their masters came out from the baths. They were raw, inexperienced
slaves who had not a coin or two to spend.

Within the entrance of the Thermae was a marble court, where better
known philosophers discoursed on topics of the day, each to his own
group of admirers. A Christian, dressed like any other Roman, held one
corner with a crowd around him. There was a tremendous undercurrent of
reaction against the prevalent cynical materialism and the vortex of
fashion was also the cauldron of new aspirations and the battle-ground
of wits.

Beyond the inner entrance were the two disrobing rooms--women to the
left, men to the right where slaves, whose insolence had grown into a
cultivated art, exchanged the folded garments for a bracelet with a
number. Thence, stark-naked, through the bronze doors set in green-
veined marble, bathers passed into the vast frigidarium, whose marble
plunge was surrounded by a mosaic promenade beneath a bronze and marble
balcony.

There men and women mingled indiscriminately, watching the divers,
conversing, matching wits, exchanging gossip, some walking briskly
around the promenade while others lounged on the marble seats that were
interspaced against the wall between the statues.

There was not one gesture of indecency. A man who had stared at a woman
would have been thrown out, execrated and forever more refused
admission. But out in the street, where the litter-bearers and
attendants whiled away the time, there were tales told that spread to
the ends of the earth.