The contrast is indeed marked between the numerous large windows here, with their attractive outlook, and the small apertures, high in the walls and ceiling, through which light was admitted in the older baths.
In the Central Baths there was no frigidarium; but a large basin for cold baths, nearly five feet deep, was placed in the dressing room opposite the windows. Supply pipes were so laid that jets would spring into the basin from three small niches, one in each wall; the overflow was conducted by pipes under the floor to a catch basin (w), and thence to the street.
The tepidarium (q)—here, as usual, relatively small—is connected with the apodyterium by two doors, and similarly with the caldarium. The latter room has a bath basin at each end, thus affording accommodations for twenty-six or twenty-eight bathers at once; at the middle of the southeast side was a smaller basin that took the place of the labrum. The hot air flues leading from the furnaces under the bath basins were already built, and above them openings were left for semi-cylindrical heaters like that in the women's caldarium of the Stabian Baths.
The round sweating room, Laconicum, was made more ample by means of four semicircular niches, and lighted by three small round windows just above the cornice of the domed ceiling. There was probably another round opening at the apex, designed for a bronze shutter, which could be opened or closed from below by means of a chain, so as to regulate the temperature. Doors led into the Laconicum from both the tepidarium and the caldarium.
The oblong court between the bath rooms and the street on the northeast side was apparently to be laid out as a garden. At the north end the workmen had begun to build pillars for a short colonnade. A large square foundation for a sundial stands near the opposite corner.
CHAPTER XXX
THE AMPHITHEATRE
In the southeast corner of the city, at a distance from the other excavations, lies the Amphitheatre, the scene of gladiatorial combats. The Pompeians called it 'the show,' spectacula, as in the inscription, preserved in two copies, that gives us the names of the builders: C. Quinctius C. f. Valgus, M. Porcius M. f[ilius] duo vir quinq[uennales] coloniai honoris caussa spectacula de sua peq[unia] fac[iunda] coer[arunt] et coloneis locum in perpetuom deder[unt]. According to this, the Amphitheatre was built by the same men, Valgus and Porcius, who are already known to us as the builders of the Small Theatre [(p. 153]); and they presented it to the city in recognition of the honor conferred upon them by their reëlection as duumvirs. The Amphitheatre may thus have been finished half a decade later than the Theatre, but in any case it belongs to the earliest years of the Roman colony,—as might be inferred, in default of other evidence, from the archaic spelling of the inscription, and the character of the masonry, which is like that of the Small Theatre and the baths north of the Forum ([p. 41]).
The colonists, however, did not receive from Rome their impulse to erect such a building. The passion for gladiatorial combats was developed in Campania earlier, and manifested itself more strongly, than in Latium. Strabo's statement that gladiators were brought forward at Campanian banquets, in larger or smaller numbers according to the rank of the guests, has reference to the period before the Second Punic War; but it was considered a noteworthy event in Rome when, in 264 B.C., gladiators engaged in combat in the Forum Boarium in celebration of funeral rites, as also when, on a similar occasion in 216 B.C., twenty-two pairs fought in the Forum. Buildings were erected for gladiatorial shows in Campanian towns earlier than at the Capital. As late as the year 46 B.C. the spectators who witnessed the games given by Julius Caesar sat on wooden seats supported by temporary staging; and the first stone amphitheatre in Rome was built by Statilius Taurus in 29 B.C., almost half a century after the quinquennial duumvirate of Valgus and Porcius. The Amphitheatre at Pompeii is the oldest known to us from either literary or monumental sources.
In comparison with later and more imposing structures, our Amphitheatre seems indeed unpretentious. Its exterior elevation is relatively low ([Fig. 96]); as our section shows ([Fig. 99]), the arena and the lower ranges of seats are in a great hollow excavated for the purpose below the level of the ground. The dimensions (length 460 feet, breadth 345) are small when compared with those of the Coliseum (615 and 510 feet, respectively) or even the amphitheatres at Capua or Pozzuoli; and the lack of artistic form is noteworthy.