House of Amphitrite
About
Bulla Regia's most photographed mosaic once passed for the sea-goddess Amphitrite but is now read as the birth of Venus, who rides ashore on two fish-tailed centaurs while cupids ride dolphins beneath her. Craftsmen laid the floor in the 3rd century AD, roughly a century after Trajan's death fixed this map's date. It capped one of the underground reception suites Bulla Regia built to beat Tunisia's summer heat. The house gave its name to the whole excavated quarter.
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
Nearby
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 →