Of ancient Pausilypon the most visible ruins are those of the notorious villa of Vedius Pollio, later to become an imperial villa. The villa was described by the poet Ovid as "like a city". Most notoriously, he kept a pool of lampreys into which slaves who incurred his displeasure would be thrown as food, a particularly unpleasant means of death, since the lamprey "clamps its mouth on the victim and bores a dentated tongue into the flesh to ingest blood". However, the emperor, Augustus, on visiting Pollio and witnessing the condemnation of a slave, took action against Pollio and saved the slave, an incident widely documented in writings of the era (see Vedius Pollio for more details).