The villa, as described by Varro and Columella, before and shortly after the Christian era, was a farm—a jundus. It was not a mere residence, but, like the villa of the present day in Italy, a territory or estate in land.
The curtis.
The lord's homestead on the villa was surrounded by two enclosed 'cohortes,' or courts, from which was derived the word 'curtis,' so often applied to the later manor-house.[364]
The villicus and slaves.
At the entrance of the outer court was the abode of the 'villicus'—a strictly manorial officer, as we have seen—generally a slave chosen for his good qualities.[365] Near this was the common kitchen, where not only the food was cooked, but also the slaves performed their indoor work. Here also were cellars and granaries for the storing of produce, the cells in which were the night quarters of the slaves, and the underground 'ergastulum,' with its narrow windows, high and out of reach, where those slaves who were kept in chains lived, worked, and were tormented; for [p264] in the ergastulum was revealed the cruel side of the system of slave labour under Roman law. Columella says that the cleverest slaves must oftenest be kept in chains.[366] Cato, according to Plutarch, advised that slaves should be incited to quarrel amongst themselves, lest they should conspire against their master, and considered it to be cheaper to work them to death than to let them grow old and useless.[367]
In the inner 'cohort' were the stalls and stables for the oxen, horses, and other live stock; and all around was the land to be tilled.
Thus the Roman villa, if not at first a complete manor, was already an estate of a lord (dominus) worked by slaves under a villicus.
Sometimes the whole work of the estate was done by slaves; and though the estimates of historians have varied very much, there is no reason to doubt that in the first and second centuries the proportion of slaves to the whole population of the empire was enormous.
The decuriæ, slaves.
But even the management of slaves required organisation. The anciently approved Roman method of managing the slaves on a villa was to form them into groups of tens, called decuriæ, each under an overseer or decurio.[368]