The Roman orator and author Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (Pliny the Younger) had several villas. A native of Comum in the Tuscan countryside to the north of Rome, Pliny held the consulship in 100 C.E. and was active in forensic matter's over his entire life. His nine books of literary letters recount political, social, domestic, and other events of his era. In some of his autobiographical letters, Pliny writes of his various villas—their situation, construction, and decoration —and thus attests to the importance of domestic architecture to a Roman of his status and economic resources. Each of Pliny's several villas had its own peculiar setting, style, and amenities.

My house is on the lower slopes of a hill, but commands as good a view as if it were higher up, for the ground rises so gradually that...