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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2015
It is a matter for surprise that none but the vaguest idea can be gleaned from ancient writers of the appearance or plan of an ordinary farm-house in the ancient world. Cato, Varro, Columella, the Elder Pliny, and Palladius describe with varying degrees of detail the kind of site on which such a house might most suitably be built and the type of rooms required for those who inhabit it. They indicate the uses to which the various portions of the house were put (villa urbana, villa rustica, willa fructuaria) but none of them thought it necessary to describe methodically the lay-out of the house as a whole. Varro mentions incidentally a ‘cohors’ (cortile or farm-yard) and states that on a large farm it is more convenient to have two such areas, one for the kitchen and tool-sheds, the other for live-stock. Varro's remark is vague enough, but the notices of other writers are even vaguer. The younger Pliny sets out to give a detailed description of his Laurentine villa, but the attempts of modern scholars to reconstruct the plan of the villa from Pliny's description have produced the most varied results and shown the futility of the quest.
1 Tanzer, Helen H., The Villas of Pliny the Younger (Columbia Univ. Press, 1924).Google Scholar
2 A list of them, with bibliographical details, is given by Rostovtzeff, , The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, pp.496–7.Google Scholar Rostovtzeff’s list has been slightly enlarged by Day ‘Agriculture in the Life of Pompeii,’Yale Classical Studies, 1932, 3, 165ff. For convenience of reference, the numbers assigned in Rostovtzeff's list to the villas discussed in this paper are here appended:—No. 1=R.25; no. 2=R.29; no. 3= R.30; no. 4=R.27; no. 5=R.I; no. 6=R.IO; no. 7=R.13; no. 8=R.16; no. 9=R.34; no. Io=R.31; no. II=R.24; no. 12=R–5 ; no. 13=R.33.Google Scholar
3 Rostovtzeff, , op. cit., pp.503–5:Google Scholar Carrington,‘Studies in the Campanian Villae Rusticae,’ Journ. Rom. Stud., 1931, 21, 110ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 Ruggiero, , Degli Scavi di Stabia dal1749 al 1782(Naples 1881), pls9–19.Google Scholar
5 ANTIQUITY, June 1933, pp. 137–8 and fig. Ib.
6 It would be beyond the scope of this paper to discuss in detail the evidence by which these villas have been dated. Reference may be made to an article by the writer, ‘Notes on the Building Materials of Pompeii,’ in Journ. Rom. Stud., 1933, pp. 125 ff, where justification will be found for the dates assigned in this paper to the various types of construction.Google Scholar
7 ANTIQUITY, June 1933, pp. 136–7 and fig. Ia.
8 Mau-Kelsey, , Pompeii, Its Life and Art, 1899, p.252.Google Scholar
9 Patroni, , ‘L’Origine della Domus,’ Rendiconti della Reale Accademia dei Lincei, 1912, 21, 260ff. Cf. ANTIQUITY, June 1933, p. 152.Google Scholar
10 Since this paper was written, Dr Axel Boéthius has published, in the American Journal of Archaeology, 1934, 38, 158ff, an article entitled ‘Remarks on the Development of Domestic Architecture in Rome.’Amongst other subjects, he reviews carefully and judgmatically the evidence relevant to the early history of the town–house and concludes that there is no clear sign that the atrium was an off–spring of the old Italic huts. His argument depends on negative evidence, i.e. on the absence of the vital second link in the chain, huts—farm–house—atrium. The suggestion of the present writer is that the missing link is to be found in the villas of type 1. Since, however, surviving examples of these villas date from a time subsequent to the development of the urban atrium, it is essential to the writer’s argument to assume that the type itself was much older.Google Scholar
11 Mau-Kelsey, , op. cit., pp.349 ff and fig. 176. A plan of this villa will be found in the stock guide–books to Pompeii, e.g. Engelmann, New Guide to Pompeii ed. 2, Leipsig 1931, fig. 62 ; Maiuri,Google Scholar Pompei, Rome, 1931–2, fig. 14.Google Scholar
12 ANTIQUITY, June 1933, p. 139 and fig. Ic.
13 Ibid., p. 143 and fig. 2a.
14 Maiuri, La Villa dei Misteri (Libreria dello Stato, Rome, 1931).
15 Not shown in fig. III.
16 It is significant for the view taken in this paper about the origin of the atrium that, in this instance, when the atrium–plan was used, not in the town but in the suburbs, the alae became doorways leading out of the central area.
17 ANTIQUITY, loc. cit.
18 XXIII, passim, esp. eh. 15.
19 ANTIQUITY, March 1932, p. 7, fig. I, period III.
20 De Agri Cultura, chs. I, 3, 10 and 11.
21 Day, in Yale Classical Studies, 1932, 3, 165ff.Google Scholar
22 II, 13, 6.