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As you can probably feel, this is the hottest room in the baths! There is a three-foot deep pool at the far end of the room. The heat in here will help to open your pores. Feeling a little too hot, though? Don't worry, there is a slave here with a patara, a pouring bowl, of cold water to refresh you.
It might be a good idea to wear those sandals in here that the slave is carrying around for you. The room is heated by a hypocaust, which is under the floor. It makes the floor itself very hot to walk on! The hypocaust is basically a raised floor on posts, where hot air from a furnace circles about. The walls are hollow, too, to let the air travel upwards as well. A slave looks after the furnace, to make sure that it is constantly going. That is a vary hot job! The hot air also travels though a passage to the Tepidarium. Because the air has cooled off a bit in its journey, the Tepidarium does not get quite as hot. Every so often, we have to perform maintainence on the hypocaust, so some lucky boy-slave gets to climb through from the furnace, which is put out during the maintainence, and check that everything is OK. It gets very cramped in there!
When you are ready, follow me to the Frigidarium.
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