Ancient Roman Villas: The Essential Sourcebook

Edited and with translations by Guy P. R. Métraux This authoritative compendium of newly translated primary sources reveals ancient Roman attitudes on every aspect of villas, from selection of place and construction activities to day-to-day management and lived experiences. While the term villa is generic today, its meaning extended across the entirety of ancient Roman life: villas supplied food, oil, and wine to towns and cities and produced raw materials for craft industries and building construction. Villas were also venues for pleasure, relaxation, and the cultivation of friendships and the mind. Many were known for their spectacular sites, architecture, decoration, and furnishings. They came to be ubiquitous throughout ancient Rome's European and Mediterranean rural hegemony. This volume compiles a wealth of newly translated Latin and ancient Greek sources—treatises, letters, poems, histories, biographies, and other works of literary art—to vividly convey the architectural, econom