Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

secular architecture 953
common, and frescoes, marble revetment and mosaic decorations are all
preserved. 57
Villas
Sidonius Apollinaris describes several villas of the fifth century in Gaul.
His own at Avitacum near Clermont faced north and south to attractive
vistas; in addition to its bath suite, it had a portico on the east overlooking
a lake, a living-room (diaeta), a summer drawing-room (deversorium) open to
the north, a winter dining-room (triclinium) with fireplace, a small diningroom
(cenatiuncula) with stibadium (a semicircular couch) and sideboard, a
ladies’ dining-room near a storeroom and a weaving-room. The villa of his
friend Consentius near Narbonne had colonnades, a bath, a chapel, an
entrance court, gardens, olive groves and vineyards. The villa of another
friend, Pontius Leontius, had a crescent-shaped atrium, a double portico
and marble facing on the façade, as well as a winter house (hiberna domus), a
dining-room with curved portico and fish tanks, a weaving-room, winter
baths, a summer portico and granaries. In the second half of the sixth
century, Venantius Fortunatus describes other villas in Gaul which also
seem to have been very much in the classical tradition. A singular example
of the type from this period in Italy is the villa at S. Giovanni di Ruoti,
which was rebuilt in c. 460 over an earlier villa (Fig. 10, p.334 above). The
complex includes a reception hall with polygonal apse, a room with a
mosaic floor, and another room, of uncertain function, which was roofed
with a dome, as well as a tower and stables. 58
The Roman villa rustica is less associated with the eastern empire,
although proasteia – that is, suburban estates near a city – are well known
from written sources. Remains of such villas have been found outside the
walls of Caesarea in Palestine. They were also built in the fifth and sixth
century between the Constantinian and Theodosian walls of
Constantinople (Fig. 40), an area where tessellated pavements of a secular
nature have been unearthed. At Daphne, outside Antioch, houses paved in
mosaics, some built close together on irregular plans, had two main periods
of construction – in the second to the third century and in the fifth to the
sixth, when the size of rooms increased; the largest rooms (up to 13 metres
wide) may have been courtyards. One large complex, possibly built by
Ardabur when he was magister militum per Orientem at Antioch (453–66),
included a bath. What may be described as a forerunner in eastern Syria of
the Arab desert palace is the walled complex built in 561–4 at Qasr ibn
Wardan, which includes a palace, a church and barracks. The square symmetrical
palace, in opus mixtum, centres on an unporticoed court; on the side
57 Foss (1979) 73–7.
58 Sid. Ap. Carm. xxii.4.101–235; Epp. 2.2.3–19; 8.iv.1; Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. i.18–20; vi.7;
viii.19–21. On the villas’ baths see n. 36 above; S. Giovanni di Ruoti: Small and Buck (1994) 75–121.
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