Imperial monuments in Capri: The Villas
Capri's
archaeology is mainly concerned with discovering and identifying the twelve
villas in which, according to Tacitus (Ann., IV, 67) Tiberius
appears to have established himself dedicating them to the several deities
of Olympus " tum Tiberius duodecim villarum numinibus et molibus insederat
(in those days had taken his seat [in Capri] amid the deities and the structures
of twelve villas).
Apart from the scarcely dissembled charge of unrestrained luxuriousness and
Epicurean self-indulgence that transpires from Tacitus' account,
since there was no Roman patrician and wealthy man who did not own several
villas suited for residence during the different seasons, it was but natural
that an emperor should seek the most comfortable conditions far a prolonged
residence in an island that is exposed to the winds, to winter storms and
to the changes of a sea climate: the coolness of woods and winds on the side
towards the
north and the west between the plateau
of "Palazzo a Mare" the Castiglione hill and the
level ground of Damecuta, sun warmth and shelter from the
northern winds in the little valley between Mount Solaro and Tragàra.
But twelve villas, even in a beautiful island and varied in its beauty, seem
too many and perhaps some concern with round figures induced Tacitus to mistake
for imperial resorts also modest structures of villae rusticae and villae
fructuariae in which dwelled the freedmen farmers and the managers of the
patrimonium principis.
Finally Tacitus, by focussing his attention on Tiberius, overlooked the share
that Augustus first had in transforming the structure and architecture of
Greek Capri into Roman Capri.
At any rate we are indebted to some nineteenth century Capri scholars far
stringing together, with much good will and no little imagination, the golden
wreath of the twelve villas credited to Augustus and Tiberius.
Capri