Apollo and another to Esculapius, as the tutelary deities of a place
sacred to the improvement of the mind, and the health of the body. In
the principal building were, in the first place, a grand circular
vestibule, with four halls on each side, for cold, tepid, warm, and
steam baths;[9] in the centre was an immense square for exercise, when
the weather was unfavourable to it in the open air; beyond it a great
hall, where _one thousand six hundred seats of marble_ were placed
for the convenience of the bathers; at each end of this hall were
libraries. The stucco and paintings, though faintly indeed, are yet in
many places perceptible. Pillars have been dug up, and some still remain
amidst the ruins; while the Farnesian Bull and the famous Hercules,
found in one of these halls announce the multiplicity and beauty of the
statues which once adorned the Thermae of Caracalla."

Before they commenced bathing in the _Thermæ_, the Romans anointed
themselves with oil, in a room especially appropriated to the purpose;
and oil was again applied, with the addition of perfumes, on quitting
the bath. In a painting which has been engraved from one of the walls
in the baths of Titus, the room is represented filled with a number
of vases, and somewhat resembles an apothecary's shop. These vases
contained a variety of balsamic and oleaceous compositions for the
anointment, which, when ultimately performed, prepared the bathers for
the _sphæristerium_, in which various amusements and exercises were
enjoyed. The subsequent operation of scraping the body with the strigil
has given way to a mode of freeing the body from perspiration and all
extraneous matter, by a sort of bag or glove of camel's hair, which is
used in Turkey; while flannel and brushes are substituted in other
parts.

The vapour-baths now used in Russia resemble very much those among the