ALBANUM AND THE VILLAS OF DOMITIAN

by Robin DARW ALL-SMITH*

The traditional image of Domitian's Alban Villa, which Tacitus, Pliny and Juvenal have bequeathed us is only too well known : it is the Arx Albana, the house of terror where Domitian sits with his evil and sycophantic counsellors plotting death for all his opponents. But this is an image created by men with an interest in destroying all vestiges of a good reputation for Domitian. Therefore this paper aims to provide a reassessment of the Villa. Certain questions serve as guides in this examination : how unusual was the Alban villa ? Did Domitian's own use of it, or his other villas differ greatly from his predecessors and successors ? Or is the villa's owner the only reason for its bad reputations ?

I will begin with precedents for the Alban villa. Secessus, the act of living in the country, had a long ancestry : the villa of Scipio Africanus the Elder at Liternum was something of a « tourist spot » by Seneca's day (Ep. 86), and Cicero's villas at Fonniae or Tusculum are well known from his letters. It is therefore unsurprising that emperors too went on holiday. Suetonius mentions them enjoying secessus quite neutrally (cf. Divus Augustus, 72) : what he disliked was excessive luxury, such as Gaius* extravagant barges and villas (Gaius 37.2-3).

Another source of criticism was spending excessive time in secessus, the most famous such example being Tiberius on Capreae. Staying there was not reprehensible - Augustus frequently did so, without any protest (Suetonius often refers to his life there [cf. Divus Augustus 98] without comment) - but Tiberius' decision in 26 to spend most of his time there damaged his reputation. Ugly rumours circulated about his debauched life there (cf. Suetonius, Tiberius 43), which the increasing length of his stay made harder to dispel.

If Tiberius was attacked for avoiding Rome in his villa, Nero's plan to create a villa in Rome itself made him no less vulnerable. His Domus Aurea was very similar to a country villa, with lake, fields, pastures, and woods, all in the centre of Rome ; even if its true role was later distorted, Nero was going against the norm by his choice of site. It is not surprising that Vespasian, ostentatious lover of simplicity, enjoyed a very different type of secessus : he had his grandmother's villa kept just as it was, and visited it frequently (Suetonius, Divus Vespasianus, 2.1).

But what did these earlier villas look like ? I will focus on Tiberius' on Capreae, in particular the Villa Iovis (Plate I1). It is on top of a cliff at one of the highest points of the island (and thus easy to protect), and its rooms, surrounding large cisterns in the centre (built to solve problems of water supply), include an audience hall,