Letters

these dispersed the dry hot vapor to the apodyterium (changing room), calidarium, and Laconicum. Seneca See Seneca, Natural Questions, Book 3, Chapter 24. takes notice of such passages distributing the warm vapor in different degrees to different parts. In a Roman sudatory (sweat-bath) found at Wroxeter in Shropshire, the form of these bricks and the manner of laying them is exactly described in the Philosophical Transactions See Abridgment of Philosophical Transactions, Vol. 5, part 2, page 61.. Camden Britannia, p. 688. mentions an hypocaustum with this structure discovered in Flintshire, and the author of the additions to Camden tells us there was another discovered at Caerhun in Carnarvonshire.

There were particular persons appointed to take care of the fire, called fornacatores; in kindling which, they chiefly made use of wood and other combustible materials formed into balls and covered with pitch. Statius Sylvarum, lib. 1. particularly alludes to these, and the conveyance of the vapor throughout the several chambers and apartments, in his description of the Etruscan baths:

Hearing the rattling balls [of fuel], where the lazy fire wanders in the building, and the furnace-rooms roll a thin vapor.

The sweat-bath (Laconicum)

The Laconicum was a small, close, vaulted chamber, situated at the first turning from the hypocaustum, on which account the heat there was excessive. It was seldom used by those who performed the exercises of the palæstra, but the lazy, the infirm, and the debauched generally supplied the want of exercise by sweating in the Laconicum. Columella De Re rustica, preface., blaming the luxurious life of citizens, says: "Soon after, in order to arrive ready for our gluttony, we cook away our daily indigestion in the Laconica, and having sweated it out, we look for our thirst."