Public baths did exist in Rome already, but we hear very little of
them, which shows that they were not as yet an indispensable adjunct
of social life; but the fact that Seneca in the letter already quoted
describes the aediles as testing the heat of the water with their
hands shows (1) that the baths were public, (2) that they were of hot
water and not, as later, of hot air (_thermae_). The latter invention
is said to have come in before the Social war (Val. Max. ix. 1.
1.). Some baths seem to have been run as a speculation by private
individuals, and bore the name of their builder (e.g. balneae Seniae,
Cic. _pro Cael_. 25. 61). In summer the young men still bathed in the
Tiber (_pro Cael_. 15. 36). At Pompeii the oldest public baths (the
Stabian; Mau, p. 183) date from the second century B.C.]
[Footnote 442: The tradition was that the paterfamilias originally
also sat instead of reclining. See Marq. _Privatleben_, p. 292 note
3.]
[Footnote 443: Columella, ii. 1. 19, a very interesting chapter;
Plutarch, _Cato min_.
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