In the eighty-sixth Epistle to Lucilius, while Seneca tells of his visit to the villa of Liternum which belonged to Scipio Africanus, he praises the austerity and modesty of its small bathroom. A careful reading of the letter’s text, in relation with what we know today about the genesis of the Roman villa, returns a less mythicized image of the hero’s country residence. Some hints show rather a residence that is certainly devoted to agricultural work – as always in Roman villas – but also with some characteristics that are explicitly linked to the Hellenistic villas of southern Italy, especially to those close to the culture of Taranto. The mere presence of a bathroom, although modest, actually reveals a very peculiar character, if we compare it with the archaeological documentation of contemporary or slightly later villas.