Letters

useful and elegant than they had ever been before. Plutarch observes that Alexander was greatly surprised by the baths of Darius.

The Romans borrowed their first models of baths from the Greeks. The necessity of bathing was naturally occasioned by the exercises to which the Roman youth were early accustomed.

Before the city, boys and blooming youth
Exercise with horses, and tame chariots in the dust:
Either they stretch their keen bows, or with strong arms
Hurl the heavy javelins, and challenge each other in running and striking. Virgil's Aeneid, Book 7, line 162.

Before the city, boys, and blooming youth,
With rapid chariots, exercise their strength,
And tame their horses in the dusty field;
Or bend their twanging bows, and with strong arms
Launch the tough javelin, with the dart and shaft
Contending. Trapp, Aeneid 7, line 205.

The senate first appointed the campus Martius (Field of Mars) for the use of bathing, as it was situated near the Tiber. Vegetius gives us a very particular account of it: "Ignorance brings danger not only from the enemy, but even from the waters themselves. Therefore, the ancient Romans, whom so many wars and continued dangers had instructed in every art of military science, chose the campus Martius near the Tiber, where the youth, after the exercise of arms, could wash away their sweat and dust, and lay aside the weariness of running with the labor of swimming." Vegetius, Book 1, chapter 10.

But as the muddy waters of the Tiber were unfit for that use, the Romans erected other bathing places, which exceeded any Greek plans in all aspects of convenience, splendor, and even Asiatic delicacy.