Julian felt his body aching under ceaseless and profitless fatigue. Extinguishing the lamp, he lay down upon his narrow camp-bed.
"I must reflect in quiet," he said to himself, gazing at the nocturnal sky. But the power of reflection did not come. A great star was shining in the darkened ether and Julian through half-closed eyelids looked at it. Coldly, coldly, the star's image sank into his heart.
X
At Antioch the great, the capital of Syria, not far from Syngon, the principal street, splendid hot baths, Thermæ, stood just at the meeting of four roads.
These baths were fashionable and expensive. Crowds of clients used to go there to learn the last gossip of the town. Between the apodyterium, the room for undressing, and the frigidarium, or room for cooling and rest, lay a fine hall with mosaic floor and marble walls; this was the hot-air bath, the sudatorium or laconicum.
From adjoining halls came laughs of the bathers and the noise of powerful jets of water falling into huge basins. Naked slaves ran hither and thither, jostling one another and opening jars of perfume.
At Antioch bathing was considered neither as an amusement nor as a necessity, but as the principal charm and most varied art of life. The capital of Syria was moreover renowned, the world over, for the abundance, the exquisite taste, and the purity of its waters. A full bath or a full bucket seemed empty, so transparent were the streams from the aqueducts of Antioch.
Through the warm and milky vapours of the sudatorium could be caught glimpses of the red and naked bodies of notable citizens. Some were half-reclining, others seated. Some were being rubbed over with oil; all, with the utmost solemnity, were talking together, while they perspired. The beauty of a pair of ancient statues, an Antinous and an Adonis, placed in niches overhead, threw into still greater prominence the hideousness of the living.
A fat old man came out with a majestic, albeit misshapen, body. He was the merchant Bouzaris, whose finger and thumb controlled the whole of the corn-markets of Antioch. A sprightly young man was respectfully supporting him under the arm. Although both were naked, it was easy to distinguish at a glance which was patron and which client.