where you left your clothing, pass into the _tepidarium_.
This hall, which is the richest of the bathing establishment, is paved
in white mosaic with black borders, the vault richly ornamented with
_stucature_ and white paintings standing forth from a red and blue
background. These reliefs in stucco represent cupids, chimeras,
dolphins, does pursued by lions, etc. The red walls are adorned with
closets, perhaps intended for the linen of the bathers, over which
jutted a cornice supported by Atlases or Telamons in baked clay covered
with stucco. A pretty border frame formed of arabesques separates the
cornice from the vault. A large window at the extremity flanked by two
figures in stucco lighted up the tepidarium, while subterranean conduits
and a large brazier of bronze retained for it that lukewarm (_tepida_)
temperature which gave it the peculiar name.

[Illustration: The Tepidarium, at the Baths.]

This bronze brazier is still in existence, along with three benches of
the same metal found in the same place; an inscription--_M. Nigidius
Vaccula P.S._ (_pecunia sua_)--designates to us the donor who punning on
his own name _Vaccula_, had caused a little cow to be carved upon the
brazier; and on the feet of the benches, the hoofs of that quiet animal.
The bottom of this precious heater formed a huge grating with bars of
bronze, upon which bricks were laid; upon these bricks extended a layer
of pumice-stones, and upon the pumice-stones the lighted coals.

What, then, was the use to which this handsome tepidarium was applied?
Its uses were manifold, as you will learn farther on, but, for the
moment, it is to prepare you, by a gentle warmth, for the temperature of
the stove that you are going to enter through a door which closed of
itself by its own weight, as the shape of the hinges indicates.

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
s