On the Via Sacra were the shops frequented by ladies; bazaars
where silks and xylons were to be had, essences and unguents,
travelling boxes of scented wood, switches of yellow hair, useful
drugs such as hemlock, aconite, mandragora and cantharides; the
last thing of Ovid's and the improper little novels that came from
Greece.
On the Appian Way, through green afternoons and pink arcades,
fashion strolled. There wealth passed in its chariots, smart young
men that smelt of cinnamon instead of war, nobles, matrons,
cocottes.
At the other end of the city, beyond the menagerie of the
Pantheon, was the Field of Mars, an open-air gymnasium, where
every form of exercise was to be had, even to that simple
promenade in which the Romans delighted, and which in Caesar's
camp so astonished the Verronians that they thought the
promenaders crazy and offered to lead them to their tents. There
was tennis for those who liked it; racquets, polo, football,
quoits, wrestling, everything apt to induce perspiration and
prepare for the hour when a gong of bronze announced the opening
of the baths--those wonderful baths, where the Roman, his slaves
about him, after pasing through steam and water and the hands of
the masseur, had every hair plucked from his arms, legs and
armpits; his flesh rubbed down with nard, his limbs polished with
pumice; and then, wrapped in a scarlet robe, lined with fur, was
sent home in a litter.
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