The Research Of Italian Villas In Late Republican And Early Imperial Italy

In some ancient literary works,villa is often regarded as the luxury villa of the upper class of ancient Roman society.However,the translation of "villa" cannot fully reflect the complex function of villa.Villa is a rural property owned by the upper class of Roman society.It is not only an important agricultural production unit,but also an important private living space for the upper class of Roman elite.It carries a variety of leisure and entertainment activities of the upper class of Rome.In the late Roman Republic,villa became popular in Italy,and in the upper class of Rome in the early imperial period.Along with the Roman conquest,it gradually expanded to all provinces and regions of the Empire.In the middle and late imperial period,due to the influence of the crisis of the third century and other factors,many villa no longer remained as exquisite and luxurious aristocratic buildings,but only retained simple production functions.Later due to poor maintenance,uninhabited and other reasons gradually abandoned.Limited by the literature and personal ability,this paper mainly discusses the Italian villas from the late Roman Republic to the early Empire(i.e.the2 nd century BC to the 2nd century AD),using the relevant ancient Roman documents and the archaeological data of villa in modern Italy to elaborate the historical development of villa in Italy,analyze the various types of villa,list the various production and leisure activities of villa in Rome,and explore the influence of the villa in Rome on the ancient Roman society.This paper consists of two parts.The first part is the introduction,which mainly describes the research status at home and abroad,the significance of the topic,the innovation,the research methods and so on.Based on the data collected so far,the author systematically combs the research situation at home and abroad,and summarizes the research status of villa in Italy from the late Republic of Rome to the early Empire.The second part is the main body of the paper,which discusses the rise and reasons of the Italian villa,the related types of villa,the production and living conditions inside villa and the influence of villa on the Roman Empire.First,investigate the historical development of Rome and Italy villa,analyze the reasons for the prosperity of villa,describe the type of villa and its related facilities construction.Second,examine the spatial layout and decorative art of villa’s architecture,and expounds the structure and decoration of villa’s and living space mainly from the perspective of production area and living area.Third,describe the content of production and life activities of villa,mainly from the aspects of crop production,cash crop production,animal breeding,handicraft production and leisure activities.Forth,it explores the influence of Italian villa on Ancient Roman society and later Europe.On the one hand,the prosperity of villa drove the development of the surrounding areas to a certain extent,and its architectural form also influenced the architectural design of later Europe.On the other hand,the competition of the Roman upper class to build villa also had a negative impact on the social atmosphere of the empire.