Villa Pompeiana Mysteriorum
About
A suburban villa just outside Pompeii's Herculaneum Gate, built in the 1st century BCE and famous for the near-life-size Dionysiac frieze (c. 60 BCE) painted around its triclinium (Room 5), thought to depict a woman's initiation into a mystery cult of Dionysus/Bacchus. Because it lay outside the town walls it took relatively light structural damage in 79 CE, which is why its frescoes survive so completely. New category "villa" introduced (distinct from in-town "house") for this and the Villa of the Papyri entry, following the shift log's precedent of adding categories freely. Destroyed in the 79 CE eruption of Vesuvius, 38 years before this map's snapshot — included as it's an essential part of the story.
What happened here
A working estate with a comfortable house attached, and the proportions vary with how rich the owner is and how often he visits. The farm side has presses for oil and wine, threshing floors, storage sunk into the ground, stables and quarters for the workforce. The residential side has baths, dining rooms sited for the view, mosaics, and a garden with water in it. A manager runs the place year-round and reports; the owner arrives for the vintage and for the summer. Produce goes to market or to the owner's town house, and the accounts are kept in detail. Some villas are pure retreat with no farm at all, built on a cliff or a lake specifically to be looked at from a boat.
Sources
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →