Hippias, or the Bath (7-8)

When you have bathed, you need not go back through the same rooms, but can go directly to the cold room through a slightly warmed apartment. Everywhere there is copious illumination and full indoor daylight. Furthermore, the height of each

room is just, and the breadth proportionate to the length; and everywhere great beauty and loveliness prevail, for in the words of noble Pindar,[*] “Your work should have a glorious countenance.” This is probably due in the main to the light, ‘the brightness and the windows. Hippias, being truly wise, built the room for cold baths to northward, though it does not lack a southern exposure; whereas he faced south, east, and west the rooms that require abundant heat.

Why should I go on and tell you of the exercising-floors and of the cloakrooms, which have quick and direct communication with the hall containing the basin, so as to be convenient and to do away with all risk? Let no one suppose that I have taken an insignificant achievement as my theme, and purpose to ennoble it by my eloquence. It requires more than a little wisdom, in my opinion, to invent new manifestations of beauty in commonplace things, as did our marvellous Hippias in producing this work. It has all the good points of a bath—usefulness, convenience, light, good proportions, fitness to its site, and the fact that it can be used without risk. Moreover, it is beautified with all other marks of thoughtfulness—with two toilets, many exits; and two devices for telling time, a water-clock that bellows like a bull, and a sundial. For a man who has seen all this not to render the work its meed of praise is not only foolish but

ungrateful, even malignant, it seems to me. I for my part have done what I could to do justice both to the work and to the man who planned and built it. If Heaven ever grants you the privilege of bathing there, I know that I shall have many who will join me in my words of praise.