from the island of Lipari.[1] It is a long narrow building, 133 feet by 32 feet. The first room is the frigidarium, which also served as the apodyterium. In the apse at one side, into which one descended by steps, was the cold bath. The small chambers at the side of the apse were probably used for anointing, and for the storage of oil, etc., for many glass vials and small terra-cotta vases were found in the ruins. From the apodyterium one passed into the tepidarium. The floors of this chamber and of the caldarium are supported on pillars of brick, leaving open spaces between, so that the rooms resemble a box with a double bottom, into which the hot air

came from the furnace, thus raising the temperature of the apartments above. All round the walls were lines of vertical clay tubes communicating with the hypocaust below. These carried the hot air up the sides of the rooms. The actual floors were covered with a coarse mosaic pavement representing sea monsters, and just at the entrance to the tepidarium was a representation of a pair of slippers—as a reminder either that boots were forbidden or that the floor was too hot for bare feet. The niche at one side in the caldarium no doubt held the bath, and the apsed projection was probably for the labrum or cold water basin.

1 Archaeologia, vol. xxiii. I, p. 98.

90