Review: The Roman Villa in theMediterranean Basin: Late Republic to Late Antiquity, edited by Annalisa Marzano and Guy P. R. Métraux

Abstract

Annalisa Marzano and Guy P. R. Metraux, eds. The Roman Villa in the Mediterranean Basin: Late Republic to Late Antiquity Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018, 599 pp., 21 maps, 244 b/w illus. $180 (cloth), ISBN 9781107164314\n\nThis monumental volume on Roman villas, encyclopedic in conception and meticulous in presentation, is a testament to the importance of its subject and the expertise of its coeditors. In twenty-five chapters by thirty-one specialists, the book explores the vital role played by villas in the Roman economy and elite society, both in Italy and in the Roman provinces that bordered the Mediterranean. A fundamental goal of the book is to present an overview of recent research on villas around the Roman Empire that can serve as a guide to further exploration. While the editors have necessarily been selective, the collected chapters convey a sense of the vitality of that research and of the discoveries that are shaping the field. In Italy and around the Mediterranean basin, villas with luxurious residential quarters were requisite signifiers of Roman elite identity and, along with their productive facilities, signs of Roman economic and cultural presence in a given region. Accordingly, tracking the spread of such villas as “a formula and phenomenon” is an overarching theme (xxviii).\n\nThe book is organized into four parts preceded by an introduction and two chapters addressing general concerns. The introduction lays out the rationale, structure, and focus of the book. It is followed by the editors’ “The Roman Villa: An Overview,” which introduces a number of broad themes, including the ways in which villas related to urban and rural infrastructure, urban houses, and the social and economic expansion of the Roman Empire. Next, in “The Roman Villa: Definitions and Variations,” Ursula Rothe explains the terminological problems that arise from conflicting literary and archaeological sources and points out the range of climatic and cultural conditions that affected the various ways in which farmhouses were designed and built. The villa perfecta of the Roman author Varro remains elusive, and yet, despite …