Column Conundrum

 The Villa Arianna Columned Atrium Pool 

Column Conundrum

I may have said this before.  In fact, I’m sure I have.  When we got off the flight from Italy that mid-November day in 2016, following news of our devastating house fire the week earlier, all we possessed where the items in our luggage.  Everything save for our pick-up truck and a late model Honda, all we’d managed to accumulate over fifty-years, was gone.  I mention this again, now, because this life changing event also represented opportunity.  It took us two years to get organized and rebuild, but now that’s done.  I don’t really understand why but our new home is totally different from the one we lost.  Gone is that colonial air, the Stifel, Chippendale, woven rattan, and Ethan Allen look that once dominated our surroundings.  It may have been because we honestly couldn’t find that style anymore, at least none to our liking.  Somehow, we’d become contemporary, and if you look closely for it, with a hint of industrial chic.  Over time, just as we’d changed in our appearances, so apparently had our taste.  It is like that with many things.  Take cars for instance: I can recall how I loved the models I now see listed on my insurance voucher (so far there have been 21 in number!) but when I happen to see one on the road occasionally, I can’t believe I ever thought they were so cool.  Thankfully, tastes change.

The work is now completed.  The carriage-house garage has been transformed into a home but there is something missing.  I think the missing decorative item is a column or two.  I love columns almost as much as I love stone.  Could it be that somewhere floating around deep down in the cytoplasm of my cells is a marker that makes me comfortable in the past?  Sort of like the Neanderthal heritage I once wrote about that apparently promotes less black hair in me than the average Neanderthal enjoyed.  Likewise, being around columns, the presence of these markers, so emblematic of the distant past, could be as comforting to me as a security blanket, Teddy bear, or bowl full of comfort food to the average Joe.  Yes, this hypothetical just might explain it.

Fact is, we had a column in the finished basement of the old house.  For balance, I was hoping for at least two in our new place, although four would be better.  Although I’m willing to make some concessions to my column design ambitions, Maria Elena doesn’t share my love of columns.  In stalwart English-Irish propriety, she’s held firm to her no-column stance.  “Too Italian” she’d insist.  “Not at all, Mare”, I’d reply, drawing out her name to add a touch of seriousness.  It was still not enough.  Still too weak a rebuttal, it lacked enough umph to sway stalwart propriety.  Here was a quintessential example of where the question was the answer: Q: No Columns? Ans: No Columns!  Over the years I’d prepped for such an event, going so far as to stoop to a scheme of exposure, like a catchy virus.  Italy is chock-full of columns, so you’d think that being exposed to their slender silhouettes, seeing and touching them would do its magic.  The columns galore of Ostia, once the gateway to Rome; those of the Forum with its soaring array even the Catholic Church couldn’t pull down; and closer to home, the Greek columns of nearby Paestum; the garden columns of Pompeii; and those of Herculaneum, sadly with all of them and more, none did the trick.  Nothing softened her stance.  Most recently, on a road trip close to home in Calitri, I tried once again to bring her around to my way of thinking when we visited Villa Arianna.

Villa Arianna is in Castellammare di Stabia on the south side of the Gulf of Naples, close to where the highway from Naples breaks off to join the Amalfi Peninsula.  Villa Arianna is one of the oldest villas in Stabia, dating from the second century BC.  I hesitate here to admit that BC centuries are confusing to me.  When you get on the other side of “year zero,” what does “second century BC mean?  It decodes to 200 – 101 BC, but being BC time, I have to think about it.  Consul Lucius Sulla destroyed Stabia in 89 BC. This was during what is called the “Social War”, which wasn’t “social” at all but a mistranslation of the Latin word socii, which means "allies.”  After this war, Stabia gradually transformed into an elite residential site of six large villas of otium (Latin for “leisured culture”) that featured spectacular views from their perches over the bay.  At the time, Stabia, like Paestum, was closer to the sea then it is today.  Like the image a present day advertisement for beach front property might evoke, it afforded the who’s who of the time fantastic views of the sea from their terraces and main rooms.

Stabia is famous for the Roman villas, such as Villa Arianna, that have been unearthed there.  While we do not know who their owners were, we do know that these owners, in what we’d today think of as a “gated community,” were extremely wealthy individuals.  It is an easy jump from there to the realization that the artistic and architectural remains we’d be strolling through would be the finest examples of any Roman villas ever encapsulated in time.  Imagine it on the equivalent scale of cushy Beverly Hills and winding Mulholland Drive where the “leisured cultured” of our day wallow in relaxation overlooking Hollywood.  Stabia was where Pliny the Elder, then a prefect in charge of the naval fleet at Misenum, near present day Pozzuoli, died the day following the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD.  At the time, he was aboard his naval galley, urging his men on across the bay under a shower of volcanic ash and debris to 

