This slim volume owes its origins to a joint symposium of the Archaeological Institute of America and the American Philological Association at San Diego in 2007 and contains seven chapters, topped and tailed by an introduction and concluding remarks. Given the volume's title, the instant reaction is one of almost dismay given the burgeoning corpus of literature already available on the subject in general. However, this innocuous title belies a series of essays that go beyond the standard re-presentation of classical sources applied to archaeological finds in mutual support of each other and the reader should note the subtitle Architecture, Context and Ideology, for it is this on which the volume focuses.
Roughly split into two thematic areas, clearly bearing the marks of the original symposium concerns, Chapters 1, 6 and 7 are primarily concerned with archaeology and Chapters 2–5 with the literary texts associated with the Roman villa. The editors are very clear at the outset of the introduction to acknowledge both that the term ‘villa’ is too broad, encompassing as it does small scale farms to vast high status estate buildings, and that the term has accrued a certain amount of expectation and presumption, heavily coloured by the reception of classical texts and the dominance of Imperial architecture/archaeology over that of Republican and earlier periods making a distinction between the ‘classic’ and ‘classical’ villa.
M. Torelli's opening chapter sets the tone for the following chapters and attempts both to delimit the contentious term ‘villa’ within the context of the volume and to establish a genealogy for the discussion drawing on Greek and other Italic rural building traditions but shaped by the prevailing socio-political changes and expression of Roman nobilitas of the third century b.c.
Following on from this compelling examination of the archaeological evidence, C. Green changes the pace in the second chapter to a much more speculative point of view based on a close reading of Varro, postulating that the text of De re rustica is as much a metaphorical analogy of the running of the Roman state as a treatise on the business of farming. Green's hypothesis is well constructed, persuasive and thought-provoking. It can be argued that reflections on the good management of running a successful, efficient and profitable farm can be upwardly projected to the macro scale of the model state, and Green draws parallels between the language and practices of both businesses to support the argument in a convincing manner.
Expanding on the preceding chapter, J. Bodel broadens the ideological time frame to encompass Cato and Cicero and examines the contextual culture of the villa in the aptly named ‘Villaculture’ of Chapter 3. If Varro's De re rustica can be seen as presenting an allegory of state management, then Cato's De agri cultura can be seen as equally allegorical in terms of dignitas, with the lessons of the most honest of work, those learned from farming, being those moral and ethical ideals seen as necessary for a statesman.
B. Reay continues the themes discussed in regards to Cato in the fourth chapter but suggests that rather than simply stating the qualities to be found in the good farmer and the good citizen Cato is putting himself (and by implication his family) as first amongst equals as he has written the guide on how good, traditional Roman virtues are to be cultivated and maintained (like produce and tools), or problems dealt with (whether the farmer next door, other members of the political class, or the threat of Hellenism). As Reay puts it, people had been going about the business of agriculture for many centuries before Cato so why the need for a manual at all – unless it was a form of self-aggrandisement or the conspicuous conservatism of a novus homo?
Chapter 5, by T., brings us back to the subject of supporting the archaeological evidence surrounding the Republican villa by blending the literary corpus with the archaeology. Informed by the earlier chapters, T. attempts to match the advice given by Cato in De agri cultura to the archaeology of viniculture in a search for a correlation between these two sources. He concludes that the evidence is not substantive and as such De agri cultura represents a bucolic ideal by which Cato highlights his rival's decadence.
In the sixth chapter R. Volpe looks to the city of Rome's suburbium areas, now undergoing extensive development, to find evidence for Republican structures. By connecting the presence of remains bearing the hallmarks of Republican building techniques with the presence of deep agricultural trenches (for the cultivation of vines), this chapter argues that the proximity of the two strongly suggests the presence of a villa. Further Volpe postulates that far more villa sites exist than have been classified as such up until now (even ignoring those hidden by younger structures) within the vicinity of Rome.
The final chapter by B. details the problem of classifying the enigmatic structures characterised by polygonal masonry platforms that have been termed basis villae. B. argues that these structures fall outside of the accepted definition of villa but should be considered as such (on the balance of the argument), or rather, perhaps, emphasises that the current definition of a villa is far too narrow to accommodate new discoveries and interpretations.
At first glance this volume appears to be a quick read, in part due to its length and overall easy narrative style; however, to appreciate fully the arguments put forward it requires the reader both to put aside any preconceptions about the term ‘villa’ and to suspend conservative reception of classical works employed in support of the narrative. Moreover, it demands a good working knowledge of the cited classical authors or, as in the case of this reviewer, a rereading of Cato and Varro in order to understand the full implications of the arguments. That said, the reader who perseveres, and has the cited texts close at hand, will be rewarded with a novel and compelling set of arguments presented in a well-thought-out structure.
To whom is this book addressed, and does it warrant the regrettably high cover price? This book should certainly be included in any decent Classics Department's library stacks, if only for the fact that it does a very good job of causing one to pause and reflect on the relationship between the forces of architecture, context and ideology that surround all classical studies but which it is so easy to forget exist outside one's own, often narrow, focus of study.
If you are interested in Republican architecture (and the implications it has for the Imperial period and beyond) or in Roman farming and the metamorphosis of the rural to the ritual, then you are well advised to add this to your reading list. Dedicated undergraduates, postgraduates and established scholars, and not just those from Classics but also from aligned study areas, will undoubtedly find the book stimulating, its content provocative and its conclusions frustrating. I say frustrating in the sense of being left with the feeling of witnessing the original symposium through the texts but without recourse to the post-panel discussions (save for the concluding remarks by S. Dyson) with questions and contentions that the authors raise. This, perhaps, is the ultimate goal of this publication, as stated in its introduction, to act as a gateway to further research, facilitating discussions, debate and discovery, in a specific area which appears to have been overlooked for too long.
