Drawing on documentary sources and archaeological evidence this book offers a socio-economic history of elite villas in Roman Central Italy and brings a new perspective to the debate on the slave-based villa system and the crisis of Italian villas in the imperial period.

Annalisa Marzano, Ph.D. (2004) in Classical Studies, Columbia University, is Research Assistant at the Institute of Archaeology and William Golding Research Fellow at Brasenose College, Oxford. She is currently part of the research staff for the Oxford Roman Economy Project.