VILLA PUBLICA
the only public building in the campus Martius proper
before the end of the republic, built in 435 B.C. (
Liv. iv. 22. 7), restored
and enlarged in 194 (ib. xxxiv. 44. 5), and probably again in 34 B.C.
by Fonteius Capito. It is represented on a coin of Fonteius (Babelon,
Fonteia 18; BM.
Rep. i. 479, 3856-60) as a walled enclosure, within
which was a square building with two stories, of which the lower opened
outward with a row of arches. It was also decorated with paintings
and statues (Varro,
RR iii. 2). If, as seems probable, the Villa is represented on fragments of the Marble Plan (FUR 103, 97;
Mitt. 1903,
47-48), it existed as late as the second century, but much reduced in
size and merely as a monument of antiquity. No ruins have been found,
but its site, just north of the Piazza del Gesu, is determined as close to
the Saepta (Cic. ad
Att. iv. 16. 14; Varro, loc. cit.; cf.
BPW 1903, 575;
cf., however, for a site further west,
BC 1918, 120-126), the circus Flaminius
(Plut. Sulla 30), and the temple of Bellona, for the senate, assembled in
this temple, heard the groans of the four thousand prisoners taken in the
battle of the Colline Gate in 82 B.C., who were being massacred by Sulla's
orders within the Villa (Joseph. b.
Iud. vii. 5. 4; Sen. de
Clem. i. 12. 2;
Lucan ii. 197; Liv. Ep. 88;
Flor. ii. 9. 24; Ampel. 42. 3; Val.
Max.
ix. 2. ; de vir. ill. 75;
Strabo v. 249; Cass. Dio, frg. 109. 5:
ἀγρὸς δημόσιος.
The building served as headquarters for state officers when engaged in
taking the census or levying troops (Varro, loc. cit.; Apul. Apol. I), and
generals who desired a triumph and foreign ambassadors were lodged
here, e.g. those from Carthage in 202 B.C. (
Liv. xxx. 21. 12), and from
Macedon in 197 (ib. xxxiii. 24. 5; cf. Joseph. loc. cit.; HJ 480, 494, 572;
JRS 1921, 25-36).
