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The Campanian Villas of C. Marius and the Sullan Confiscations1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

John H. D'arms
John H. D'arms
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Extract

By the end of the Republic the Bay of Naples had become a preferred setting for the pleasure villas of wealthy Romans, a centre of fashion and of cultivated ease. The villa of C. Marius at Misenum, though not the first of which we hear, is the earliest coastal Campanian estate whose appointments are explicitly described as having been luxurious. In an epistle of Seneca (Ep. 51. 11) Marius is said to have built the villa, and on a height; of the location Seneca says, vaguely, in regione Baiana, for the subject of the epistle is the depravity of Baiae, and the author took pleasure in contrasting the character of the early villas in the area with the moral decadence of the imperial resort; the elder Pliny locates the site of Marius' villa more precisely: in Misenensi. From Plutarch's somewhat fuller account come a first indication of date, a different impression of architectural character, and the names of two subsequent owners of the property. He states that after the Social War, when Sulpicius proposed Marius, others Sulla, for command in the Mithridatic War, the detractors of Marius urged him to look after his failing health and to go to the warm baths at Baiae:

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , May 1968 , pp. 185 - 188
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1968

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References

page 185 note 2 The portion of the Campanian coast bounded on the north-west by Misenum, on the south by Athenaeum, was known familiarly as ‘the crater’ (Strabo 5. 4. 3 ff. = C 242); hence Cicero's cratera ilium delicatum (Att. 2. 8. 2). I hope elsewhere to publish a complete register of owners of coastal Campanian villas; for a partial list cf. Dubois, C., Pouzzoles Antique, 361 ff.Google Scholar

page 185 note 3 Beloch, J., Campanien2, 198Google Scholar; Frank, T., ESAR, i. 295.Google Scholar

page 185 note 4 Ep. 51. 11:... C. Marius et Cn. Pompeius et Caesar exstruxerunt quidem villas in regime Baiana, sed illas imposuerunt summis iugis montium.

page 185 note 5 Plin, . N.H. 18. 32Google Scholar: novissimus villam in Misenensi (sc. regions) posuit C. Marius vii cos....

page 185 note 6 Plut. Mar. 34. 2.Google Scholar Marius thus had his villa by 88, and had built it presumably some years before. But not before his election to the consulship of 107: possession of so luxurious a coastal retreat would have made mockery of Marius' bitter denunciation, in his post-electoral speech, of the mollitia, luxuria, and ignavia of the nobiles (Sall. BF. 85. 35, 43). Again, the pressures of subsequent campaigns and the turmoil of domestic politics can have afforded Marius little time for leisurely attention to a villa's construction in the later years of this decade. The estate at Misenum will probably have been built after Marius' return from the east in the mid-nineties, the years in which he forged marriage links with the Crassi and Scaevolae (see Badian, E., ‘Caepio and Norbanus’, Hist. vi [1957], 329)Google Scholar, and Antonius, M. (cos. 99)Google Scholar defended the old Marian legate Aquillius, M. (Badian, For. Client., 212 n. 5)Google Scholar. For independent evidence (Cic. de Orat. 2. 60; on which see Beloch, , Camp. 199)Google Scholar attests that M. Antonius himself owned a villa at Misenum, and that he defended (probably in 92) Marius' cousin, M. Marius Gratidianus, involved in a shadowy dispute at the Lucrine Lake with the Campanian oyster-breeder and real-estate speculator Orata, C. Sergius (Munzer, R-E. ii a, 1713-1714, no. 33).Google Scholar The Campanian holdings of Antonius and Gratidianus ought surely to be noticed in connexion withMarius' own villa at Misenum.

