Horace's Villa

The villa of Horace is a Roman country house and an excavation site in the Sabine mountains (hence also called Sabinum ) near the present town of Licenza in the Italian province of Rome. The poet Horace got the house as a gift from his patron Maecenas in the 30s of the first century BC. At that time it belonged to the Augustan Regio IV near the Latinerstadt Tibur. Horace is processed thematically in his poetry and dedicated to him several smaller works.

Since Horace frequently and extensively reported on his Sabinum, had his research not only important for archeology and along with his descriptions of the social history of the poet, but also served to better understand the Sabinums symbolizing the philosophical views of the poet.

• 2.1 Description of the Villa

Discovery and location

Situation in Horace

In his Odes and Epistles Horace described the situation of his country house in detail. The Sabinum lay in a secluded valley between two mountain ranges of the Sabine hills, extending from north to south in a side parallel to a major link road, the Via Valeria, covered. At what altitude was the villa is controversial, as Horace himself described that there was a small grove on this. Because as well as can be " beyond" super translated in Horace description both as "above", was a disagreement over whether over the Sabinum existed a real grove or whether Horace would have liked over what has been described also such a grove. The house was still at a drinking water source, the Horace Bandusia called and possibly caused a tributary of the creek Digentia. In addition, there was near a temple of Vacuna, the clear echo slope Ustica and the mountain Lucretilis. The description of the climate bears typical features of a locus amoenus. The house stood in the cool forest shade and was a comfortable temperature in the summer, the winters were mild. However varies the climatic description of Horace, depending on the poem. The heating session on the Sabinum he understood, for example, often especially if the surrounding area has been hard hit by the frost affected as comfort against the chill of a harsh winter. Ernst Schmidt calculated from the data of agricultural writers and Horace's statements regarding his slaves and tenant farmers, the total area of a mixing operation to about 321 jugers (approx. 81 hectares) and classified the goods as a medium-sized operation.

Exploration in the modern era

From the mid-16th to the 18th century, German and Italian humanists interested reinforced for the biography of Horace and the history of his country house, its location and appearance to reconstruct tried by detailed descriptions of the poet and his vita. The Roman biographer Suetonius and archivist was in the short vita of the poet to the place on the proximity of the old Latinerstadt Tibur, which in the Augustan Regio IV meant the lower, southern part of the Sabinerlands. Due to the old road, the Via Valeria, the village of Varia is closer to determine where the tenant Horace deposed their goods. The Tabula Peutingeriana, a medieval copy of a Late Antique world map from the 4th century, showed the place on the road, which was about the eighth milestone before Tibur.

The first modern considerations, where Horace's villa is locate, came from historians and geographers Flavio Biondo in his Italia Illustrata 1474, later representations were based on the localization of the geographers Philip Clüver in his Italia Antiqua ( 1624). However, the identifications of Horace place names and geographical names was incoherent and inaccurate when two scholars, so it took another ten years after Clüver until the geographer Lukas Holste was also able to identify the place Varia there, opening into the Aniene Bach Digentia. This was followed by measurements of other provisions of the place names, such as the Mons Lucretilis as Monte Gennaro. Except for topographical studies of the location of the Sabinums remained after Holste back over a century without interest for the research .. In 1761, the villa was finally able to locate exactly where on the basis of the work of Holste, a dispute among the two abbots Domenico de Sanctis and Bertrand de Capmartin Chaupy broke out. Both had discovered with the discovery of the remains of walls above the Bandusiaquelle the house in the Vigne di San Pietro parcel where the ancient foundations of the medieval church of Ss. Pietro e Marcellino had been placed ..

Because of its location surrounded by other villas and farms and an extensive road system that ran through the valley well off the Via Valeria, it can be assumed that Horace Sabinum was not so lonely in a secluded position, as it would have had in his descriptions like poets. Various hypotheses and doubts about the localization de Sanctis ' and de Chaupys, so among other things, that the Bandusiaquelle from a medieval deed of gift to Pope Paschal II in Venusia, Horace's hometown to have located, have not prevailed. Ernst Schmidt argued that the ode in which the source could be named with the poetic experience of reading the poet also by himself for a place of his youth.

Archaeological excavations at Sabinum

Since the year 1911, Italian archaeologists interested in the exact development of the building under the former church. The archaeologist Angelo Pasqui conducted from 1911 to 1914 a first excavation, it was continued after his death by his colleague Giuseppe Lugli. Lugli and Thomas D. Price began a third excavation in 1930, the results of which they published in Scripture Horace 's Sabine farm. Another study by Price appeared in 1932 under the title A Restoration of Horace 's Sabine Villa. An excavation from 1997 to 2001 is based largely on Luglis Prices and descriptions. Indicate the present condition of the house again, as it can be seen at Vicovaro.

Description of the Villa

The excavated villa covers the foundations of a house in an area of 2.75 km ², only 1.25 km ² million was at the garden with a colonnade. The floor plan is drawn largely rectangular and slightly axially from northwest to southeast. The garden falls to the south towards. It was designed as Xystus, as the garden terrace and had in the middle of a large fish pond ( piscina ). The walking was a Cryptoporticus with openings on the inner garden. The garden form did not correspond to the usual peristyle, built by the wealthy Romans popular places for extended villa complexes. She was too closed. In the higher northern part of the house was the living quarters, of which the owner had views of the mountains of Licenzatals. The villa had no substructures, although the hill on which they stand (415 m above sea level), has been somewhat straightened.

The entire living area was also separated for Cryptoporticus north through another hallway. This resulted in a northern residential district with a large atrium and triclinium, which abutted the southern corridor and a small living area with a smaller atrium, which is contiguous to Cryptoporticus. The triclinium in the northern residential part was divided into two great winter and small Sommertriklinium that lay in the extreme northeast of the house. The smaller triclinium was a passage room. The southern part contains living on the east side of the two-part bed-chamber of the poet, possibly thought in the West several rooms and chambers for the slaves. The living area was downstairs.

The walls are made from regular Opus reticulatum, the floor of Opus sectile with simple square shapes. The wall frescoes contain symposiastische scenes, including a naked Bacchus. You are now in the Antiquarium of Licenza.

Horace has received the villa, but not built or grown. Due to the allegations, which he can do in Satire 2.3, he would mimic Maecenas, however it is known that he has made at least modifications to the house. In the northwest close to thermal baths, which are indeed the best preserved of the house, however, were greatly altered with the construction of the church since the second century, at least since the eighth century.