, as is
also the cornice and ceiling of the laconicum, which is worked in
stucco with little figures of boys and animals.

The women's bath resembles very much that of the men, and differs only
in being smaller and less ornamented. It is heated, as we have already
mentioned, by the same fire, and supplied with water from the same
boilers. Near the entrance is an inscription painted in red letters.
All the rooms yet retain in perfection their vaulted roofs. In the
vestibule are seats similar to those which have been described in the
men's baths as appropriated to slaves or servants of the
establishment. The robing-room contains a cold bath; it is painted
with red and yellow pilasters alternating with one another on a blue
or black ground, and has a light cornice of white stucco and a white
mosaic pavement with a narrow black border. There are accommodations
for ten persons to undress at the same time. The cold bath is much
damaged, the wall only remaining of the alveus, which is square, the
whole incrustation of marble being destroyed. From this room we pass
into the tepidarium, about twenty feet square, painted yellow with red
pilasters, lighted by a small window far from the ground. This
apartment communicates with the warm bath, which, like the men's, is
heated by flues formed in the floors and walls.

There are in this room paintings of grotesque design upon a yellow
ground, but they are much damaged and scarcely visible. The pavement
is of white marble laid in mosaic. The room in its general arrangement
resembles the hot bath of the men; it has a labrum in the laconicum,
and a hot bath contiguous to the furnace. The hollow pavement and the
flues in the walls are almost entirely destroyed; and of the labrum,
the foot, in the middle of which was a piece of the leaden conduit
that introduced the water, alone remains. On the right of the entrance
into these women's baths is a wall of stone of great thickness and in
a good style of masonry.

These baths are so well arranged, with so prudent an economy of room
and convenient distribution of their parts, and ar