Identifier: romeitsrisefallt00myer (find matches)
Title: Rome : its rise and fall ; a text-book for high schools and colleges
Year: 1900 (1900s)
Authors: Myers, P. V. N. (Philip Van Ness), 1846-1937
Subjects:
Publisher: Boston, Ginn & company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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sudatory, and swimmingbaths ; dressing-rooms and gymnasia ; museums and libra-ries ; covered colonnades for loitering and conversation ;extensive grounds filled with statues and traversed bypleasant walks ; and every other adjunct that could add tothe sense of luxury and relaxation.9 The pavements werefrequently set with the richest mosaics. The Thermae of of the world in any age. M. Agrippa, the builder of the Pantheon, iscredited with having set up one hundreds and five, and his example foundmany imitators. 9 Lanciani calls these imperial thermae gigantic clubhouses, whitherthe voluptuary and the elegant youth repaired for pastime and enjoy-ment ARCHITECTURE. 469 Diocletian contained over three thousand of these stonepictures. Caracallas Baths had over sixteen hundredmarble seats; granite pillars from Egypt decorated thecolonnades ; green marble panellings, cut in Numidia, linedmany of the chambers; the fixtures of the baths wereplated, and in some of the rooms were of solid silver.
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Great Hall of the Baths of Diocletian. (Now used as a church.) (From an old engraving.) Some conception of the stupendous size of this structuremay be gained from the fact that the entrance hall, orrotunda, of the building was almost as large as the cele-brated Pantheon, which it resembled in form. It was not the inhabitants of the capital alone that hadconverted bathing into a luxury and an art. There was notown of any considerable size anywhere within the limits 47o ARCHITECTURE, LITERATURE, LAW. of the empire that was not provided with its thermae; andwherever springs possessing medicinal qualities broke fromthe ground, there arose magnificent baths, and such spotsbecame the favorite watering-places of the Romans. ThusBaden-Baden was a noted and luxurious resort of thewealthy Romans centuries before it became the great sum-mer haunt of the Germans. Baiae, near Naples, on accountof its warm sulphur springs and the beauty of its sur-roundings, became crowded withthe pleasure-seekers

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