The past two-plus decades have seen an influx of complementary approaches to traditional, formally oriented studies of Roman domestic architecture. Greater attention is being paid to sensorial and experiential considerations in ancient interior spaces,Footnote ¹ and advances in garden archaeology are leading to reinterpretations of the exterior arrangements of domus and villas.Footnote ² Another subject of growing interest among classical scholars is seasonality; its potential for wide-ranging applications is on display in the 2021 conference volume The Archaeology of Seasonality. Footnote ³

Mantha Zarmakoupi’s Shaping Roman Landscape is well situated at the intersection of these stimulating developments. The book draws heavily on the author’s background as a trained architect and her extensive expertise on Late Republican and Early Imperial luxury villas. In fact, many of the examples featured in her first monograph Designing for Luxury on the Bay of Naples (2014) prove useful in Shaping Roman Landscape. Footnote ⁴

The book revolves around the overarching premise that the concept of landscape per se emerged during the Late Republican period as part of large-scale environmental, cultural, and political transformations. Z. makes an original and compelling case for integrating environmental considerations into the assessment of ancient architecture and its component decorative programs. In the successive chapters, she explores how the Roman conception of landscape, having already integrated Hellenistic influences, informed architectural design practices and iconographical choices.

Especially along the Bay of Naples, luxury villas served as the primary experimental grounds for the wealthy to define, enhance, and ultimately show off their surrounding environments.Footnote ⁵ To illustrate her main arguments, Z. focuses on the exceptional remains of Villa A at Oplontis, Villa San Marco and Villa Arianna at Stabiae, and the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, as well as the Villa of Livia at Prima Porta outside Rome. She also weaves in imperial residences such as Sperlonga and the Domus Aurea, in addition to paintings from some of Pompeii’s most ornate houses, including the House of the Golden Bracelet and the House of Marcus Lucretius Fronto.

In “Ecocritical approaches to the Roman landscape,” Z. first summarizes the relevant historiographical background and then sets out a new theoretical approach. Z. convincingly argues for an ancient abstract concept of landscape,Footnote ⁶ challenging the traditional idea that it only developed during the Renaissance (17–19). To give weight to environmental aspects in assessments of architectural design, literary evidence, and wall painting, Z. proposes an ecocritical interpretative model inspired by current trends in modern landscape studies.Footnote ⁷ Citing the French landscape theorist Alain Roger, Z. selects the term “artialization” to represent the process by which Romans transformed nature (land) into landscape.Footnote ⁸ Emphasizing the culturally constructed nature of landscape, she adopts Roger’s concept of nature in situ and nature in visu to reflect how human intervention transformed not only the physical but also the perceived or pictorial landscape.Footnote ⁹

In Chapter 2, Z. traces the extensive urban developments that took place in Rome during the 2nd and 1st c. BCE and connects them to a growing appreciation of landscape. In the city center, monumental porticoes following Hellenistic models were constructed with integrated pleasure gardens, while aristocratic horti emerged around its periphery (34–37). Outside Rome, a concurrent building boom of maritime villas from Latium to Campania transformed the landscape of the Tyrrhenian coast between the mid-2nd c. and the mid-1st c. BCE.Footnote ¹⁰ These villas combined luxurious living quarters with production facilities and piscinae, exploiting and enhancing the natural advantages of each site.Footnote ¹¹

Z. helpfully synthesizes the complex combination of factors that contributed to these profound transformations. Increased trade and the advent of opus caementicium spurred the construction of grandiose commercial infrastructure and public complexes in addition to enabling more inventive villa architecture and landscaping.Footnote ¹² Thanks to expanding imperial networks and eastern appropriation, a wealth of resources such as polychrome marbles and exotic plant species became increasingly available over the course of the 1st c.

In Chapter 3, Z. explores the many ways that human intervention altered and cultivated natural environments into sophisticated villa landscapes, in turn further shaping the Roman concept of landscape. Clever layout decisions, such as the strategic positioning of windows and doors or the integration of covered porticoes,Footnote ¹³ demonstrate Roman builders’ in-depth understanding of climatically savvy design. Although modern scholars have seldom addressed the topic when studying ancient domestic buildings,Footnote ¹⁴ seasonal considerations were repeated tropes in the writings of the period (48–54). For instance, Vitruvius (De arch. 6.1.12) not only discusses how domestic architecture should mediate between humans and their environments, but he also elaborates that buildings should be appropriately designed in accordance with their surroundings and local climate (decorum).

A century later, the younger Pliny is more concerned with villa architecture as a means of self-presentation to articulate owners’ command over nature (52–54). As experimental villa architecture evolved, so did the overall flexibility in plan, which allowed owners to take advantage of the specific characteristics of a given site. For example, dining rooms were designed to maximize views, with glass windows framing the surrounding landscape. Z.’s architectural expertise is on full display in her explanations of how porticoes and cryptoporticus effectively mediated between inside and out – both visually and climatically (54–66). These sprawling complexes incorporated various elements of intelligent passive design: for instance, sea breezes at maritime villas like Sperlonga and underground spaces like the dining room in the Villa of Livia at Prima Porta would have kept their occupants pleasantly cool in the heat of summer. Such seasonal characteristics were often visually recalled in the painted landscapes adorning the porticoes and dining spaces of these villas.

