On all sides, and in a thousand countries, there are waters bounteously springing forth from the earth, some of them cold, some hot, and some possessed of these properties united: those in the territory of the Tarbelli,[1] for instance, a people of Aquitania, and those among the Pyrencæan[2] Mountains, where hot and cold springs are separated by only the very smallest distance. Then, again, there are others that are tepid only, or lukewarm, announcing thereby the resources they afford for the treatment of diseases, and bursting forth, for the benefit of man alone, out of so many animated beings.[3]

Under various names, too, they augment the number of the divinities,[4] and give birth to cities; Puteoli,[5] for example, in Campania, Statyellæ[6] in Liguria, and Sextiæ[7] in the province of Gallia Narbonensis. But nowhere do they abound in greater number, or offer a greater variety of medicinal properties than in the Gulf of Baiæ;[8] some being impregnated with sulphur, some with alum, some with salt, some with nitre,[9] and some with bitumen, while others are of a mixed quality, partly acid and partly salt. In other cases, again, it is by their vapours that waters are so beneficial to man, being so intensely hot as to heat our baths even, and to make cold water boil in our sitting-baths; such, for instance, as the springs at Baiæ, now known as "Posidian," after the name of a freedman[10] of the Emperor Claudius; waters which are so hot as to cook articles of food even. There are others, too,—those, for example, formerly the property of Licinius Crassus—which send forth their vapours in the sea[11] even, thus providing resources for the health of man in the very midst of the waves!