After you have lain quiescent in the caldarium until its pleasure has begun to pall, the proper thing next is to pass to the _laconicum_. Here the hypocausts have heated the floor and walls with an intense dry heat. The bathers loll again upon marble slabs, and first are dried off and then burst into a profuse perspiration. The ceremony of the bath is at last over. Your slaves or the regular attendant now will scrape you down with the thin flexible bronze strigils, rub you thoroughly with towels, and anoint you with unguents, the more costly and highly perfumed the better. In the numerous small chambers around the great laconicum, open for special fees, there is a greater luxury still;--here such elderly magnates as Varus, or even young noblemen of the more effeminate type, will be elaborately massaged and finally rubbed down with very soft woolen blankets, by at least three expert masseurs working together. After such an experience surely body and mind ought to be prepared for the pleasures of the dinner party. =313. Restaurants, Small Shops, and Sports in or around the Baths.=--Very much more might be added about the Great Baths. For those people who wish to linger until the edge of meal time, there is no need to go hungry. Close by the entrance are numerous restaurants (_popinæ_) of more than ordinary elegance. Here you can send your slave for sweet cakes, slices of toasted honey bread, sausages, eggs, and like viands; and in the great frigidarium and tepidarium the peddlers from these restaurants are always going about with trays of such food, crying their wares and making the ordinary bedlam so much the greater. Directly in the thermæ themselves are small shops for the sale of fine perfumes and unguents; and often in the corridors and antechambers you can find crowds gazing at special displays of paintings, or of new statuary--for the public baths are practically the art galleries of Rome. As for the frequenters of the baths, here even more than in the fora are the trysting spots for parasites. Let an approachable nobleman be seen lolling at ease in the tepidarium and he is instantly spotted by some dinner hunter. Innumerable are the attentions that can then be paid him. Does he wish to play handball?--The parasite retrieves for him. Does he lay aside a fine garment?--At once “his remarkable taste” is praised to the skies. Does he lie perspiring in the laconicum? His “friend” tries to anticipate the slaves in wiping the sweat from his brow. No act is too obsequious--all in hopes of hearing those delightful words, “Come home and dine!” In the halls of the women similar scenes are enacted, but we cannot pursue them.