On sumptuous baths the rich their wealth bestow, Or some expensive airy portico; Where safe from showers they may be borne in state; And, free from tempests, for fair weather wait: Or rather not expect the clearing sun; Through thick and thin their equipage must run: Or staying, ’tis not for their servants’ sake, But that their mules no prejudice may take. The _Naumachiæ_, or places for the shows of sea engagements[160], are nowhere particularly described; but we may suppose them to be very little different from the circus or amphitheatres; since those sort of shows, for which they were designed, were often exhibited. The _Naumachiæ_ owed their original to the time of the first Punic war, when the Romans first initiated their men in the knowledge of sea-affairs. After the improvement of many years, they were designed as well for gratifying the sight, as for increasing their naval experience and discipline; and therefore composed one of the solemn shows by which the magistrates or emperors, or any affecters of popularity, so often made their court to the people. The usual accounts we have of these exercises seem to represent them as nothing else but the image of a naval fight. But it is probable that sometimes they did not engage in any hostile manner, but only rowed fairly for the victory. This conjecture may be confirmed by the authority of Virgil, who is acknowledged by all the critics, in his descriptions of the games and exercises to have had an eye always to his own country, and to have drawn them after the manner of the Roman sports. Now the sea contention, which he presents us with, is barely a trial of swiftness in the vessels, and of skill in managing the oars, as is most admirably delivered in his fifth book[161]. Warm baths were first introduced into Rome by Mæcenas. There cannot be a greater instance of the magnificence of the Romans than their bagnios. Ammianus Marcellinus observes, that they were built “in modum provinciarum,” as large as provinces; but the great Valesius judges the word provinciarum to be a corruption of piscinarum. And though this emendation does in some measure extenuate one part of the vanity which has been so often alleged against them, from the authority of that passage of the historian, yet the prodigious accounts we have of their ornaments and furniture, will bring them, perhaps, under a censure no more favourable than the former. Seneca, speaking of the luxury of his countrymen in this respect, complains that they were arrived to such a pitch of niceness and delicacy, as to scorn to set their feet on any thing but precious stones. And Pliny wishes good old Fabricius were but alive to see the degeneracy of his posterity, when the very women must have their seats in the baths of solid silver. Of the luxury and magnificence of the Roman bath, we have an interesting account in Seneca; we borrow the old translation, it being somewhat of a curiosity:—