Winged Ariadne 

observe the eruption of Vesuvius more closely and possibly to rescue friends from this wealthy community.  Like much of this area, Villa Arianna was covered by the eruption and lost in time until 1749.  It was then that Rocco de Alcubierre, an engineer working for Bourbon King Charles VII of Naples, discovered the site.  After a brief excavation at the insistence of the king who was interested in extracting valuable artifacts for his museum, it was reburied.  Two hundred years later, interest in exploring the site was rekindled when it was rediscovered, this time by a school principle.  This expansive villa, which from its clifftop along the edge of the Varano plateau, owes its name to a fresco unearthed in the grand triclinium (a formal Roman dining room) of the villa depicting a fabled scene of winged Ariadne.  Certainly a topic of discussion at dinner, she was a Cretan princess in Greek mythology, abandoned by the Athenian hero, Theseus, who had slain the Minotaur.  

It was surprising how few people we encountered while there.  Actually, “few” may be a misleading word and give the wrong impression of the actual number of people there.  It does take a bit more effort to find the site which may help explain why we got to experience this extraordinary villa with very few additional visitors around.  As the complex is extensive, it is easy to get the feeling you might be the only visitors.  The lack of cars in the parking lot gave us our first hint we might be alone.  Then again, finding the guard house empty had us questioning if the villa was actually open.  In addition to Maria Elena and myself, there was only one other couple there during our entire visit.  Yes, “few” if a misrepresentation, is an outright overestimation.  We expected more visitors, especially when there was no entry fee.  One shortcoming was that it was not well marked, so finding it wasn’t a simple matter of following well placed signs.  A few U-turns were needed along with a modicum of curses, but in due course we found it.  Clearly, these spectacular Roman villa ruins lie off the beaten path, overshadowed not simply by Vesuvius, but by the draw of nearby Pompeii and Herculaneum which likely get all the signs.

The Roomy But Empty AriannaParking Lot 

I must admit I’m the gullible sort, just a little too accepting of what I hear or am told.  Maybe it’s because I want to believe in a simpler black and white world, as improbable as that may be.  On average, things are just simpler that way.  Unfortunately, like Cher admitted she’d once believed that the Mount Rushmore Memorial was a natural phenomenon, so when I read “I Claudius From the Autobiography of Tiberius Claudius,” I believed it to be a real autobiography, written in Claudius’s hand.  You know, the kind someone writes about themselves, not one written by novelist Robert Graves centuries later, and as a form of semantic excavation, had the audacity to call it an “autobiography”.  In any case, it was a wonderful read in search of an honest writer, the likes of which would not have been found on a bookshelf in the library of any Stabia villa, or for that matter, anywhere across the empire.  What they did have, however, were columns.

With site maps in hand, we walked  

Approaching Villa Arianna

across the lawn, past a huge ancient storage container, to a graveled pathway bordered by a split rail fence, to me so symbolic of Italy.  A few corridors away, we came upon what is known as the palaestra.  This open outdoor gym, used for wrestling and exercise, is thought to have been added to one end of the building shortly before the eruptionmof 79 AD.  It was of considerable size.  I'd estimate it approached a soccer field in dimension.  Its entire perimeter was surrounded by a covered portico, mostly gone today, supported by over 100 white stuccoed  

Columns Surrounding thePalastra Gym

columns, certainly without the Portland cement my father used when he’d work with stucco.  We came upon them everywhere, in a private bath suite arrayed on the corners of a large tub basin, around the atrium pool, and when there weren’t actual physical columns you could walk around, they were presented as decorative illusions of fluted columns painted on a wall appearing to support a coffered ceiling.  Needless to say, they were plentiful along with other wall decorations, (video accessible at the underline with a Rt Click of your mouse and selection of “Open Hyperlink”).  Columns and wall embellishments aside, outside on what once may have been a veranda, now freed from the corrugated metal roofing protecting the various rooms we’d visited, the view toward both the sea to one side and mountains, including Mt. Vesuvius on the other, was 

Decorative Wall Frescoes

spectacular.  As I do today, those “early Italians” sure loved their columns.

Stone columns are the offspring of earlier wooden pillars.  Their introduction by the Greeks allowed architects more aesthetic Molten lead was then poured down the core of the column as a form of cement to seal everything in place.  Though I don’t believe it was intentionally by design, this construction technique provided some earthquake resistance since it permitted limited flexing of a column that allowed a quake’s energy to dissipate.  Over our travels, we’ve come upon broken columns throughout Italy.  They litter the grounds of Rome’s Forum and are scattered about Ostia Antica.  In Israel, we found them repurposed as breakwaters and piers in Caesarea.  In Greece, they lie about the fields of Olympia

Caesarea Seawall UsingAncient Columns

where a guard once shooed me off a pile of “column drums” with an official blast of his whistle, as though he was starting a race; my time for 100 yards not impressive.  At a more modest down-to-earth cost for those Roman Home Depot do-it-yourself types, there was an alternative to those heavyweight monolith and checker-segment type columns.  The Roman empire was built on bricks so why not use bricks to fashion columns.  That is exactly what they did.  Locally made on site, these far more commonplace columns were constructed with mortar and bricks arranged into something like a three-leaf clover and later covered with plaster with decoratively fluted channels added on the outside.  Add a base and either a classic Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian capital to the top of the column and voilà, you had a finished, marble-looking column.  Take a close look at the Colosseum; Its inspection will reveal a rarity - all three styles of columns in one building.  

