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Updated: April 30, 2025
And here, too, we may note the admirable nature of the Roman system of heating, where the floors radiated the majority of the heat, and the walls a slightly less amount. The fresh air under the ancient system must have entered through the cooler rooms, and being drawn towards the calidarium found its exit through the ceilings, at times by way of the regulating device mentioned by Vitruvius.
For the purposes of this work, and for the sake of brevity and convenience, I have thought fit to adopt the following terms from the old Roman vocabulary, to designate the apartments of the modern bath. I respectively term the first, second, and third hot rooms, the Tepidarium, Calidarium, and Laconicum.
Two subdivisions at the end of the tepidarium lead to the calidarium, adjoining which is the heating apparatus, fitted with two of Messrs. Constantine's "Convoluted" stoves. Access to the stokery is gained by a passage at the end of the tepidarium. The shampooing room is placed off the cooler end of the tepidarium, dwarf walls separating it from the latter apartment, as also from the lavatorium.
And then, yet further, on the horizon, were other cyclopean ruins, the baths of Caracalla, standing there like relics of a race of giants long since vanished from the world: halls extravagantly and inexplicably spacious and lofty; vestibules large enough for an entire population; a frigidarium where five hundred people could swim together; a tepidarium and a calidarium* on the same proportions, born of a wild craving for the huge; and then the terrific massiveness of the structures, the thickness of the piles of brick-work, such as no feudal castle ever knew; and, in addition, the general immensity which makes passing visitors look like lost ants; such an extraordinary riot of the great and the mighty that one wonders for what men, for what multitudes, this monstrous edifice was reared.
At one end of the shampooing room is a chamber containing the cold plunge bath and needle bath. A door from hence leads to a staircase conducting to the furnace-chamber. A laundry is provided at the head of these stairs. The furnace-chamber is placed under the further end of the calidarium. The baths for ladies are arranged on a very similar plan.
Entering from the street, a corridor conducts to a short flight of stairs leading to the office. Adjoining this is an apodyterium, fitted with two ranges of dressing-boxes, one above the other, a gallery forming the floor of the upper tier. From hence a short staircase leads to the door of the tepidarium, at right angles to which is the calidarium.
This chamber is lighted by means of a ceiling-light constructed in the form of a small, flat dome, with stained-glass stars set therein. A marble seat runs round the whole of this chamber. On one side of the staircase is placed the calidarium, and, on the other, the combined shampooing room and lavatorium, a door from the latter forming an exit for the visitor who has completed his bath.
A shelf or shelves for linen checks is useful in this position. Sometimes the floor of the calidarium is carpeted all over, but strips of matting or carpet are better. The hot laconicum is best carpeted throughout. The tepidarium should have strips of carpet where the bathers must necessarily tread.
To-day, you would say a mass of rocks in the rough, thrown from some height for building the abode of Titans. * Tepidarium, warm bath; calidarium, vapour bath. Trans. And as Pierre gazed, he became more and more immersed in the limitless past which encompassed him. On all sides history rose up like a surging sea.
This may be 110°-120° in the shampooing rooms, 140° in the tepidarium, 180° in the calidarium, and 250° in the laconicum. These must be the maxima of the average temperatures of each room at 6 ft. 6 in. above the floor. In a pure atmosphere the highest temperatures are comfortable, but in a foul one they become insupportable.
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