DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16632#0111
CHAPTER IV
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
THE Romans inherited the villa gardens which had been developed in
Hellenistic times; and they came into possession just when country life
—which in an earlier day was cut off from the Greeks—was the dominant
idea all over Italy. Country life—res rustica-—was the distinguishing, if not
the one, cry of the Roman gentleman. Only in passing did the Romans visit
their town houses; and after Rome had moved in an utterly different direction, and they
had almost completely forgotten how their town started as a market-place for country
farmers, they were yet unwilling to abandon their old allegiance to the soil, their piety
towards the land of their fathers.
With what pride does Cicero, the busy lawyer, insist that the villa where he stays at
Arpinum is his real home! Certainly the Tullian family had lived there from remote times;
his sacred places, his own people, and many traces of his forefathers were there. So, when
his friend ventured to object that he did as a fact live in Rome, it was with a full conscious-
ness of the nature and growth of the town that he answered: "True, I and every citizen,
we all have two homes: one comes by Nature, the other by the State: if Cato is a native
of Tusculum and adopted by the Roman State, he is by nature and family Tusculan, but
as regards the State a Roman, and he has one home in locality, another in law."
The original farm properties were not called "Villa," but "Hortus," in the Twelve
Tables of the Law; and it was on the revenues from arable lands and enclosed gardens
that the wealth of the Roman depended; it was in fruit and in vegetables. And so in
earlier times it was for the sake of the State that good cultivation of country property
was insisted upon. We have it on Cato's authority that people were punished for neglecting
their farms, or letting them get dirty, and for not taking proper care of their tree-gardens.
Buildings were unimportant except as giving cover for fruits, animals and men; and Cato's
dictum is always the same, "First plant, then build." There is very little known about
these early villa sites; but the aged Cato plainly shows his disapproval of the strong tendency
to luxury in his day, when he insists that his own villa must be quite simple and unadorned,
and must not even have the walls plastered.
But the villa of the man who first adopted the pure Attic style, and through whom
its light spread into his own land—the country house of Scipio—was always kept in the
fashion of his fathers, showing no trace of the Hellenistic manner of life. Seneca paid a
visit to Liternum near Cumas, where the great man spent his last years, and found his
house built of freestone; it must have given the effect of a knightly castle of the
Middle Ages, with its ramparts and towers. The park was enclosed by a high wall, and
beyond the buildings and the court there was a very large pond, big enough to serve a whole
army; but the bath was narrow and dark in the old style, "for our forefathers thought
that if a place was to be warm, it must be dark."
83
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
THE Romans inherited the villa gardens which had been developed in
Hellenistic times; and they came into possession just when country life
—which in an earlier day was cut off from the Greeks—was the dominant
idea all over Italy. Country life—res rustica-—was the distinguishing, if not
the one, cry of the Roman gentleman. Only in passing did the Romans visit
their town houses; and after Rome had moved in an utterly different direction, and they
had almost completely forgotten how their town started as a market-place for country
farmers, they were yet unwilling to abandon their old allegiance to the soil, their piety
towards the land of their fathers.
With what pride does Cicero, the busy lawyer, insist that the villa where he stays at
Arpinum is his real home! Certainly the Tullian family had lived there from remote times;
his sacred places, his own people, and many traces of his forefathers were there. So, when
his friend ventured to object that he did as a fact live in Rome, it was with a full conscious-
ness of the nature and growth of the town that he answered: "True, I and every citizen,
we all have two homes: one comes by Nature, the other by the State: if Cato is a native
of Tusculum and adopted by the Roman State, he is by nature and family Tusculan, but
as regards the State a Roman, and he has one home in locality, another in law."
The original farm properties were not called "Villa," but "Hortus," in the Twelve
Tables of the Law; and it was on the revenues from arable lands and enclosed gardens
that the wealth of the Roman depended; it was in fruit and in vegetables. And so in
earlier times it was for the sake of the State that good cultivation of country property
was insisted upon. We have it on Cato's authority that people were punished for neglecting
their farms, or letting them get dirty, and for not taking proper care of their tree-gardens.
Buildings were unimportant except as giving cover for fruits, animals and men; and Cato's
dictum is always the same, "First plant, then build." There is very little known about
these early villa sites; but the aged Cato plainly shows his disapproval of the strong tendency
to luxury in his day, when he insists that his own villa must be quite simple and unadorned,
and must not even have the walls plastered.
But the villa of the man who first adopted the pure Attic style, and through whom
its light spread into his own land—the country house of Scipio—was always kept in the
fashion of his fathers, showing no trace of the Hellenistic manner of life. Seneca paid a
visit to Liternum near Cumas, where the great man spent his last years, and found his
house built of freestone; it must have given the effect of a knightly castle of the
Middle Ages, with its ramparts and towers. The park was enclosed by a high wall, and
beyond the buildings and the court there was a very large pond, big enough to serve a whole
army; but the bath was narrow and dark in the old style, "for our forefathers thought
that if a place was to be warm, it must be dark."
83