The Roman Traitor, Vol. 2

by Henry William Herbert

Through a soft lap in the wooded chain of Mount Algidus, a bright pellucid stream, after wheeling and fretting among the crags and ledges of the upper valleys, winds its way gently, toward the far-famed Tiber.

Shut in, on every side, except the south, by the lower spurs of the mountain ridge, in which it is so snugly nestled, covered with rich groves of chesnut-trees, and sheltered on the northward by the dark pines of the loftier steeps, it were difficult to conceive a fairer site for a villa, than that sweet vale.

Accordingly, on a little knoll in the jaws of the gorge, whence issued that clear streamlet, facing the pleasant south, yet sheltered from its excessive heats by a line of superb plane trees, festooned with luxuriant vines, there stood a long low building of the antique form, built of dark-colored stone.

A villa, in the days of Cicero, was a very different thing from the luxurious pleasure-houses which came into vogue in the days of the later Emperors, of which Pliny has given us descriptions so minute and glowing; yet even his Tusculan retreat was a building of vast pretension, when compared with this, which was in fact neither more nor less than an old Roman Farmhouse, of that innocent and unsophisticated day, when the Consulars of the Republic were tillers of the soil, and when heroes returned, from[pg 76] the almost immortal triumph, to the management of the spade and the ploughshare.

This villa had, it is true, been adorned somewhat, and fitted to the temporary abode of individuals more refined and elegant, than the rough steward and rustic slaves, who were its usual tenants. Yet it still retained its original form, and was adapted to its original uses.

The house itself, which was but two stories high, was in form a hollow square, to the courts enclosed in which access was gained by a pair of lofty wooden gates in the rear. It had, in the first instance, presented on all sides merely a blank wall exteriorly, all the windows looking into the court, the centre of which was occupied by a large tank of water, the whole interior serving the purpose of a farm yard. The whole ground floor of the building, had formerly been occupied by stables, root-houses, wine-presses, dairies, cheese-rooms and the like, and by the slaves' kitchen, which was the first apartment toward the right of the entrance. The upper story contained the granaries and the dormitories of the workmen; and three sides still remained unaltered.

The front, however, of the villa had been pierced with a handsome doorway, and several windows; a colonnade of rustic stonework had been carried along the façade, and a beautiful garden had been laid out before it, with grassy terraces, clipped hedges, box trees, transmuted by the gardener's art into similitudes of Peacocks, Centaurs, Tritons, Swans, and many other forms of fowls or fishes, unknown alike and unnamed by Gods or mortals.

The sun was within about half an hour of his setting, and his slant beams, falling through a gap in the western hills, streamed down into the little valley, casting long stripes of alternate light and shadow over the smoothly shaven lawn, sparkling upon the ripples of the streamlet, and gilding the embrowned or yellow foliage of the sere hill-sides, with brighter and more vivid colors.

At this pleasant hour, notwithstanding the lateness of the season, and looking upon this pleasant scene, a group of females were collected, under the rustic colonnade of Italian marble, engaged in some of those light toils, which in feminine hands are so graceful.

The foremost of these, seated apart somewhat from the[pg 77] others, were the stately and still beautiful Hortensia, and her lovely daughter, both of them employed in twirling the soft threads from the merrily revolving spindle, into large osier baskets; and the elder lady, glancing at times toward the knot of slave girls, as if to see that they performed their light tasks; and at times, if their mirth waxed too loud, checking it by a gesture of her elevated finger.