THE ROMAN VILLAS OF THE AUGUSTAN AGE. IN the early times of the Republic, the Romans strictly confined themselves to what was useful, even in their public works: it was only during the reigns of the Emperors that they began to give to the Temples of the Gods an air of magnificence by the regularity of their architectural disposition'. Before the war with Pyrrhus, which happened four hundred and seventy years after 1 Strabo, lib. 5. B the foundation of the City, it is clear they used only thatch or shingles as a covering for their houses, which at the same time consisted of no more than one story in height; the Laws of the Ediles also forbidding the walls of private buildings to be made of a greater thickness than eighteen inches, English measure: subsequent regulations, indeed, fixed the height of houses at sixty or seventy feet'. In the time of Horace, who wrote in the reign of Augustus, every man, who was rich enough, had his country-seat in the charming Campania; and the district of Naples, Baiæ, Puteoli, &c. was preferred, being the most beautiful sea coast in the world, according to the poet's own words, What place on earth with charming Baiæ vies2. All were confessedly inferior to the cele 1 Dionysius Halicarnassensis, lib. 1. 2 Francis's Translation of " Nullus in Orbe, sinus Baiis," &c. Epistle 1. Baia was the winter retreat of the Romans; while Tibur, Tusculum, Preneste, Alba, Cajeta, Mons Cir brated villa of Lucullus, situated near Naples, which had more the air of a magnificent town than a rural seat. Here this luxurious and accomplished Roman general not only caused hills on the coast to be cut through, for the purpose of conducting the ocean into a lake, which he had been at the expense of forming on his estate, but directed whole bays of the sea to be dammed up, for the sake of covering them with marble structures, that he might indulge in his love of artificial variety. This exorbitant luxury in building, which Horace notices in various familiar passages of his ceius, Anxur, and the more airy situations in the mountains, were their favourite retirements during the heats of summer. Juvenal also notices the rage for erecting villas which prevailed in his time : Centronius lov'd to build; and now the shore, |