Sollertiana Domus

Domus Sollertiana

VillaAfrica Proconsularis · El Jem, TunisiaBuilt 210 CE

Not standing in 117 CE

About

This patrician house in Thysdrus took its name from an inscription reading Sollertius set into a mosaic threshold. Its floor packed an entire amphitheater scene into one room: five bears and six spotted African cats mauling condemned prisoners, blood spatters picked out in red-brown tesserae. Builders raised the house in the early 3rd century AD, nearly a century after Trajan's death, as El Jem's olive-oil wealth funded its giant amphitheater nearby. The mosaic now hangs in the town's 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.