The villa of the Lentuli was one of the newest and finest at Baiae.

It rested on a sort of breakwater built out into the sea, so that the waves actually beat against the embankment at the foot of Cornelia's chamber.

The building rose in several stories, each smaller than the one below it, an ornamental cupola highest of all.

On the successive terraces were formally plotted, but luxuriant, gardens.

Cornelia, from her room in the second story, could command a broad vista of the bay.
Puteoli was only two miles distant.