BALNEARIUS FUR, in Antiquity, a kind of thief who practised stealing the clothes of persons in the baths; sometimes also called fur balnearum. The crime of those thieves was a kind of sacrilege, for the hot baths were accounted sacred; and hence they were more severely punished than common thieves, who stole out of private houses. The latter were usually acquitted on paying double the value of the thing stolen; but the former were generally punished with death.