Old Rome: A Handbook to the Ruins of the City and the Campagna

by Robert Burn

Villas.

As may easily be imagined there are numerous remains of ancient villas scattered about the immediate neighbourhood of Tibur, and the local guides, in order to please travellers but without the slightest evidence in support of their assertions, have dubbed them the Villas of Catullus, Horace, Ventidius, Quintilius Varus, Mæcenas, Sallust, Piso, Capito, Brutus, Popillius, and other celebrated Romans.

The most remarkable ruins are those to which the name of Mæcenas has been attached. The greater part of these have been now unfortunately concealed by new buildings and by an iron manufactory, but a fine terrace and parts of the porticoes still remain on the lofty bank of the Anio. The rest is a mere confused mass of vaulted chambers and archways. The Via Tecta, or Porta Oscura, as it is sometimes called, by which the road passes underneath these ruins, was built, as we learn from an inscription now in the Vatican collection, by O. Vitulus and Rustius Flavos. The materials and style show that it can hardly be of a later date than the first century A.D.

Tempio della Tosse.

The Tempio della Tosse which probably obtains its name from a vulgar interpretation of the name of the gens Tossia, is a ruin standing in a vineyard at the side of the old road, called the Via Constantina, below the Villa d’Este. It has none of the characteristic marks of an ancient temple, and the large number of windows it contains forbid us to suppose it to be a tomb. The interior of the building is round, the exterior octagonal. It is built of layers of small fragments of tufa intermixed with courses of bricks, materials which point to the fourth century as the earliest possible date of its erection. On the walls are the remains of frescoes of the Saviour and the Virgin, dating probably from the 13th century. These show that, if it was not originally a Christian Church, it was used as one at the time the frescoes were painted.

Villa of Cassius.

The ruins of a considerable villa lie near the Porta S. Croce of Tivoli, in the estate called Carciano, from the mediæval name of the Fundus Cassianus, which is stated in a list of the estates belonging to the cathedral at Tivoli to have been the site of a villa of Caius Cassius. Part of these ruins consist of a very ancient structure of polygonal work, but the rest is pronounced by Nibby to belong to the time of the later republic. The casino of the Collegio Greco is now built on the spot, but the plan of the ancient villa can be so far traced as to show that it had several terraces, and looked towards the south-west. In the 16th century there were still eighteen large apartments existing, surrounded with a portico of Doric columns, and also some temples, a theatre, some fountains, and fish ponds. The opus reticulatum of these ruins is peculiar for the alternate arrangement of coloured tufa in its lozenges. An immense number of works of art were dug up here, and the nearly complete destruction of what still remained of the villa in the 16th century, is probably due to the fact of its having been found to be so rich a mine of sculpture.

Sabine Farm of Horace.

The Sabine farm of Horace can hardly be passed over here, though it is not strictly included within the district of Tibur. There is no evidence to show that Horace ever had any villa at Tibur in addition to his Sabine farm; indeed his own words seem expressly to imply the contrary. The estate he had was plainly usually called a Sabinum, not a Tiburtinum, and must therefore be looked for at some distance from Tibur. Horace mentions two places in its neighbourhood, Varia, and Mandela, the sites of which can be exactly determined. The ancient list of towns places Varia on the Via Valeria, eight miles beyond Tibur, and precisely at this distance are the remains of an ancient town now covered by the modern village of Vico Varo. But the position of Mandela is more important for ascertaining the site of Horace’s farm, because if we can fix upon it, we then can discover to which of the mountain streams which flow into the Anio the name Digentia belonged. An inscription dug up in 1757 near the Church of S. Cosimato on the Via Valeria, two miles from the village of Bardella, shows that an estate in the modern district formed by the union of Cantalupo and Bardella was called in the later imperial times, or the early Middle Ages, Massa Mandelana.

From this it is plain that the Digentia was the torrent called Mariscella, which joins the Anio between Cantalupo, Bardella and Vico Varo, descending from near Licenza, a small village about six miles from Vico Varo. As to the exact spot where the farm of Horace itself stood in the valley of the Digentia, we cannot be quite certain. The ruins usually pointed out are on a little knoll opposite to the village of Licenza, and on the other side of the stream. These are possibly situated on the spot on which the farmhouse stood, if they do not date so far back as the lifetime of the poet himself. Dennis in Milman’s Horace says, “The ruins consist only of a mosaic pavement, and of two capitals and two fragments of Doric columns lying among the bushes. The pavement has been much ruined by the planting of a vineyard, and can only be seen on removing the earth which covers it. The groundwork is white with a border of animals in black. These are the sole traces now visible (1842), but some fifty years ago, the mosaic floors of six chambers were brought to light, but were covered again with earth, as nothing was found to tempt any further excavation. The farm is situated on a rising ground which sinks with a gentle slope to the stream, leaving a level intervening strip now yellow with the harvest. In this I recognised the sunny meadow which, as the poet says, was in danger of being inundated. The sunny fields were probably then, as now, sown with corn. Here it must have been that the poet was wont to repose on the grass after his meal, and here his personal efforts perhaps to dam out the stream provoked his neighbours’ smiles.” The place is surrounded on all sides by hills, except where the main valley of the Digentia separates them, running nearly due north and south, so that facing down the valley, the sun before midday rests on the right-hand slopes, and in the afternoon on the left hand, thus corresponding exactly to the poet’s description of the site.[160]