The tepidarium, or warm chamber, was so called from a warm, but soft and mild temperature, which prepared the bodies of the bathers for the more intense heat which they were to undergo in the vapor and hot baths; and, _vice versa_, softened the transition from the hot bath to the external air. The wall is divided into a number of niches or compartments by Telamones, two feet high, in high relief, and supporting a rich cornice. These are male, as Caryatides are female statues placed to perform the office of pillars. By the Greeks they were named Atlantes, from the well-known fable of Atlas supporting the heavens. Here they are made of terra-cotta, or baked clay, incrusted with the finest marble stucco. Their only covering is a girdle round the loins; they have been painted flesh-color, with black hair and beards; the moulding of the pedestal and the baskets on their heads were in imitation of gold; and the pedestal itself, as well as the wall behind them and the niches for the reception of the clothes of the bathers, were colored to resemble red porphyry. Six of these niches are closed up without any apparent reason.
[Illustration: RECEPTION TO THE BATHS (_at Pompeii_).]
The ceiling is worked in stucco, in low relief, with scattered figures and ornaments of little flying genii, delicately relieved on medallions, with foliage carved round them. The ground is painted, sometimes red and sometimes blue. The room is lighted by a window two feet six inches high and three feet wide, in the bronze frame of which were found set four very beautiful panes of glass fastened by small nuts and screws, very ingeniously contrived, with a view to remove the glass at pleasure. In this room was found a brazier, seven feet long and two feet six inches broad, made entirely of bronze, with the exception of an iron lining. The two front legs are winged sphinxes, terminating in lions' paws, the two other legs are plain, being intended to stand against the wall. The bottom is formed with bronze bars, on which are laid bricks supporting pumice-stones for the reception of charcoal. There is a sort of false battlement worked on the rim, and in the middle a cow is to be seen in high relief. Three bronze benches also were found, alike in form and pattern. They are one foot four inches high, one foot in width, and about six feet long, supported by four legs, terminating in the cloven hoofs of a cow, and ornamented at the upper ends with the heads of the same animal. Upon the seat is inscribed, M. NIGIDIUS, VACCULA. P.S.