LUXURY AND LEISURE IN THE ROMAN VILLA

Abstract

It is now nearly half a century since the publication in 1976 of J. Percival’s seminal The Roman Villa, which explored origins and regional types, society and tenure, economy, late antiquity and even the post-classical period. Each of these aspects has received much study and debate over the subsequent decades, yet there had been no recent overall study of villas across the Empire to bring this scholarship together. The volume under review offers chapters on villas in the Vesuvian region, elsewhere in Italy, Sicily, Gaul, the Iberian peninsula, Malta, North Africa, Israel, Greece and the eastern Adriatic. There are also thematic explorations of villas in relation to ideals of elite leisure, late antiquity, Christianity, seaside and maritime environments and the later reception of the villa. The decision to publish all chapters in English makes this a particularly useful resource for many students. While the geographical range is broad (even the north-western provinces receive brief attention in U. Rothe, ‘The Roman Villa: Definitions and Variations’), nearly half the chapters focus on Italy, which also dominates much of the discussion in the introductory chapter, ‘The Roman Villa: an Overview’ (Marzano and Métraux). The chronological span is extensive, beginning with the second century BCE (e.g. G.P. Brogiolo and A. Chavarría Arnau, ‘Villas in Northern Italy’) and continuing to late antiquity, which receives attention within a number of chapters (e.g. the aforementioned chapter on northern Italy; M. Gualtieri, ‘Roman Villas in Southern Italy’; R.J.A. Wilson, ‘Roman Villas in Sicily’; and L. Buffat, ‘Villas in South and Southwestern Gaul’). There is, in addition, a section dedicated to late antiquity, with chapters on ‘Themes’ (Métraux), ‘Aristocratic Residences in Late Antique Hispania’ (G. Ripoll) and ‘Christianization of Villas’ (K. Bowes). Two final chapters address seventeenthto twentieth-century reconstructions of classical villas (P. de la Ruffinière du Prey, ‘Conviviality versus Seclusion in Pliny’s Tuscan and Laurentine Villas’ and K. Lapatin, ‘The Villa dei Papiri: Herculaneum and Malibu’). The term ‘villa’ is used in its most extensive sense to include luxury seaside retreats (e.g. T.N. Howe, ‘The Social Status of the Villas of Stabiae’) and elite town houses (Z. Weiss, ‘Houses of the Wealthy in Roman Galilee’) as well as the aristocratic centres of productive rural estates (e.g. F. Teichner, ‘Roman Villas in the Iberian Peninsula’). Wilson (in ‘Roman Villas in North Africa’) draws attention to the existence of different types of villa in North Africa, a region often neglected in discussions of the phenomenon. Another unusual and welcome inclusion is the villas of Malta (A. Bonanno, ‘Roman Villas in the Maltese Archipelago’, also offering interesting discussion of the identity of villa owners). The integration of these villa residences with smaller farmsteads and hamlets (perhaps in many cases dependent), artisanal sites, way-stations, cult places, roads and road stations, rivers and installations for water management (aqueducts and watermills), and small market centres is mentioned in only a few chapters, although O. Tal and I. Roll discuss a mansio (‘The Roman Villa at Apollonia [Israel]’). The book is most emphatically about elite residences. Its focus is overwhelmingly on the architectural qualities, typology, ideology, decoration, reception rooms and bathhouses of elegant upper-class houses. In spite of the stated goal to ‘present very recent discoveries and ideas about villas’ and to investigate their ‘social and economic function’ (p. xxx), the THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 547