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Updated: May 24, 2025
From this place the party again diverged, according to their several fancies, some to the sudatorium, which answered the purpose of our vapor-baths, and thence to the warm-bath itself; those more accustomed to exercise, and capable of dispensing with so cheap a purchase of fatigue, resorted at once to the calidarium, or water-bath.
The two semi-circular recesses, or small rooms, to the north, I should consider were each a sudatorium if the floors had not been 2ft. 6in. lower than the adjoining apartment. To the north of these, Dr. Sutherland figures, in dotted lines, three chambers omitted in my plan. Although I believe he had some authority for giving them, I am somewhat at a loss to assign a use to these rooms.
These were the frigidarium, the caldarium, the sudatorium, and the tepidarium, for the cold, the hot, the sweating or vapor, and the warm baths. They did not possess the magnitude and ornament of the Roman thermae. They were used in connection with and after exercising, and were enough for all practical purposes.
In this, with a suggestive cleverness entirely Gallic, he causes us to gather an impression of Cesare in the intestinal sudatorium of that eventrated bull, as of one who is at once the hierophant and devotee of a monstrous, foul, and unclean rite of some unspeakable religion a rite by comparison with which the Black Mass of the Abbe Gribourg becomes a sweet and wholesome thing.
The plunge may, if thought advantageous, be placed partly in the cool apartment and partly in the hot rooms, in which case, the bather dives under a glazed partition of some sort, which, furnished with an india-rubber flap dangling in the water, prevents the hot air of the sudatorium from entering the cooling rooms.
As the best position for a bather to assume in the sudatorium is one approaching to the horizontal, a bath cannot be considered complete unless a liberal number of marble-slabbed benches be provided. These should run round the solid walls, the risers of the benches being formed of brickwork glazed, faced with tiles, or plastered and white marble slabs set thereon.
The relative position of chamber to chamber of the sudatorium, and of the latter to the cooling rooms, must remain more or less constant; but the angle of connection with each other, their shape, proportions, and floor levels, must, together with the positions of the subsidiary apartments, be determined by the exigencies of the site, and considerations of convenience and economy.
Then wrapping himself in a light robe, he returned once more to the tepidarium, where he found Glaucus, who had not encountered the sudatorium; and now, the main delight and extravagance of the bath commenced. Their slaves anointed the bathers from vials of gold, of alabaster, or of crystal, studded with profusest gems, and containing the rarest unguents gathered from all quarters of the world.
Being then gradually warmed in the tepidarium, which has just been described, the delicate steps of the Pompeian elegant were conducted to the sudatorium. Here let the reader depict to himself the gradual process of the vapor-bath, accompanied by an exhalation of spicy perfumes.
To guard against this, double doors, with a small lobby between, should be provided to any means of communication with a cold chamber. A set of hot rooms could be constructed so that the bather would be in the top current of air that flows from the heating apparatus. The atmosphere of the sudatorium must be perfectly free from vapour. "Perfect dryness of the air," says Mr.
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