House of Industrius

VillaAfrica Proconsularis · Oudna (ancient Uthina), about 30 km south of Tunis, Tunisia — coordinates approximate within the excavated areaBuilt 290 CE

Not standing in 117 CE

About

A house owner named Industrius stamped his name into a mosaic inscription at this roughly 700-square-meter peristyle house at Uthina, and archaeologists still call the place after him. Its ceremonial hall floor showed Venus Anadyomene rising from the sea, flanked by two nude nymphs holding basins for her bath. Builders raised the house toward the end of the 3rd century AD, about two centuries after Trajan's 117 CE death. The Venus mosaic now hangs in the Bardo Museum.

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.