"Che gusto e dilèto
Che dà quèla tèra
Cambiàda de cièra,
E i fiumi die placidi
Sbassài nel so' lèto
Va zòzo in te 'l mar!"[17]
On my last wet-day, I spoke of the elder Pliny, and now the younger Pliny shall tell us something of one or two of his country-places. Pliny was a government-official, and was rich: whether these facts had any bearing on each other I know no more than I should know if he had lived in our times.
I know that he had a charming place down by the sea, near to Ostium. Two roads led thither; "both of them," he says, "in some parts sandy, which makes it heavy and tedious, if you travel in a coach; but easy enough for those who ride. My villa" (he is writing to his friend Gallus, Epist. XX. Lib. 2) "is large enough for all convenience, and not expensive." He describes the portico as affording a capital retreat in bad weather, not only for the reason that it is protected by windows, but because there is an extraordinary projection of the roof. "From the middle of this portico you pass into a charming inner court, and thence into a large hall which extends towards the sea,—so near, indeed, that under a west wind the waves ripple on the steps. On the left of this hall is a large lounging-room (cubiculum), and a lesser one beyond, with windows to the east and west. The angle which this lounging-room forms with the hall makes a pleasant lee, and a loitering-place for my family in the winter. Near this again is a crescent-shaped apartment, with windows which receive the sun all day, where I keep my favorite authors. From this, one passes to a bed-chamber by a raised passage, under which is a stove that communicates an agreeable warmth to the whole apartment. The other rooms in this portion of the villa are for the freedmen and slaves; but still are sufficiently well ordered (tam mundis) for my guests."
And he goes on to describe the bath-rooms, the cooling-rooms, the sweating-rooms, the tennis-court, "which lies open to the warmth of the afternoon sun." Adjoining this is a tower, with two apartments below and two above,—besides a supper-room, which commands a wide look-out along the sea, and over the villas that stud the shores. At the opposite end of the tennis-court is another tower, with its apartments opening upon a museum,—and below this the great dining-hall, whose windows look upon gardens, where are box-tree hedges, and rosemary, and bowers of vines. Figs and mulberries grow profusely in the garden; and walking under them, one approaches still another banqueting-hall, remote from the sea, and adjoining the kitchen-garden. Thence a grand portico (crypto-porticus) extends with a range of windows on either side, and before the portico is a terrace perfumed with violets. His favorite apartment, however, is a detached building, which he has himself erected in a retired part of the grounds. It has a warm winter-room, looking one way on the terrace, and another on the ocean; through its folding-doors may be seen an inner chamber, and within this again a sanctum, whose windows command three views totally separate and distinct,—the sea, the woods, or the villas along the shore.
"Tell me," he says, "if all this is not very charming, and if I shall not have the honor of your company, to enjoy it with me?"
If Pliny regarded the seat at Ostium as only a convenient and inexpensive place, we may form some notion of his Tuscan property, which, as he says in his letter to his friend Apollinaris, (Lib. V. Epist. 6,) he prefers to all his others, whether of Tivoli, Tusculum, or Palestrina. There, at a distance of a hundred and fifty miles from Rome, in the midst of the richest corn-bearing and olive-bearing regions of Tuscany, he can enjoy country quietude. There is no need to be slipping on his toga; ceremony is left behind. The air is healthful; the scene is quiet. "Studiis animum, venatu corpus exerceo." I will not follow him through the particularity of the description which he gives to his friend Apollinaris. There are the wide-reaching views of fruitful valleys and of empurpled hill-sides; there are the fresh winds sweeping from the distant Apennines; there is the gestatio with its clipped boxes, the embowered walks, the colonnades, the marble banquet-rooms, the baths, the Carystian columns, the soft, embracing air, and the violet sky. I leave Pliny seated upon a bench in a marble alcove of his Tuscan garden. From this bench, the water, gushing through several little pipes, as if it were pressed out by the weight of the persons reposing upon it, falls into a stone cistern underneath, whence it is received into a polished marble basin, so artfully contrived that it is always full, without ever overflowing. "When I sup here," he writes, "this basin serves for a table,—the larger dishes being placed round the margin, while the smaller ones swim about in the form of little vessels and waterfowl."
Such al fresco suppers the country-gentlemen of Italy ate in the first century of our era!
Palladius wrote somewhere about the middle of the fourth century. His work is arranged in the form of a calendar for the months, and closes with a poem which is as inferior to the poems of the time of Augustus as the later emperors were inferior to the Cæsars. There is in his treatise no notable advance upon the teachings of Columella, whom he frequently quotes,—as well as certain Greek authorities of the Lower Empire. I find in his treatise a somewhat fuller list of vegetables, fruits, and field-crops than belongs to the earlier writers. I find more variety of treatment. I see a waning faith in the superstitions of the past; Bacchus and the Lares are less jubilant than they were; but the Christian civilization has not yet vivified the art of culture. The magnificent gardens of Nero and the horticultural experiences of the great Adrian at Tivoli have left no traces in the method or inspiration of Palladius.