DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16632#0117
The Roman Empire
89
too, we have evidence of Greek influence, and after what we have seen in the Ciceronian
villas we may assume that garden sites were of the first importance.
The style of Cicero's villa and that of his brother shows the Greek renaissance spirit
in a comparatively simple way. The great love of display in Roman gardens was still in
the future, but before Cicero's time we hear of individual cases of extreme luxury. Varro
says that the villas of Lucullus and Metellus vie with public buildings, and the edifices built
by Lucullus in particular are regarded partly with astonishment and partly with dislike. He
owned many villas near Tusculum, and these had watch-towers commanding very distant
views, countless lovely avenues and
pavilions, and he looked on all this as - =- rr='r7-5m5iX ^X^^L-^f'TVOL
a contrivance (as he himself declares)
for flying off any day to another
house, "like a crane or a stork."
There is even more to tell of the
great ponds at another villa, where
he introduced a dam, to keep the
sea-water for his fish.
The passion for the chase, which
came from Greece, had hold of the
Romans after the time of the younger
Scipio, and hence there came about
the construction of parks of a sizt
hitherto unheard of. In Varro's time
Quintus Hortensius had already
made a park of fifty yokes of land,
and enclosed it with a wall, and
on this estate he had set up on
the higher ground a shooting-box,
where he entertained his friends in a
peculiar way. He had a slave dressed ^^T^I^JTj
like Orpheus who sang before them,
and then sounded a horn, where-
11 A£ , FIG. 58. PORTICUS LIVI^E, TOWN PLAN OF ROME
upon a whole crowd of stags and
boars and other quadrupeds came up, so that to him who told the tale the spectacle
seemed more delightful than the hunt itself.
The more money people had to spend on buildings after the peace of the first empire,
the more they strove to produce extravagant homes in the villa centres of the Latin and
Neapolitan coast, and on the hills near Rome and in Tuscany. There came a time, deplored
by Horace, when the great villas cramped the farms more and more, and instead of elms
and olives were planted planes and myrtles, laurels and beds of flowers, enclosed with
fine shady porticoes. And although we must not forget that Horace's poem belongs to
the rhetorical-poetic type, as the allusion to Cato shows, we still have quite enough
evidence of the great increase in the number of ostentatious gardens attached to imperial
and private places.
Chief of all, Rome herself in the early days of the Empire was not only surrounded
89
too, we have evidence of Greek influence, and after what we have seen in the Ciceronian
villas we may assume that garden sites were of the first importance.
The style of Cicero's villa and that of his brother shows the Greek renaissance spirit
in a comparatively simple way. The great love of display in Roman gardens was still in
the future, but before Cicero's time we hear of individual cases of extreme luxury. Varro
says that the villas of Lucullus and Metellus vie with public buildings, and the edifices built
by Lucullus in particular are regarded partly with astonishment and partly with dislike. He
owned many villas near Tusculum, and these had watch-towers commanding very distant
views, countless lovely avenues and
pavilions, and he looked on all this as - =- rr='r7-5m5iX ^X^^L-^f'TVOL
a contrivance (as he himself declares)
for flying off any day to another
house, "like a crane or a stork."
There is even more to tell of the
great ponds at another villa, where
he introduced a dam, to keep the
sea-water for his fish.
The passion for the chase, which
came from Greece, had hold of the
Romans after the time of the younger
Scipio, and hence there came about
the construction of parks of a sizt
hitherto unheard of. In Varro's time
Quintus Hortensius had already
made a park of fifty yokes of land,
and enclosed it with a wall, and
on this estate he had set up on
the higher ground a shooting-box,
where he entertained his friends in a
peculiar way. He had a slave dressed ^^T^I^JTj
like Orpheus who sang before them,
and then sounded a horn, where-
11 A£ , FIG. 58. PORTICUS LIVI^E, TOWN PLAN OF ROME
upon a whole crowd of stags and
boars and other quadrupeds came up, so that to him who told the tale the spectacle
seemed more delightful than the hunt itself.
The more money people had to spend on buildings after the peace of the first empire,
the more they strove to produce extravagant homes in the villa centres of the Latin and
Neapolitan coast, and on the hills near Rome and in Tuscany. There came a time, deplored
by Horace, when the great villas cramped the farms more and more, and instead of elms
and olives were planted planes and myrtles, laurels and beds of flowers, enclosed with
fine shady porticoes. And although we must not forget that Horace's poem belongs to
the rhetorical-poetic type, as the allusion to Cato shows, we still have quite enough
evidence of the great increase in the number of ostentatious gardens attached to imperial
and private places.
Chief of all, Rome herself in the early days of the Empire was not only surrounded