Anaploga Villa, Corinth
About
A Roman villa at Anaploga, 750 meters from Corinth's Odeion, was excavated between 1962 and 1964 and yielded a striking still-life mosaic with elaborate geometric borders. Pottery beneath the mosaic's bedding dated its creation to the last quarter of the 1st century CE, decades after Corinth's refounding as a Roman colony. It illustrates the villa culture that took root even in this thoroughly Hellenic province by 117 CE.
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 →