Pliny's Comedy and Tragedy villas were two of the several villas owned by Pliny the Younger during the 1st century in the area surrounding Lake Como in northern Italy. In one of Pliny's letters to his boyhood friend Voconius Romanus (Book 9, Epistle 7), he named them as his favourites. In his letter, Pliny wrote that the Tragedy villa was atop a ridge above the lake, but the Comedy villa was right on the water's edge and that "each of them has particular beauties; a diversity which renders them to their master as still more agreeable." According to the letter, Pliny had derived the villas' names from their geographical positions and the conventions of Roman theatre. He saw the Tragedy villa as rising from its setting like an actor wearing the tragedian's high platform boots (cothurni), whi