Caedere Sylvano porcum, quadrante lavari.
The victim Pig to God Sylvanus slay, And for the public Bath a farthing pay.
But after the hour of bathing was past, it sometimes cost a great deal more, according to Martial,
Balnea post decimam, lasso centumque petuntur Quadrantes--
The bathing hour is past, the waiter tir'd; An hundred Farthings now will be requir'd.
Though there was no distinction in the places between the first patrician and the lowest plebeian, yet the nobility used their own silver and gold plate, for washing, eating, and drinking in the bath, together with towels of the finest linen. They likewise made use of the instrument called strigil, which was a kind of flesh-brush; a custom to which Persius alludes in this line,
I puer, et strigiles Crispini ad balnea defer.
Here, Boy, this Brush to Crispin's Bagnio bear.
The common people contented themselves with sponges. The bathing time was from noon till the evening, when the Romans ate their principal meal. Notice was given by a bell, or some such instrument, when the baths were opened, as we learn from Juvenal,
Redde Pilam, sonat Aes thermarum, ludere pergis? Virgine vis sola lotus abdire domum.
Leave off; the Bath Bell rings--what, still play on? Perhaps the maid in private rubs you down.
There were separate places for the two sexes; and indeed there were baths opened for the use of women only, at the expence of Agrippina, the mother of Nero, and some other matrons of the first quality. The use of bathing was become so habitual to the constitutions of the Romans, that Galen, in his book De Sanitate tuenda, mentions a certain philosopher, who, if he intermitted but one day in his bathing, was certainly attacked with a fever. In order to preserve decorum in the baths, a set of laws and regulations were published, and the thermae were put under the inspection of a censor, who was generally one of the first senators in Rome. Agrippa left his gardens and baths, which stood near the pantheon, to the Roman people: among the statues that adorned them was that of a youth naked, as going into the bath, so elegantly formed by the hand of Lysippus, that Tiberius, being struck with the beauty of it, ordered it to be transferred into his own palace: but the populace raised such a clamour against him, that he was fain to have it reconveyed to its former place. These noble baths were restored by Adrian, as we read in Spartian; but at present no part of them remains.