House of Orpheus, Volubilis
About
The House of Orpheus stood among the grandest private residences at Volubilis, Mauretania Tingitana's frontier city, built in the second half of the 1st century CE. It takes its modern name from a large floor mosaic of Orpheus charming animals with his lyre, one of the finest surviving figural mosaics from Roman North Africa. The house also included private baths, a mark of the wealth Volubilis's olive-oil trade brought its elite, an established residence when Trajan died in 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 →