Letters

The Lacedæmonians, as In the life of Alcibiades. Plutarch observes, first invented the Laconicum, and from them it received its name. They generally walked out of that chamber smoking with heat directly into the cold bath, as they were unwilling to relax their vessels with warm bathing and were fond of accustoming their constitutions to the greatest extremes of heat and cold, as appears from Martial Book 6, Epigram 42..

If the customs of the Lacedæmonians please you,
Content with the dry vapor,
You may plunge into the cold Virgin and Martian waters. The "Virgin" and "Martian" waters refer to famous Roman aqueducts.

This chamber is called by the Greeks pyriatheron; by the Romans it is generally called cella calida (hot room) or Laconicum; by Seneca, sudatorium (sweat-bath); by Cicero, assa (dry bath); and by Vitruvius, calidarium. It was never lacking in private baths. Book 3, Epist. 1. Cicero takes particular notice of it in a letter to his brother Quintus, where he says he has moved it to another corner of the apodyterium (changing room) because the heat was inconvenient to a bedroom situated immediately above it. From this, it is evident that this room was always distinct from the bathing room, although the different names given to it have rendered many accounts of the Laconicum perplexed and unintelligible.

The tepidarium.

The tepidarium, in both public and private baths, was the most magnificent part of the whole. It was moderately warmed by the hypocaustum (furnace system) and was always situated to receive the full influence of the sun. In this place, those who had finished their usual exercises were rubbed down with strigiles, or scrapers, before they were anointed for bathing.
The strigiles.

The strigiles were made of either ivory or metal; the common sort, kept in the public baths,