=308. Heterogeneous Crowds in the Great Baths.=--One of the glories of the great thermæ is their apparent democracy. Any freedman is entitled to make use of them, although there are doubtless special recreation and reposing rooms reserved for the rich elect. In theory the public baths are free, but except on gala occasions when the Emperor wishes to win popularity, there is usually a standard charge for admission of a _quadrans_, a small copper coin (about ¼ cent). This simply covers the expense of the attendants who look after one’s clothes, and provides the oil for anointing--the use of the magnificent building goes for nothing. In such a place persons of every station can be seen mingling together, social barriers partially break down, and a delightful informality prevails. It is recorded of Hadrian that when he is in the city, he proves his “liberal” habits by frequenting the public baths and bathing in the great pools along with the meanest of his subjects. Every afternoon, therefore, the thermæ are the scenes of intensely bustling life. The noise rising from their great halls is terrific--the shouting, laughing, splashing, running, exercising, going on continuously.[197] The Romans are preëminently a sociable people. They delight in the free and easy contacts of the baths. What place has witnessed more financial bargains struck, quarrels started or abated, lawsuits arranged, marriage treaties negotiated, philosophical theories spun, artistic points discussed, or even matters of imperial policy promoted than the thermæ of Trajan? At the thermæ are continued all those matters you talked over in the Forum this morning and which you will finish on the supper couches to-night. The place, however, to a stranger is utterly bewildering in its hugeness, its noise and the hurrying of its crowds and its complexity, and few scenes in Rome could be more novel to a visitor from another civilization. [Illustration: PLAN OF ROMAN PUBLIC BATHS: partly conjectural.] =309. Entering the Thermæ.=--We can follow Calvus as he approaches by the great southern portal which looks down from the slopes of the Esquiline upon the great gray cylinder of the Flavian Amphitheater. Before us stretches an enormous portico, fronting a high masonry wall, of course crowned at many points with statues. The entrance is relatively narrow in order to control the thousands of persons streaming inside, each passing his copper to the attendants at the gate. But once past the barrier, we see before us the vista, apparently not of a bathing establishment, but of an ample, inclosed park, girded on every side with handsome porticoes, scattered with trees, bright shrubbery, and groups of sculpture, but with the domes seemingly of a magnificent palace rising from the middle of the area.