=304. Popularity and Necessity of the Baths.=--As the afternoon advances, however, unless the case is extremely urgent, or the advocates unwontedly skilful, the impassive toga-clad figures upon the high seats of the tribunals begin to show signs of uneasiness. The pleaders themselves reach in turn a suitable climax, as the last filling of the water clocks runs out;--if necessary they can finish their castigations or their excuses to-morrow. The courts are adjourned, and judges, litigants, advocates, spectators, all hasten from the Basilicas possessed with the thought which is common to nigh every man in Rome not of the most unfortunate class--“To the Baths!” The warm Italian climate makes frequent ablutions not merely comfortable but necessary, but in the stern old days of the earlier Republic Seneca specifically assures us that the fathers of Rome were not wont to wash all over oftener than once a week (_nundinæ_).[193] Long before the age of Hadrian, however, a daily bath became a personal necessity. No dinner can be enjoyed without it. No respectable man can feel comfortable deprived of it. As the bathing habit grows, its luxury and elaboration grow correspondingly. The daily bath becomes a social ceremony, and the bathing place becomes almost as indispensable as the forum, or the triclinium. Other peoples and ages may equal or surpass the Romans in actual cleanliness; none can develop institutions really corresponding to the enormous public _thermæ_ scattered over the capital.[194] =305. Luxurious Private Baths.=--Probably every senator and all the more pretentious equites have sumptuous private baths in their own mansions. Here they can go when visits to the public thermæ are inconvenient, or to refresh themselves between the long courses of their great dinner parties. The luxury of these private baths can be so prodigious as to afford constant texts for the Stoical philosophers. Seneca has waxed almost frantic telling how an aristocrat feels somewhat poverty-stricken unless “the walls [of his bath] shine with great costly slabs, and marbles of Alexandria tricked out with reliefs in stone from Numidia, and with the whole ceiling elaborately covered with all varieties of paintings, and unless Thasian marbles inclose the swimming pool, and the water gushes out of silver taps”; likewise “how many a rich freedman adorns his baths with fine collections of statues and a multitude of pillars supporting nothing but serving only as ornaments.” Essential, too, are such private baths for those so devoted to the enjoyment that they insist on bathing several times a day.