HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 
5 
put it up myself. It contains a very warm winter room ( heliocaminus ), one side of which looks 
down the terrace, while the other has a view of the sea, and both lie exposed to the sun . . . . ’ 
The other of Pliny’s villas, known as the Tusculan, is described in his letter to Apollinaris. It 
was his favourite villa, and whereas the Laurentine house was used in the modern sense of a villa in 
the suburbs, this was intended more as a summer resort. It was divided into three principal parts. 
First, the immediate surrounding of the house, including the hippodrome, surrounded by a grand 
double avenue of plane-trees, and intended for equestrian exercises ; adjoining was the gestatio , a 
place of repose where slaves carried their masters on litters, and the xystus, or flower garden. 
Secondly was the labyrinth, with straight and curved walks, and thirdly, the luciis, or sacred wood, 
a relic of very ancient days, where there were temples dedicated to all the divinities of ancient 
paganism. The description left by Pliny is of great interest, and perhaps on this account we may be 
excused for giving it here in full, though it has been often transcribed. ‘ My villa,’ says Pliny, ‘is so 
advantageously situated that it commands a full view of all the country round ; yet you approach it by 
so insensible a rise that you find yourself upon an eminence without perceiving you ascended. Behind, 
but at a great distance, stand the Apennine Mountains. In the calmest days we are refreshed by the 
winds that blow from thence, but so spent, as it were, by the long tract of land they travel over, that 
they are entirely divested of all their strength and violence before they reach us. The exposition of 
the principal front of the house is full south, and seems to invite the afternoon sun in summer (but 
somewhat earlier in winter) into a spacious and well-proportioned portico, consisting of several 
members, particularly a porch built in the ancient manner. In the front of the portico is a sort of 
terrace, embellished with various figures and bounded with a box-hedge, from whence you descend 
by an easy slope, adorned with the representation of diverse animals in box, answering alternately to 
each other, into a lawn overspread with the soft—I had almost said the liquid—Acanthus: this is 
surrounded by a walk enclosed with tonsile evergreens shaped into a variety of forms. Beyond it is 
the Gestatio, laid out in the form of a circus, ornamented in the middle with box cut in numberless 
different figures, together with a plantation of shrubs, prevented by the shears from shooting up too 
high ; the whole is fenced in by a wall covered by box, rising by different ranges to the top. On the 
outside of the wall lies a meadow that owes as many beauties to nature as all I have been describing 
within does to art; at the end of which are several other meadows and fields interspersed with thickets. 
At the extremity of this portico stands a grand dining-room, which opens upon one end of the terrace 
(xystus ); as from the windows there is a very extensive prospect over the meadows up into the 
country, from whence you also have a view of the terrace and such parts of the house which project 
forward, together with the woods enclosing the ancient hippodrome. Opposite, almost at the centre of 
the portico, stands a square edifice which encompasses a small area, shaded by four plane-trees, in the 
midst of which a fountain rises, from whence the water, running over the edges of a marble basin, 
gently refreshes the surrounding plane-trees and the verdure underneath them. ... In the front of 
these agreeable buildings lies a very spacious hippodrome, entirely open in the middle, by which 
means the eye, upon your first entrance, takes in its whole extent at one glance. It is encompassed 
