Old Rome : a handbook to the ruins of the city ... - Warburg Institute

254 -^ Handbook to the Rums of Rorne
of Avhat still remained of the villa in the 16th centurj', is
prohahly due to the fact of its having been found to be so
rich a mine of sculpture.
Sahine The Sabine farm of Horace can hardly be passed over
Farm of here, though it is not strictly included witliin the district
of Tibur. There is no evidence to show that Horace ever
had any villa at Tibur in addition to his Sabine farm ; indeed
his own words seem expressly to imply the contrary. The
estate he had was plainly usually called a Sabinura, not a
Tiburtinum, and must therefore be looked for at some
distance from Tibur. Horace mentions two places in its
neighbourhood, Varia, and Mandela, the sites of which can be
exactly determined. The ancient list of toA\Tis places Yaria
on the Via Valeria, eight miles beyond Tibur, and precisely
at this distance are the remains of an ancient town now covered
by the modern village of Vico Varo. But the position of
Mandela is more important for ascertaining the site of
Horace's farm, because if we can fix upon it, we then can
discover to which of the mountain streams which flow into
the Anio the name Digentia belonged. An inscription dug
up in 1757 near the Church of S. Cosimato on the Via
Valeria, two miles from the village of Bardella, shows that
an estate in the modern district formed by the union of
Cantalupo and Bardella was called in the later imperial
times, or the early Middle Ages, Massa Mandelana.
From this it is plain that the Digentia was the torrent
called Mariscella, which joins the Anio between Cantalupo,
Bardella and Vico Varo, descending from near Licenza, a
small village about six miles from Vico A^aro. As to the
exact spot where the farm of Horace itself stood in the valley
of the Digentia, we cannot be quite certain. The ruins usually
pointed out are on a little knoll opposite to the village of
Licenza, and on the other side of the stream. These are
possibly situated on the spot on which the farmhouse stood, if
they do not date so far back as the lifetime of the poet himself.
Dennis in Milman's Horace says, " The ruins consist only of
a mosaic pavement, and of two capitals and two fragments
of Doric columns lying among the bushes. The pavement
has been much ruined by the planting of a vineyard, and can