La Villa. Bartolomeo Taegio

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 the oikos and the Roman idea of the villa. Both depended to some extent on the cultivation of the land and agricultural production. Roman treatises on the management of villas reflect practical concerns identical to those treated by Xenophon in Oeconomicus. Cato may have used Xenophon’s Oeconomicus as a source for his own treatise, De agri cultura. In Cicero’s De senectute, Cato, the chief interlocutor in the dialogue, was represented as familiar with Xenophon’s writings in general, which he called “multas ad res perutiles” (very instructive on many subjects), and with the Oeconomicus in particular.¹³¹ It is Cicero’s, not Cato’s, regard for Xenophon that is evident in this passage. Cicero had produced a Latin paraphrase of the Oeconomicus in 85 B.C., and it was Cicero’s version, rather than the Greek, that Varro, Columella, and Pliny the Elder later quoted. Cicero himself was the real speaker in all of his dialogues. He even warned his readers, in the introductory section of De senectute, not to expect to find in his representation the historical Cato, who “eruditius videbitur disputare quam consuevit ipse in suis libris” (will seem to argue more learnedly than he was in the habit of doing in his own books).¹³²

      The idea of the villa, especially as found in Cato and Varro, differs in several repects from the idea of the oikos found in Xenophon. By contrast to the Greek oikos, the Roman villa was always situated in a “countryside,” whether found or contrived. Cicero used the term villa to distinguish a house in the country from one in the city. While most ancient Roman villas had the agricultural capability to be self-sufficient, not all villas were associated with farming.¹³³ The villas of the rich, especially those of the emperors, were not always literally located in the countryside. The most obvious example is the Domus Aurea of Nero, who built his villa where the Colosseum now stands. Though it was located in the heart of Rome, because it was provided with a parklike setting, an imitation of rural landscape, such a residence could still be called a villa. The first-century A.D. Latin historian Tacitus described Nero’s villa as a palace the marvels of which “were not so much customary and commonplace luxuries like gold and jewels, but lawns and lakes and faked rusticity—woods here, open spaces and views there.”¹³⁴ Because the idea of the villa carries with it a notion of life in the country, a landscape setting that evokes or represents the countryside is essential to the Roman villa, while it is not essential to the Greek oichos.

      A villa is distinguished from an oikos not only by its actual or represented situation but also by its purpose. The Roman villa was associated with the owner’s enjoyment and relaxation in a way that the Greek oikos was not. Evidence for the idea that the enjoyment of country life constituted a purpose for the villa is found in the works of Cato, Varro, and Pliny the Younger. The first indication in ancient literature that life in villa was associated with delight in the vita rustica appears as early as the first half of the second century B.C., in Cato’s De agri cultura. To Cato the villa represented primarily a sound investment, and only secondarily a source of pleasure because it served as a retreat. Varro’s view was more balanced. He said that “agricolae ad duas metas dirigere debent, ad utilitatem et voluptatem” (farmers ought to aim at two goals, profit and pleasure).¹³⁵ For Pliny the Younger, the main purpose of the villa was pleasure, particularly the pleasure that comes from “dulce otium honestumque” (sweet and honorable leisure) devoted to literary studies.¹³⁶ He called the retreat at Laurentum his “verum secretumque mouseion (true and private haunt of the muses), indicating that for him an important function of its setting was to inspire him to write.¹³⁷ Pliny the Younger counted himself among the “scholasticis porro dominis” (scholars-turned-landlords) of his day, who not only enjoyed villa life but also found it necessary for cultivating a life of scholarship, just as Taegio would, nearly fifteen hundred years later.¹³⁸

      While life in villa was, from Cato’s day on, associated with enjoyment of the countryside, the “pleasure factor” became more remarkable at the height of the empire. The rustic farmhouses of Cato’s and Cicero’s days were overshadowed in later generations by the luxurious suburban villas described by Martial. This shift in the idea of the villa may have resulted in part from the increasing influence of Epicurean philosophy, which contrasted with the Stoicism of Cato. As the Roman Empire expanded, villas were increasingly devoted more to the owner’s pleasure than to farming. This development probably was stimulated by economic changes associated with the rise of slave-run estates known as latifundia. When Pliny the Elder wrote that “latifundia perdidere Italiam, iam vero et provincias” (large estates have been the ruin of Italy, and are now proving the ruin of the provinces too), he was not only putting latifundia at the center of debate about the aggregation of rural properties too large to farm according to the labor-intensive methods described by Cato and Varro, he was also signaling a change СКАЧАТЬ