Not Enough Columns Then
Add Their Graphic
Architectural Constructs

   Stone columns are the offspring of earlier wooden pillars.  Their introduction by the Greeks allowed architects more aesthetic freedom, but more importantly, allowed them to handle the higher compressive loads of ever larger and larger buildings.  One piece columns were quarried in places like Egypt and Turkey, then shipped to Rome. That was an expensive proposition and risked damage in shipment due to their extreme weight and cumbersome size.  More frequently, rather than being carved whole, Roman columns were constructed in segments, like massive drums or checker pieces, then stacked one atop another.  Being made in these Lego-piece segments made their transportation and later assembly much easier.  Once stacked, stone or metal pins ran down the center of these drum-like pieces to tie them together and stop them from shifting.  Molten lead was then poured down the core of the column as a form of cement to seal everything in place.  Though I don’t believe it was intentionally by design, this construction technique provided some earthquake resistance since it permitted limited flexing of a column that allowed a quake's energy to dissipate.  Over our travels, we’ve come upon broken columns throughout Italy.  They litter the grounds of Rome’s Forum and are scattered about Ostia Antica.  In Israel, we found them repurposed as breakwaters and piers in Caesarea.  In Greece, they lie about the fields of Olympia where a guard once shooed me off a pile of “column drums” with an official blast of his whistle, as 

Madonna of the Columns in Olympia

though he was starting a race; my time for 100 yards not impressive.  At a more modest down-to-earth cost for those Roman Home Depot do-it-yourself types, there was an alternative to those heavyweight monolith and checker-segment type columns.  The Roman empire was built on bricks so why not use bricks to fashion columns.  That is exactly what they did.  Locally made on site, these far more commonplace columns were constructed with mortar and bricks arranged into something like a three-leaf clover and later covered with plaster with decoratively fluted channels added on the outside.  Add a base and either a classic Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian 

Villa Arianna       Columns of Brick

capital to the top of the column and voilà, you had a finished, marble-looking column.  Take a close look at the Colosseum; Its inspection will reveal a rarity - all three styles of columns in one building.   . 

Close to where the wooden Pons Suplicius (Bridge Resting on Pilings) once crossed the Tiber until it was washed away, and closer still to the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin where we’d once bravely put our hands into the Bocca della Verita, is an area that in ancient times was known as the Forum Boarium (Cattle Forum).  This forum was the site of Portus Tiberinus, for centuries the nexus of commerce along the docks of Rome.  The warehouses may be gone but what remains is the striking majesty of the small Temple of Hercules Victor.  Speculation exists as to who built it.  Whoever it was, had it built well, for today it holds the distinction of being the oldest surviving building in Rome totally made of marble.  It features a circular arcade of twenty tall columns set in a rather tight concentric ring to give worshipers a sense of unity and closeness to their deity.  If seeing it didn’t influence Maria Elena, I feared nothing would. 

Rome's Temple of Hercules Victor

Come to find out, it didn’t sway her feelings in the least.  Even with this fine architectural example, employing so many classic Corinthian columns, Mare remained firm, and I might politely add, unyielding.  Her equivalent to the oft heard expression, “Nice to visit, but wouldn’t want to live there,” was, “Nice to see, but not in our house.”  I needed to regroup, get a foot in the door.  My hope of four columns was becoming just that, a hope, and a fading one at that.  I’d be very lucky to see just one again!  Maybe I should approach this piecewise.  Start smaller … a column-style side table with a lamp, a whimsical Maxfield Parrish painting featuring columns, a pillared birdbath, maybe an outdoor gazebo incorporating columns … and work from there before 

Not Exactly a Column but
      a Small Beginning

this becomes holy writ, which I suspect it has.

So here we are at an impasse.  I’m hoping Maria Elena will change her position, while in Mexican standoff tradition, she is hoping that I, like another Paul, will suffer my own conversion.  She just might be right.  I fear she controls the high ground and thus has the advantage.  After fifty years, she has insider information.  She knows there have been many a time that I’ve set out to do one thing and arrived somewhere else.  Just as I’d flipped on my fondness for former car styles, she’s hoping I’ll get over my obsessive fixation with columns, or as a backup strategy, that the house gradually fills with enough furniture that there’ll no longer be room for an invasive column, let alone two.  It’s doubtful there will ever be a winner but in strange irony, as it sits right now, the thought occurs to me … at this very moment, with clear primacy over the situation seeing I am without a single column, SHE IS WINNING!

From That Rogue Tourist

Paolo