Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Frigidarium

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

FRIGIDA'RIUM. A cool place or larder for preserving meat. Lucil. Sat. viii. 7. Gerlach.

2. One of the chambers mentioned by Vitruvius, as connected with the bathing department of a gymnasium (Vitruv. v. 11. 2.); the actual use and precise nature of which he does not state, nor is it easy to determine. However, it was certainly distinct from the cold-water bath (frigida lavatio), with which it is enumerated, but situated in an opposite angle of the edifice, and adjoining the oiling room (elaeothesium), precisely as represented in a painting from the Thermae of Titus, introduced at p. 142. Reasoning from analogy and the sense in which the term is used by Lucilius (see No. 1.), we might fairly conclude that it was a chamber which did not contain a bath, but was merely kept at a low temperature, in order to brace the body after the exhaustion of the Laconicum, or vapour bath, by a process less violent than that of plunging immediately into cold water — a common practice amongst the ancients. The difficulty experienced in attempting to establish a distinction between the two expressions frigidarium and frigida lavatio, in the passage of Vitruvius above cited, has induced Marini, and Professor Becker with him, to alter the former reading into tepidarium; but the painting referred to, from the Thermae of Titus, which shows a frigidarium adjoining the elaeothesium, as Vitruvius directs, is sufficient to establish the original reading as genuine.

3. Ahenum, or vas. The vat or cistern containing cold water in a set of baths. (Vitruv. v. 10.) The ingenious manner in which the ancients uniformly contrived to arrange the different coppers and vats required for the supply of their baths, so as to incur the least possible waste of water and fuel, is very clearly exhibited by the annexed woodcut (Frigidarium/3.1), from a painting in the Thermae of Titus at Rome. The boiler for the hot water (caldarium) was placed immediately over the furnace; above that, or at a greater elevation from the fire, was another copper (tepidarium), which immediately supplied the vacuum created in the boiler as the hot water was drawn off, by an equal quantity of fluid already raised to a moderate temperature; and was itself, in like manner, filled up directly from the cold cistern (frigidarium), which, as shown by the engraving, was completely removed from the heat of the furnace.

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  Frigidarium/3.1