This book represents a hugely ambitious project. Originating from an international colloquium held in Jerusalem in 2008, it has been expanded by the addition of specially commissioned papers to produce the most comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the Roman villa yet attempted. As the editors write in their introduction (xxix), it ‘is intended to outline some of the varieties of Roman villas and the various ways they interacted among themselves, with the landscape and larger economic picture, and within the late Republican and imperial hegemonies through late antiquity’. Naturally, there has to be a degree of selectivity. Aside from the geographical restrictions imposed by the concentration on the lands bordering the Mediterranean, the terms of reference exclude imperial villas such as Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli and the palace of Diocletian at Split. Nevertheless, it is impossible to pass over these imperial properties altogether, given their role in inspiring imitation on the part of private patrons. Similarly, the geographical parameters have been relaxed to accommodate some reference to areas away from the Mediterranean, such as the north-western provinces (dealt with in chapter 2 by U Rothe).

It is a hopeless task to convey the riches of this volume in the space of a 750-word review. There are twenty-five papers in all, beginning with two synoptical discussions: the first (‘The Roman villa: an overview’) by the two editors; the second (by Rothe) on ‘definitions and variations’. The remaining papers are mostly regional surveys covering the late Republic to the early Empire, but some have a narrower focus (for example, the Roman villa at Positano and the so-called ‘Villa of Augustus’ at Somma Vesuviana) while the collection concludes with three essays on late antiquity (of which that by G Ripoll on aristocratic residences in Hispania is a tour de force) and two on modern responses to Roman villas (de la Ruffinière du Prey deals with imaginative reconstructions of Pliny’s Tuscan and Laurentine villas from 1700 to the present, and Lapatin decribes how J Paul Getty’s ‘ranch house’ at Malibu was transformed into a museum loosely based on the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum).

Throughout, the emphasis tends to be on the architecture of the villas, but in the best papers this forms a route to socio-economic interpretations. Thus Wallace-Hadrill (chapter 3) analyses the plan of the Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii in terms of a modular lay-out, but focuses particular attention on possible hospitality suites in this and other late Republican villas. Similarly, Clarke (chapter 4) gives a general account of Villa A at Oplontis, but also draws inferences on the markers which differentiate spaces used by the owners and their guests from those used by slaves. Special praise must go to the editors’ overview in chapter 1, which is magisterial – full of insights and sensible ideas. It is probably right, for instance, to question the Sette Finestre pattern of equal-sized cellae as an indicator of slave accommodation, and certainly right to argue that not every example of a villa that shows signs of contraction in late antiquity necessarily offers evidence of real decline: some may have been taken over by neighbouring property-holders and relegated to ancillary functions.

It would be surprising if the book were entirely homogeneous, and indeed it is not. Some chapters are descriptive and densely packed with data, while others adopt a more leisurely and argumentative approach. The scope of some chapters is considerably more ambitious than others (compare, for example, Wilson on the villas of North Africa with Bonanno on those of Malta and Gozo). There is also some disparity of opinion on what actually constitutes a ‘villa’. The prevailing policy is to restrict the term to rural residences with some architectural pretensions, including such features as peristyles, apsidal halls and decorations in fresco and mosaic. This is set out clearly, for instance, by Bowden (page 378): ‘I shall use [the term villa] in its modern definition to denote residential buildings whose owners aspired to, or participated in, the leisured life of the Roman aristocracy with its accompanying complex architectural and decorative vocabulary.’ Yet several contributors (including Bowden himself: see his figure 20.7) employ the term also in the sense of a modest farmhouse. That is an equally valid usage, but a villa is by definition a rural residence, so the urban dwellings studied by Weiss in his chapter on Roman Galilee would seem to lie outside the book’s terms of reference.

Enough of cavils. This is a major reference work, written by a stellar cast of contributors, and it deserves to take its place as the definitive study of Roman villas round the Mediterranean basin. It is also beautifully produced, with (mostly) excellent illustrations, a comprehensive bibliography and ample indexes.