even the profit-oriented latifundia, large slave-run villas, probably grew enough of all the basic foodstuffs to provide for their own consumption. The late Roman Republic witnessed an explosion of villa construction in Italy, especially in the years following the dictatorship of Sulla (81 BC). In Etruria, the villa at Settefinestre was the centre of one of the latifundia that were involved in large-scale agricultural production. At Settefinestre and elsewhere, the central housing of such villas was not richly appointed. Other villas in the hinterland of Rome are interpreted in light of the agrarian treatises written by the elder Cato, Columella and Varro, all of whom sought to define the suitable lifestyle of conservative Romans, at least in idealistic terms. Large villas dominated the rural economy of the Po Valley, Campania, and Sicily, and also operated in Gaul. Villas were centers of a variety of economic activity such as mining, pottery factories, or horse raising such as those found in northwestern Gaul. Villas specializing in the seagoing export of olive oil to Roman legions in Germany became a feature of the southern Iberian province of Hispania Baetica. Some luxurious villas have been excavated in North Africa in the provinces of Africa and Numidia. Certain areas within easy reach of Rome offered cool lodgings in the heat of summer. Gaius Maecenas asked what kind of house could possibly be suitable at all seasons. The emperor Hadrian had a villa at Tibur (Tivoli), in an area that was popular with Romans of rank. Hadrian's Villa, dated to 123, was more like a palace, as Nero's palace, the Domus Aurea on the Palatine Hill in Rome, was disposed in groupings in a planned rustic landscape, more like a villa. Cicero had several villas. Pliny the Younger described his villas in his letters. The Romans invented the seaside villa: a vignette in a frescoed wall at the in Pompeii still shows a row of seafront pleasure houses, all with porticos along the front, some rising up in porticoed tiers to an altana at the top that would catch a breeze on the most stifling evenings. Some late Roman villae had luxuries like hypocaust-heated rooms with mosaic floors; mosaics are known even from Roman Britain. As the Roman Empire collapsed, villas in Britain were abandoned. In other areas some at least survived; large working villas were donated by aristocrats and territorial magnates to individual monks, often