Atrium House, Daphne

VillaSyria · Harbiye (ancient Daphne, suburb of Antioch), near Antakya, Turkey — general suburb location, exact find-spot not pinpointedBuilt 50 CE · Destroyed 115 CE

Not standing in 117 CE

About

Princeton's 1932 dig at Daphne, Antioch's leafy suburb, found this house's dining-room floor still holding mosaic panels of a drinking contest between Herakles and Dionysos. Built in the 1st century AD, the house stood when a magnitude-7.5 earthquake flattened Daphne on 13 December 115 CE and nearly killed Trajan, then wintering in Antioch. Its mosaics survived to be split among four museums, Princeton and the Louvre included. Two years later, when Trajan died, the suburb was still rebuilding.

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.