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Studies in the Campanian ‘Villae Rusticae.’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Extract

The remains of 39 villas have been discovered, up to the present, in the region which was covered by lapilli and ash during the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79. Twelve of these were excavated between the years 1749 and 1782, in the vicinity of Castellammare di Stabia; the rest have been excavated during the last half-century, either in the immediate neighbourhood of Pompeii or in the territory of the modern comuni adjoining it (Boscoreale, Scafati, Gragnano). A list of 36 of the villas arranged in the chronological order of their excavation is given in Rostovtzeff's Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire. Rostovtzeff concludes his note with the words ‘Useful work could be done by a scholar who would devote a little time and care to a study of the Campanian “villae rusticae,” and endeavour to investigate the history of the buildings.’ Unfortunately all of the villas were buried again after their excavation, and, in investigating the history of the buildings, we have only the scanty information furnished by the reports, which, often amounts to nothing at all. Inability to see the buildings, however, would not be such a great disadvantage if, at the time of the excavation, adequate records had been made of the building materials used, and the methods of their use.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright ©R. C. Carrington 1931. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

page 110 note 1 P. 496, ch. 1, n. 26. Rostovtzeff's list comprises 36 villas. The following, though unimportant, are also to be noted:—no. 37 (Scafati), Notizie degli Scavi, 1922, p. 478, no. xii; no. 38 (Valle di Pompei), Notizie degli Scavi, 1928, p. 375 D; no. 39 (Scafati), loc. cit., no. xv–iii.

A map, showing the sites of the villas, will befound on plate xiv. Nos. 1–12 are taken from the map in Ruggiero, Degli Scavi di Stabia dal 1749 al 1782: the rest the writer has investigated personally.

page 110 note 2 No. 13, the well-known villa at Boscoreale, in which was found a store of silver plate, was not in which was found a store of silver plate, was not filled in immediately, but was subsequently neglected, and little of it can now be seen.

page 111 note 1 The following are the villas of which too little survives, or too little was excavated, to make them profitable for study and which, for that reason, are not considered further:—

No. 6. Stabiae. Ruggiero, op. cit., plate xiii.

No. 9. Stabiae. op. cit., plate xvi.

No. 12. Stabiae. op. cit., plate xix.

No. 17. Scafati. N.d.S., 1898, p. 33 ff.

No. 18. Scafati. N.d.S., 1900, p. 203 ff.

No. 23. Boscotrecase. N.d.S., 1899, p. 297 ff.

No. 36. Scafati. N.d.S., 1923, p. 284 ff.

Nos. 37, 38, 39. See p. 1, n. 1.

At the time of writing, no. 24, the Villa Item or ‘Villa of the Mysteries’, lying a short distance from the Porta di Ercolano of Pompeii, is still in process of being excavated and is not yet officially open for public inspection. There is every indication that, when the excavation is complete, this villa will furnish valuable information on ancient agricultural processes, but for the present it has seemed better not to include it in this survey.

page 111 note 2 The evidence on which no. 31 is assigned to the emperor is discussed in Rostovtzeff, loc. cit. The evidence for the other names varies. For nos. 13, 19, 20, 23, 29, it consists in a name on a seal. The words Aselli Thallus on a seal give both the owner and the manager of no. 27. A travertine cippus, set up in memory of his wife, Plautia Tertulla, gives us the name of the owner in no. 7, while that of P. Fannius Synistor (no. 16) occurs on the neck of a measuring vase and in a graffito from the apodyterium.

page 112 note 1 Tacitus, Annals, i, 6.

page 112 note 2 Cf. the villa of Cicero at Pompeii, from which some of the letters are addressed (the identification with the house in the Via dei Sepolcri has no foundation); those of Pompey and Hortensius at Bauli; of Caesar, Licinius Crassus, the orator, and Piso at Baiae; of Mark Antony and Lucullus at Misenum (Beloch, Campanien im Alterthum, ed. 2, pp. 178–9, 185–6, 198–9); that of Catulus on the border of the Lucrine Lake (Cicero, Acad. Prior., ii, 25Google Scholar, 80).

page 112 note 3 Conway, , Italic Dialects, vol. i, pp. 6162, nos. 44–45.Google Scholar

page 112 note 4 C.I.L. x, 846. (= Dessau, I.L.S. 6367). Numerius Popidius N.f. Celsinus was ‘adlected’ into the ordo decurionum for his generosity in rebuilding the Temple of Isis after the earthquake of A.D. 63.

page 112 note 5 The name is found in Oscan inscriptions of the pre-Sullan period. Conway, loc. cit.

page 112 note 6 ibid., p. 77, no. 77 B. Q. Asilli. Cf. von Planta, Gram. d. Osk. Umbr. Dial., vol. i, p. 516.

page 112 note 7 C.I.L., x, 2109.

page 112 note 8 Cf. Duff, Freedmen in the Early Roman Empire, p. 110.

