Of all the products of ancient Roman civilisation, few were more distinctive than the great villas which, especially in the last century of the republic and the first of the empire, sprang up in obedience to the owners' will, not only on the outskirts of the capital, on the lower slopes of the Alban Hills, and along the fair and salubrious shores of the gulfs of Baiae and Neapolis, but at many a remote point where pure air, fertile soil, broad views and running water, with, if possible, the proximity of a frequented highway, combined to attract the weary administrator or business man in search of repose and to offer the most fascinating of problems to the architect and dillettante.