=306. Government and Privately Owned Public Baths: Both Very Popular.=--Even great nobles, however, enjoy the society and recreations afforded by the public establishments; and there is often no better way for a rich senator to display pomp and circumstance than to enter one of the huge thermæ followed by a long train of slaves, freedmen, and clients. Men of business, and, of course, mere toilers must visit the baths when their duties give temporary leisure, but for everybody who can control his time there is one preferable period--the eighth or ninth hour, two or three P.M. It is around this time that the bath attendants heat all their huge tanks to boiling and make ready with an endless supply of anointing oils and “strigils” (metal scrapers) to care for the onrush of the multitudes. There are about sixteen enormous public baths in Rome owned by the government, although often their care is leased to contractors. Small baths, privately owned, opened to anybody at a tolerable fee and managed solely for profit, exist in addition all over the city, and nearly nine hundred stand licensed on the City Præfect’s books. Some of these privately owned baths are elegant establishments, offering great luxuries at corresponding prices. The keepers of a bath-house (_balneatores_) rank low in social estimation, for many of their places are the scenes of gross reveling and debauchery; but there is excellent money in the business. Their baths have names something like inns, and going about the metropolis, we have noticed the “Baths of Daphne,” “The Æolian,” “The Diana,” “The Mercury,” or they are simply called from the names of the owners, as “Faustinian Baths” or “The Crassian.” On a signboard one can read that the “Thermæ of Marcus Crassus” offer both salt- and fresh-water baths.[195] =307. The Great Baths of Trajan: Baths, Club-House, and Café.=--However, if one would see and meet the world, a visit to the great public baths is absolutely necessary. Some of these are located on the outskirts of the capital; for example, the magnificent Baths of Agrippa stand near the Pantheon in the Campus Martius; but only a short distance from Publius Calvus’s mansion on the Esquiline rise what are, perhaps, the finest public thermæ as yet existing in Rome, those of Trajan, which were rebuilt on the site of a similar establishment earlier erected by Titus.[196] The Baths of Trajan constitute more than a vast establishment where perhaps a thousand persons can bathe in the various tanks and pools simultaneously. They supply many of the needs which another age will meet partly by the club-house and partly by the café. They are frequented by women as well as men, although the former are expected to make their visits particularly during the morning hours and certain special rooms are set aside for their use. These rules, however, are often violated, and scenes can take place at the Baths of Trajan which from the standpoint of a later time are simply indescribable.