In “Between conceptual and perceptual space: miniature landscapes,” Z. shifts her attention to depicted architecture, in particular to pinakes – the small-scale, idealized representations of landscapes and harborscapes that were popular domestic decor in the late 1st c. BCE and 1st c. CE. The best known is the port scene from a villa at Gragnano (figure 62, Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples), while other illustrative examples cited include the Third Style pinakes in the tablinum of the House of Marcus Lucretius Fronto in Pompeii (figures 45, 59–60). Z. asserts that, rather than constituting a separate iconographic category, villa depictions were assimilated into the established Roman tradition of sacral-idyllic scenes (77).Footnote ¹⁵ In the early 1st c. CE, more descriptive littoral scenes gained popularity, not coincidentally in parallel with the rise of groves, garden porticoes, and horti in Rome and the proliferation of luxury villas along the Tyrrhenian coast. Beyond reflecting these contemporary developments, as well as Hellenistic influences, depictions of maritime villa façades with prominent colonnades and tall towers helped to give dimension and animation to the liminal space between sea and land.Footnote ¹⁶ Harborscapes also emerged in this period, making idealized references to Greece and, more specifically, to the famous ports at Delos and Lechaion (83–86).Footnote ¹⁷

In Early Imperial literary sources, Z. identifies a tension between contrasting attitudes: on the one hand, continued reverence toward untouched nature and, on the other, growing recognition of the impressive technological achievement that these crafted landscapes represented. Though both penned in the second half of the 1st c. CE, the nostalgic, moralizing writings of Seneca (e.g., Ep. 90.8–9) diverge sharply from Statius’s admiration of man’s ability to assert dominance over nature (Silv. 1.3.1–6).

Wall paintings are also the focus of Chapter 5. Z. describes how, just as painted simulations of colonnades and architecture in Second Style wall paintings constructed fictive perspectives, hyperreal depictions of gardens were designed to provide immersive experiences for viewers in domestic spaces (103–5). The earliest known examples were found in the Villa of Livia at Prima Porta outside Rome. In addition to the lush vegetation adorning the underground dining room’s walls, the paintings extended over the barrel-vaulted ceiling, creating an almost grotto-like framing (helpfully reconstructed in figure 41). As Z. rightly points out, these imitations of nature combined plants from all over the Empire at their peaks regardless of season. This observation is all the more interesting when read together with Annalisa Marzano’s recent monograph that explores the associations between plants and the politics of the Late Republic and Early Empire as it underwent rapid expansion.Footnote ¹⁸ The taste for elaborate ornamental gardens featuring a great variety of imported plants – both real and depicted – was driven by the increasingly well-connected Empire. Moreover, by evoking the Nile, the Euripus, and other elements of Eastern pleasure gardens in domesticated contexts, villa owners harnessed and familiarized cultural imports (114).Footnote ¹⁹ A wide assortment of hybrid references was deemed appropriate decor for these aristocratic leisure retreats, expanding the physical limits of their immediate surroundings: Egyptian ornaments were incorporated into painted garden scenes along with porticoed gardens simulating Hellenistic and civic architecture in the domestic realm.

Chapter 6, “The remediation and intermediality of landscape,” further develops the book’s theoretical framework in addition to serving as its conclusion. Z. demonstrates how representations in different media informed one another, especially in side-by-side (paratactic) arrangements, thereby intensifying the experience and perception of landscape.Footnote ²⁰ Villas both framed and shaped landscapes, creating interrelations between the real and the depicted.Footnote ²¹ They also evoked connotations relevant to the Empire’s control over the natural world and over distant provinces. Z. offers the villa environment as a nexus of the cultural benefits of the imperial assimilation of conquered territories, all of which contributed to the Roman conception, elaboration, and representation of landscape. Z. concludes with a curious coda on the enslaved (145–51). While it is certainly true that Roman villas depended on such labor, this short discussion in the book’s final pages risks coming across as an abrupt afterthought.

Throughout the book, Z. expertly weaves in pertinent literary sources to support her arguments. She demonstrates how the authors of the Late Republican and Early Imperial period held contrary opinions of disdain versus admiration for such control and mastery over nature (Natura artifex and techne). Similar tension can be observed in the decor of villas – in assemblages of scenes of untouched nature with hyper-constructed architecture. A rich selection of generously sized, high-quality illustrations, most in vivid color, greatly enhances the reader’s experience. For instance, in Chapter 6, Z. presents and adeptly narrates an effective sequence of site photographs in combination with detailed images of pinakes at Villa San Marco and Villa A at Oplontis (figures 78–87). That said, in places the concentration of successive images arguably interrupts the flow and readability of the text.

In sum, Shaping Roman Landscape is the work of an accomplished scholar who successfully transcends disciplinary boundaries to understand Roman attitudes towards landscape across different media in this pivotal period. Z. extends her previously demonstrated strength in the description and analysis of architecture to wall painting to generate important insights that will be of interest to students and scholars of classical archaeology, art history, and architectural history.