This park is teeming with life; young men in the scantiest of costume are running races on a long sandy track, others are tossing ball, others engaged in a wrestling contest, Greek fashion, before a crowd of spectators wedged upon seats along a kind of stadium. In a kind of kiosk, or small temple, in a remote corner behind the shrubbery a venerable man with the long beard of a philosopher is expounding the theory of atoms to a small but select audience. We are told that there are also _aulæ_ for learned conventicles, likewise excellent libraries within the central building. =310. Interior of the Baths: the Cold Room (_Frigidarium_).=--This building itself is an enormous mass of brick and concrete, formed into correspondingly enormous vaulted apartments and domes, their entire surface covered with polished marbles or at least with brilliantly colored stucco. At every point there are statues, singly and in groups, historical and mythological, in the round or in high reliefs, in stone and in bronze. Particularly to be noted is a marvelous if overrealistic Laocoön group destined to be celebrated through the coming ages.[198] It boots little to describe all the special chambers and features of the Baths of Trajan; we can only notice those prime features common to all public thermæ even in the provincial cities. The great mass of visitors makes for the hall of the _frigidarium_ (“cold room”), a vast unheated space, albeit comfortable enough on a warm Italian afternoon. Here they toss off their garments, to their own personal slaves if they are visitors of consequence, although there is a great force of regular attendants (_capsarii_) whose prime business it is to take charge of togas and tunics. For all their pains, thefts of clothes in the baths are very common and give rise to frequent uproars. Once stripped, even the gravest and oldest visitors are likely to indulge in all kinds of gymnastics and horseplay. If they do not go outside to limber themselves with tossing ball at trigon (see p. 206) or with amateur races in the stadium, there are plenty of diversions in the frigidarium itself. One can behold the “Very Noble” Varus, the presiding consul, forgetful of all official dignity, competing with an imperial legatus, both with their hands tied behind them and trying by leaning backward to touch their heads against the tips of their toes; while a prætor, an hour earlier an austere judge in the Basilica Æmilia, is leaping up and down “murdering a good song by trying to sing it.”[199]