House of the Dionysiac Procession
About
A wealthy household in Thysdrus laid this house's showpiece floor around 150 AD: Dionysus riding a lion in a drunken parade, a tambourine-playing maenad, two satyrs, and Silenus swaying atop a camel. A landowner named Belhareth turned the mosaic up on his own property in 1959, and archaeologist Louis Foucher excavated it the same year. Its floor postdates this map's 117 CE snapshot by more than three decades. The mosaic is now displayed at the El Jem Archaeological 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.
Sources
Nearby
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, 1st half of the 3rd century AD, Sousse Archaeological Museum, Tunisia.jpg?width=800)
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 →