  We study hot nuclear matter in a model based on nucleon interactions deriving
from the exchange of scalar and vector mesons. The main new feature of our work
is the treatment of the scale breaking of quantum chromodynamics through the
introduction of a dilaton field. Although the dilaton effects are quite small
quantitatively, they affect the high-temperature phase transition appreciably.
We find that inclusion of the dilaton leads to a metastable high-density state
at zero pressure, similar to that found by Glendenning who considered instead
the admixture of higher baryon resonances.