page 113 note 1 C.I.L. iv, 5818.

page 113 note 2 C.I.L. iv, 5863.

page 113 note 3 C.I.L. iv, 2643.

page 113 note 4 Mem. d. R. Acc. d. Napoli, 2 (1911), p. 191.

page 113 note 5 C.I.L. iv, 2. Tab. Cer. xcvi. 5. That the Caecilii were a gens of long standing in Pompeii is indicated by the occurrence of a Q. Caecilius among the candidati antiqui, as candidate for the quaestorship, an office which no longer existed after the foundation of the colony.

page 113 note 6 See below, p. 119.

page 114 note 1 C.I.L. x, 2960, M. Siminius Cresces. We shall see later that no. 20 cannot really be counted as a rustic villa (p. 116), but, as the precise nature of the villa is not really clear, and as the name does not materially affect our main conclusions, it is included here for the sake of completeness.

page 114 note 2 See below, p. 121.

page 114 note 3 petronius, Satyricon, 76.

page 114 note 4 xiv, 48 ff.

page 115 note 1 C.I.L. x, 794—a Popidius holds the quaestorship, an office which can only have existed in the days of the pre-Sullan municipium. Conway, op. cit., nos. 44–5 cites another Popidius as meddix tuticus. For Asellius see p. 6, n. 3; for Arellius, p. 8, n. 1.

page 115 note 2 For Caecilius, cf. C.I.L. iv, 29, 30, 36, recording a Caecilius who was a candidate for the quaestorship.

page 115 note 3 Pro Sulla, 21, 62, ita carus utrisque est atque jucundus (sc. P. Sulla), ut non alteros demovisse, sed utrosque constituisse videatur.

page 115 note 4 For the evidence, see Beloch, Campanien, p. 248–9.

page 115 note 5 Cicero (Pro Sulla, 21, 60–62) is clearly drawing a distinction between the colonial settlement immediately succeeding the Social War, which is said to have been regarded by the Pompeians as not unfavourable, and a dispute which arose and continued for many year de ambulatione ac de suffragiis suis, and was decided by the patroni coloniae to the satisfaction of both parties.

page 115 note 6 Op. cit., p. 503–5, n. 21.

page 116 note 1 See above, p. 112, and fig. 16.

page 116 note 2 See below, p. 122, and fig. 16.

page 116 note 3 A photograph of them is given in N.d.S., 1921, p. 422.

page 116 note 4 See below, pp. 124–5, and fig. 16.

page 116 note 5 At Stabiae; Ruggiero, op. cit., plate xi.

page 116 note 6 Ruggiero, op. cit., plate xviii.

page 116 note 7 N.d.S., 1897, p. 337 ff; 1898, p. 494 ff; 1899, p. 236 ff.

page 117 note 1 ibid., 1895, p. 495. The notice cacator cave malum shows that the walls of the buildings were accessible to people who had no right there.

page 117 note 2 ibid., p. 499.

page 117 note 3 N.d.S., 1903, p. 64 ff. See fig. 16, p. 126.

page 118 note 1 When a name occurs in full, it is either in the genitive or the dative case or in the ablative with ab. Occasionally two of these occur together (e.g., C.I.L., iv, 5788, 5712), but in such cases, it is quite clear that one person is the sender and the other the recipient. Owing, however, to the abbreviated form in which the names often occur, it is sometimes doubtful whether the sender or the recipient is intended. Obviously we are only warranted in claiming as actual producers of wine those whose names indicate that they are the senders of the amphora. As a working formula, the following may be adopted. When a name occurs in the genitive or in the ablative with ab, it probably indicates that the bearer of the name produced the contents of the amphora; when a name is in the dative, we cannot be certain whether its bearer was an absentee landlord to whom the produce was being sent, or an entirely extraneous person, and, consequently, such names cannot be used as evidence; when only the initials or a truncated form of the name is given, the graffiti are useless for our purpose.

page 119 note 1 If the plan of the villa, its size, decoration, and furnishings, or the objects found in it, are as luxurious as their counterparts from the wealthier houses found in Pompeii itself; if, that is, they signify a copiousness of wealth and a breadth of culture such as we should not expect a permanently resident farmer to display, that villa is assigned to the first class. Clearly the most difficult distinction to draw is that between the first and second classes, and, as we can no longer view the buildings, classification will largely depend on the impression created on our minds as we read the reports.

page 119 note 2 Ruggiero, op. cit., plate x, fig. 2a.

page 119 note 3 Pasqui, , in Monum. Ant., vol. vii, 1897, 398.Google Scholar

page 119 note 4 F. Barnabei, La Villa Pompeiana di P. Fannio Sinistor, (1901).

page 119 note 5 N.d.S., 1921, p. 426. See fig 16.

page 119 note 6 ibid., p. 442. See above, pp. 112.

page 119 note 7 ibid., p. 461.

page 121 note 1 ibid., 1922, p. 459. See above, pp. 112, and fig. 16.

