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Updated: June 30, 2025
They said of her that she slept with one eye open. Livius had complained in the Thermae to Pertinax that the wine of influence was going to Marcia's head, but he merely expressed the opinion of one man, who would have liked to feel himself superior to her and to use her for his own ends. She was not deceived by Livius, or by anybody else.
By the side of the Colosseum they are insignificant in magnitude; they do not cover acres, like the baths of Caracalla. Yet who has copied the Flavian amphitheatre; who erects an edifice after the style of the Thermae? All artists, however, copy the Parthenon.
But when I had seen this noble phalanx and company descending from the Capitol with many infantry, and had viewed all the bravery of the cars and the ediles, dressed in the old fashion, and had seen Senhor Giulio Cesarino pass with the standard of the city of Rome, on a horse with trappings covered with a white coat of arms and black brocade, I at once turned my horse towards Monte Cavallo, and thus went riding along the Thermae road pondering over many things of the olden times, in which I then felt myself to be more than in the present.
If we consider that the city and suburbs of Rome, in the reign of Claudius, contained about seven millions of inhabitants, a number equal at least to the sum total of all the souls in England; that great part of antient Rome was allotted to temples, porticos, basilicae, theatres, thermae, circi, public and private walks and gardens, where very few, if any, of this great number lodged; that by far the greater part of those inhabitants were slaves and poor people, who did not enjoy the conveniencies of life; and that the use of linen was scarce known; we must naturally conclude they were strangely crouded together, and that in general they were a very frowzy generation.
The poem concluded, those who took only the cold bath began to undress; they suspended their garments on hooks fastened in the wall, and receiving, according to their condition, either from their own slaves or those of the thermae, loose robes in exchange, withdrew into that graceful circular building which yet exists, to shame the unlaving posterity of the south.
Stretching beyond the Thermae Alexandrinae, near the Pantheon, was the magnificent bridge which crossed the Tiber, built by Hadrian when he founded his Mausoleum, to which it led, still standing under the name of the Ponte S. Angelo. The eye took in eight or nine bridges over the Tiber, some of wood, but generally of stone, of beautiful masonry, and crowned with statues.
In a little house, or shed, behind the court, is preserved the wonderful group of Dirce, commonly called the Toro Farnese, which was brought hither from the thermae Caracallae. There is such spirit, ferocity, and indignant resistance expressed in the bull, to whose horns Dirce is tied by the hair, that I have never seen anything like it, either upon canvass, or in stone.
'The Coliseum is unlike any work of human hands I ever saw before. It is of enormous height and circuit, and the arches, built of massy stones, are piled, on one another, and jut into the blue air, shattered into the forms of overhanging rocks. 'The next most considerable relic of antiquity, considered as a ruin, is the Thermae of Caracalla.
"Exactly. But that is the difficulty," Livius answered, moving his eyes again restlessly. There was not much risk of informers in the Thermae, but a man never knew who his enemies were. "Marcia represents the Christians, and the idiots won't let well enough alone. By Hercules, they have it all their own way, thanks to Marcia. They are allowed to hold their meetings.
So he was proclaimed unanimously, "the most humane, the most liberal, the most polite and happiest of men." Generous to his dependents, he did not forget himself. He built a villa which, by the space it occupied, was a real palace, with thermae walled in precious marbles. He passed his time in the baths, or gaming, or hunting in short, he led the life of a great landed proprietor of those days.
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