La Villa. Bartolomeo Taegio
urbana. In Varro’s day, the villae urbanae of the wealthy were typically more elaborate architecturally than the serviceable farmhouse described by Cato, and they were often adorned with painted decoration and filled with expensive furnishings. That Varro disapproved of this trend is evident in the following passage in which he praised the thrifty ancients and condemned his extravagant contemporaries.
Itaque illorum villae rusticae erant maioris preti quam urbanae, quae nunc sunt pleracque contra…. Nunc contra villam urbanam quam maximam ac politissimam habeant dant operam ac cum Metelli ac Luculli villis pessimo publico aedificatis certant.
(And so their [the ancients’] villae rusticae cost more than their villae urbanae, while now the opposite is usually the case…. Nowadays, on the other hand, people try to have as large and handsome a villa urbana as possible; and they vie with the villas of Metellus and Lucullus, which they have built to the great damage of the state.)113
As this excerpt from book 1 of Rerum rusticarum shows, Varro used the terms villa rustica and villa urbana to refer to two different kinds of dwellings. Later in Varro’s dialogue, the difference between these kinds of dwellings is elucidated: one is a utilitarian farmhouse, the other a luxurious country residence dissociated from farming. In a long passage in book 3, in which one interlocutor asks what a villa is, a range of examples is given in reply. At one end of the spectrum is a villa that entirely lacks painted or sculpted embellishments. At the other extreme is a villa that serves no purpose related to the tilling of the soil.114 For Varro it was not a building’s location, size, or level of comfort but its economic productivity (which could be based on raising anything from crops to cattle, birds, or bees) that made it a villa.
Like Varro, Columella distinguished between rustica and urbana, but for a purpose different from Varro’s. According to Columella, the rustica (overseer’s residence), the urbana (owner’s residence), and the fructuaria (storehouse) were the three main parts of the villa, differentiated according to use: “Modus autem membroumque numerus aptetur universo consaepto et dividatur in tres partes, urbanam, rusticam, fructuariam” (Moreover, the size [of the villa] and the number of its members should be proportioned to the whole enclosure, and it should be divided into three parts: urbana, rustica, and fructuaria.)115 It is clear from the context that Columella was referring to a building that was composed of more or less loosely related parts. The same building housed, in three sections, everything that needed shelter: the owner’s family; the slave household, cattle, and other animals; and the wine and all the produce of the villa. The two principles Columella set forth that were supposed to guide the arrangement of spaces within each section were solar orientation—“balnearia occidenti aestivo advertantur” (the baths should face the setting sun of summer)—and convenience—“vilico iuxta ianuam fiat habitatio, ut intrantium exeuntiumque conspectum habeat” (quarters should be provided for the overseer alongside the entrance, so that he might have a view of all who come in and go out).116 Columella distinguished between the villa and the consaeptum (fenced enclosure) in which it is built. Even where he said that there should be “vel intra villam vel extrinsecus inductus fons perrenis” (a never-failing spring either within the villa or brought in from outside) and that “salientes rivi … perducendos in villam” (bubbling brooks … should be conducted into the villa), Columella used the word villa to refer to an articulated and functionally differentiated aedificium (building), not an estate.117
Another important ancient source of villa is the late first-century A.D. Roman author Marcus Valerius Martialis. Martial’s Epigrams contain more than thirty references to suburban villa estates, including his own. Where he referred to his own property at Nomentum, a town in Latium northeast of Rome, Martial used the words rus (farm), recessum (retreat), or hortus (garden), or he simply called it his Nomentanus.118 Distinguishing between the land and the building, he called his modest house at Nomentum both casa and rudis villa.119 He repeatedly stated that his main reason for going there was to exchange the incessant noise of the city for the quiet of the countryside, and a good night’s sleep.120 Martial praised his friend Faustinus’s villa at Baiae because it “rure vero barbaroque laetatur” (rejoices in the true, rough countryside). He contrasted Faustinus’s villa with a property “sub urbe” (near Rome) that offered its guests “famem mundam” (elegant starvation).121 Quiet was evidently more important to Martial than either distance from the city or rusticity. He said he preferred the villa of Julius Martialis on the Janiculum in Rome to larger ones at Tibur or Praeneste because there he could view the city below isolated from its noise, even though he wondered whether the “celsa villa” (lofty villa) ought to be called a rus (country place) or a domus (urban residence).122
The ancient author who, more than any other, enlarged the word villa by expanding its range of associations is Pliny the Younger. Of his letters, written at the height of the empire, four in particular reveal the richness of meaning of villa for Romans at the end of the first century A.D. In his letters to Gallus and Domitius Apollinaris, Pliny attributed to his Laurentine and Tuscan villas qualities that are now almost universally associated with the word villa. References to these qualities also occur, among comments on a villa’s purpose, in two less well known letters: one to Baebus Hispanus, in which Pliny the Younger described a property that a friend wanted to buy; and another to Minicius Fundanus (which Taegio cited), concerning his Laurentine villa.
The qualities that Pliny the Younger counted among the attractions of his Laurentine villa are its moderate commodiousness, its proximity to the city, and the favorable disposition of its rooms with respect to exposure and vistas. He wrote to Gallus that “villa usibus capax, non sumptuosa tutela” (the house is large enough for my needs, but not expensive to keep up).123 Extending this principle to an entire estate, he told Baebus Hispanus that he should buy a property with “mediocritas villae, modus ruris, qui avocet magis quam distringat” (a modest house, and sufficient land for him to enjoy without taking up too much of his time). Pliny the Younger expected his friend to enjoy strolling around his grounds inspecting vines and fruit trees. He recommended the same property because it was vicinitas urbis (not far from Rome).124 He described for Gallus the arrangement of various rooms of his Laurentine villa in terms not only of solar orientation but also of vistas, especially the view from the dining room that “quasi tria maria prospectat” (looks out, as it were, on three seas).125 Pliny the Younger also emphasized the beauty of the views from the house, and the restfulness of the place, in his description of the Tuscan villa. He wrote to Domitius Apollinaris, “Villa in colle imo sita prospicit quasi ex summo” (My house is on the lower slope of a hill but commands as good a view as if it were higher up).126 He claimed that he enjoyed the best of health, both physical and mental, when he was at his villa, because “placida omnia et quiescentia, quod ipsum salubritati regionis ut purius caelum ut aer liquidior accedit” (everywhere there is peace and quiet, which adds as much to the healthfulness of the place as the clear sky and pure air).127
Although none of the ancient sources says so (and Varro did not mention it in his etymology of vilicus), it is probable that villa, like many Latin words, is closely related to a Greek word. Modern etymologies indicate that villa is a derivative of the Latin word vicus, which is cognate with the Greek word oikos, meaning “estate” or “household.”128 In Oeconomicus, Xenophon’s dialogue on the subject of estate management, the word oikos denotes an economic entity, the most basic unit of production and consumption throughout the Greek world. The oikos described by Xenophon was sustained by agricultural activity. It combined features of the family-run farm with the type of enterprise that exploited slave labor; profit was its chief goal. Neither the location of its land nor the character of its landscape setting was an important aspect of the oikos.129 Many inhabitants of classical Athens had to travel miles from home to reach the plots of land they farmed, and while some of the wealthiest possessed enclosed, irrigated, and intensively cultivated kepoi (gardens) adjacent to their houses, this certainly was not the rule.130
There are similarities between the Greek idea of