page 121 note 2 ibid., 1923, p. 271. See fig. 16.

page 121 note 3 ibid., p. 280.

page 121 note 4 Ruggiero, op cit., plate ix.

page 121 note 5 ibid., plate x, fig. 1a.

page 121 note 6 ibid., plate xii.

page 121 note 7 ibid., plate xiv.

page 121 note 8 ibid., plate xvii. See below, p. 124, n. 3.

page 121 note 9 N.d.S., 1897, p. 391 ff.

page 121 note 10 ibid., 1921, p. 436. See above, p. 116.

page 122 note 1 Loc cit. C.I.L. iv, 6867–9. See below, p. 123, and fig. 16.

page 122 note 2 ibid., p. 423. See fig. 16.

page 122 note 3 ibid., 1923, p. 275. See fig. 16.

page 122 note 4 Cf. Strabo, v, 247. άγροῖς περιοικούμενον παγκάλοις πλὴν τῆς κορνϕῆς

page 122 note 5 One of the two villas of the third type (no. 34) was found low down in the Sarno valley, the part of the district least suitable for a summer residence.

page 123 note 1 No. 25. Palos acutos DCCCXL qui non acuti CDXX summa MCCC (C.I.L., iv, 6886). No. 31. In acervo magno pali sunt MXXIII (6887). A large mass of such pali were found on no. 33.

page 123 note 2 These nineteen villas, arranged in the classes to which they were assigned above, are:—

Class I (absentee landlords, residing only occasionally), nos. 13, 16, 29, 30, 31, 33, 35.

Class II (permanently resident farmers), nos. 2, 5, 10, 14, 25, 28.

Class III (large-scale factories run by slaves), nos. 26, 34.

Not classifiable:—nos. 8 (Ruggiero, op. cit., plate xv), 15 (N.d.S., 1898, p. 419), 19 (1899, p. 392), 32 (1922, p. 479).

page 124 note 1 Viz.: Class I, nos. 16, 29, 30, 31, 33, 35; Class III, no. 26; unclassifiable, nos. 8, 15, 19, 32.

page 124 note 2 Viz.: nos. 13 and 34. No. 34 is discussed on pp. 31–2. No. 13 contained a large threshing-floor, indicating the cultivation of cereals.

page 124 note 3 One room, jutting out from the rest of the building, and with a wide opening apparently fronting on a road, contained two moderately large dolia, reminding one of the taberna vinaria of Varro, De ling. lat., lib. viii, §55, p. 185. The existence of a torcularium shows that the villa produced wine, though the cella attached to the press is not very large.

page 124 note 4 See above, p. 122.

page 124 note 5 Nos. 5 and 14 contained threshing floors, the former's being a large one. In no. 25 a plough was found which seems to have served for some form of agricultural production other than that of the vine.

page 124 note 6 N.d.S., 1923, p. 271.

page 124 note 7 See above, p. 122.

page 124 note 8 The discovery of earrings and bracelets in one of the rooms suggests that, if women were not employed on the farm, at least the vilicus had his wife to supervise the cheese factory which it contained.

page 125 note 1 In the villa were found a cella (p. 120, no. 34, F), a torcularium, a large room containing wooden beams (E), perhaps for splitting up into vine-props, and two hoes. Furthermore, skeletons of oxen were discovered in a stabulum (no. 2), and, most important of all, a large bronze vessel, suitable for the handling of large quantities of milk, which suggested to the excavator that part of the farm (D) was used as a cheese factory. Milk could readily be obtained from the Mons Lactarius, the modern Monte Lattare above Gragnano, the milk from which was famous in antiquity for its richness and medicinal properties. Cf. Beloch, op. cit., p. 248.

page 125 note 2 A special apparatus was discovered, designed for the preparation of grain, of which, at the time of writing the report, Della Corte promised a special study.

page 125 note 3 Cf., Mau-Kelsey, Pompeii—Its Life and Art, p. 388. Cf. fig. 16.

page 126 note 1 The wall-paintings belong to the third (no. 30) or fourth (nos. 33 and 35) styles. Of the earlier history of the villas we know nothing.

page 126 note 2 Fig. 16.

page 126 note 3 N.d.S., 1903, p. 65.

page 127 note 1 Cf. Mau-Kelsey, op. cit., p. 43.

page 128 note 1 De Agri Cultura, cxlvii.

page 128 note 2 Fig. 16.

page 128 note 3 Fig. 16.

page 128 note 4 Vitruvius, 6, 8, 22.

page 128 note 5 N.d.S., 1897, p. 386.

page 128 note 6 N.d.S., 1897, p. 396.

page 129 note 1 Mau-Kelsey, op. cit., p. 43.

page 129 note 2 N.d.S., loc. cit.

page 129 note 3 See above, p. 121.

page 129 note 4 See above, p. 122.

page 130 note 1 De Re Rustica, 8, 1, 2.