Chapter 764: The Hot Bath That Went Viral In Rome
Gaby explained some rules that they had to pay attention to after Mark Reuss left. After that, he hurriedly left and caught up with Mark Reuss to discuss the opening game with him.
Bach did a good job in the final assessment, allowing Gaby to complete the task given by Mark Reuss. And he even received his compliments. Gaby, however, wasn’t too happy. In fact, he was frowning.
He was responsible for Bach’s training, and he knew Bach’s true strength quite well. And he felt that it was not a good idea to push Bach to perform in the arena now. Based on Gaby’s original plan, Bach would have to receive at least half a year of special training before he could truly become the trump card of the Victor Arena. It was not wise to make him fight with other gladiators now. However, Mark Reuss was not as patient as Gaby. After watching Bach fight with the official gladiator today, all he could think of was how to make full use of him, earning as much money as soon as possible.
Gaby did not know how to convince Mark Reuss to do the right thing.
…..
The people in charge were all gone, and only a crowd of gladiators who had just passed the assessment were left at the training ground. The atmosphere around them became very lively all of a sudden.
Although they had still not gotten rid of their slave status after becoming an official gladiator, the treatment they received from the arena was way better than before.
First of all, the hellish training that they had gone through was now gone. Although they still had to train constantly to improve their fighting skills, its intensity would not be as scary as before. Considering the care they received and the recovery method they had in this era, all those gladiators would have been abandoned by the school if they continued with the hellish training.
Other than that, everyone’s accommodation was now upgraded. Before that, few of them had to sleep in a small room. Presently, only four were required to sleep in the same room. That would mean the snoring wouldn’t get as loud at night. And the other perk of being chosen as an official gladiator was that they got to enjoy free baths and massages. Among them, the gladiators with Roman citizen status were allowed to leave the school at any time.
They could even stop participating in the school’s training. As long as they participated in the battles assigned on time, they could do whatever they wanted. For example, Griff was told that his wife had just given birth to a son. He barely drank any alcohol and left the school in a hurry to go and check on his wife and his child. Other than unmarried men like Habitus, most of the gladiators with Roman citizen status would go home to sleep at night.
As for the slaves, they did not receive such good treatment from the arena. However, they were told that if they performed more than a year in the Victor Arena, they could ask Gaby if they could step out for some fresh air from time to time.
Besides, Gaby had also promised them that as long as they could obtain a certain number of wins, they could regain their status as free men. Nonetheless, even if they did regain their freedom, their social rank would still be lower than an ordinary Roman citizen. On the good side, their status would be higher than the foreigners that lived in Rome.
This was undoubtedly the most exciting perk for them. As compared to other slaves, gladiators held more honor. Many girls and noble ladies were attracted to these famous gladiators. However, no one wished to stay as a slave all the time, allowing their fate to be determined by others and being sold around like goods.
Zhang Heng and Varo returned to their new residence without drinking too much wine. They opened the door and immediately saw what Mark Reuss was talking about. They saw four female slaves sitting quietly in the room. They were naked, but didnt seem abashed. Instead, they perked up their bosoms as if sending a silent invitation to them.
However, Zhang Heng and Varo did not react much when they saw it.
After completing so many games, it was hard to attract Zhang Heng with physical bodies anymore. He was not going to say no to them, but it was hard for him to get any happiness from sleeping with someone who had no feelings for him.
Varo was a married man. He used to have many slaves working for him. Hence, he was not unfamiliar with this kind of culture. Unfortunately, his mind was currently not on this sort of thing. So he turned to Zhang Heng and said, “I plan to make a batch in the school bathroom. We haven’t cleaned ourselves for so many days. I feel like I smell bad. How about you?
“I’m with you,” Zhang Heng nodded.
Other than Caesar and the gladiators, ancient Rome was famous for its obsession with taking baths.
Ever since the wealthy businessman, Gaius, invented the first hot water equipment set in the early 1st century, hot baths quickly went viral in the entire Roman Empire at an unimaginable speed, becoming a part of the Romans’ daily life. Regardless of men, women, children, nobles, or slaves, none could resist the hot bath.
However, even for the wealthy men that lived in Domus, most of them would choose not to build an individual bathroom. Ancient Romans were more accustomed to bathing in public bathhouses.
There were hundreds of large and small bathhouses in the entire city of Rome. Among them, the largest and most famous Trajan Bathhouse could accommodate three-thousand people at the same time. And the admission fees for these bathhouses were usually very low. Take Trajan Bathhouse as an example; its admission fee was only one Quadrans (sixteen Quadrans equaled one Sestertius). One could not even buy half a bowl of thick vegetable soup with one Quadrans. According to Varo, Trajan Bathhouse was like a small city. Those who entered it for the first time might even get lost.
However, Zhang Heng was not allowed to go there for the time being. They could only use the bathhouse in the gladiator school, one specially built for the gladiators and wasn’t open to the public.
From far, they could see the plume of steam coming from the top of the bathhouse. It could never be compared with a public bathhouse in terms of size, but everything a bathhouse should have could be found in the gladiator school’s bathhouse. For example, upon entering, they could see a big pool in front of them. It was cold water in the pool, and they could swim in it. When they walked past the cold-water pool, they arrived at a small courtyard. This place was like a gym. Two pairs of gladiators sparred with each other, and the rest of the people were watching the fight. Other than that, there was another man punching a bag of flour. He looked like the boxer of the later generations practicing with a sandbag.
Zhang Heng and Varo did not stay and watch them. They walked through the courtyard and came to the destination of their trip. The three rooms behind the small courtyard were the room with the hot bath, the warm bath, and the cold bath.
Varo quickly took off his clothes, leaving only a belt around his waist. It made him look like Tarzan. He then put the clothes in the cabinet on the side and then turned to Zhang Heng. “Come on, my Eastern friend, I bet you will fall in love with it.”
“You’d better not say words that come out so wrong when you are dressed like this,” Zhang Heng chuckled as he took off his clothes.
The two of them walked into the hot water bathroom on the left, one after another. As soon as they opened the door, Zhang Heng felt a heatwave rushing at him. And he saw the room filled with steam. He could barely see the stone pillars in the room.