page 186 note 1 Bailey, D. R. Shackleton, Cicero's Letters to Atticus, ii. 148 Att. 3. 12. 2).Google Scholar

page 186 note 2 Att. 1. 16. IO (Shackleton Bailey's text): Surgit pulchellus puer, obicit mihi me ad Baias fuisse. falsum, sed tamen ‘quid? hoc simile est’ inquam ‘quasi in operto dicasfuisse ?’ ‘quid’ inquit ‘homini Arpinati cum aquis calidis ?’ ‘narra’ inquam ‘patron tuo, qui Arpinatis aquas concupivit’ (nosti enim Marianas).

page 186 note 3 Clod. et Cur. fr. 20 (ed. Klotz-Schoell, , viii. 447)Google Scholar: nec enim respexit ilium ipsum patronum libidinis suae non modo apud Baias esse, verum eas ipsas aquas habere, quae gustu tamen (Boot: rustici atque) Arpinatis fuissent.

page 186 note 4 Stangl, T., Cic. Orat. Schol., 89Google Scholar: C. Curionem qui de proscribtione Syllana fundum emerat in Campania; qui C. Marii nuper fuerat, et ipsius Arpinatis.

page 186 note 5 Confirmed by Phaedr. 2.5. 9; Tac. Ann. 6. 50. 2.

page 186 note 6 Cf. n. 3 above.

page 186 note 7 The exact location cannot be determined. If (as is probable) the younger Curio (tr. pl. 50) inherited the villa at the death of his father (in 53: fam. 2. 2), the estate is called Cumanum in Att. 10. 4. 7.

page 186 note 8 Marius' second Campanian villa has been noticed by Frank, T., ESAR i. 295Google Scholar; cf. Bailey, Shackleton, Letters to Att. i. 321 (Att. 1. 16. 10)Google Scholar, where Sen. Ep. 51. II is adduced, but Plin, . N.H. 18. 32Google Scholar and Plut, . Mar. 34. 2Google Scholar are neglected. Gabba, (Ath. N.S. xxix [1951], 256 ff.)Google Scholar, followed by Carney, (‘A Biography of C. Marius’, 23–24; G. & R. N.S. viii [1961], 102)Google Scholar, has argued that Campania was a centre of Marian influence, and to those arguments the evidence for the two coastal holdings of Marius appears to lend some support (despite Badian, Hist. vi [1957], 344 ff.Google Scholar [= Stud. in Gk. and Rom. Hist. 59 ff.]); it would be surprising if the owner of two Campanian villas situated in close proximity could not claim some contacts and friends among the local inhabitants (cf. p. 185 n. 6 above). But the evidence is inconclusive: it may have been the presence of such distinguished sojourners as M. Antonius (p. 185 n. 6 above) rather than that of native Campanians which induced Marius to build villas in the area.

page 187 note 1 For Curio's career see Münzer, , R-E. ii a, 862–3, no. 10.Google Scholar

page 187 note 2 Sulla, Plut. 6. 16.Google Scholar

page 187 note 3 Livy, ep. 77.

page 187 note 4 Ascon, . Mil. 28.Google Scholar

page 187 note 5 Beloch, Camp. 198 (where Cornelia is called ‘eine Verwandte des Dictators’); Münzer, , R-E. iv, 1596, no. 412Google Scholar; Frank, T., ESAR i. 295.Google Scholar

page 187 note 6 Val. Max. 4. 2. 7.

page 187 note 7 See p. 186 n. 4 above.

page 187 note 8 Fuhrmann, , art. publicatio bonorum, R-E. xxiii (1959), 2491 ff.Google Scholar

page 187 note 9 Plut, . Crassus 2. 3.Google Scholar

page 187 note 10 Plut, . Sulla 31. 5.Google Scholar

page 187 note 11 Plut, ., Comparison of Lysander and Sulla 3. 3.Google Scholar

page 188 note 1 Plut, ., Marius 34. 2Google Scholar: .

page 188 note 2 Cic. Rosc. Amer. 6.Google Scholar

page 188 note 3 Cic. Att. 11. 6. 6Google Scholar; cf. Att. 9. 9. 4.Google Scholar

page 188 note 4 App. B.C. 1. 104.Google Scholar