Analysing The Boundaries Of The Ancient Roman Garden

This book demonstrates how the Romans constructed garden boundaries specifically in order to open up or undermine the division between a number of oppositions, such as inside/outside, sacred/profane, art/nature, and real/imagined. Using case studies from across literature and material and visual culture, Victoria Austen explores the perception of individual garden sites in response to their limits, and showcases how the Romans delighted in playing with concepts of boundedness and separation. Transculturally, the garden is understood as a marked-off and cultivated space. Distinct from their surroundings, gardens are material and symbolic spaces that constitute both universal and culturally specific ways of accommodating the natural world and expressing human attitudes and values. Although we define these spaces explicitly through the notions of separation and division, in many cases we are unable to make sense of the most basic distinction between 'garden' and 'not-garden'. In response to this ambiguity, Austen interrogates the notion of the 'boundary' as an essential characteristic of the Roman garden.

This innovative book is the first comprehensive study of ancient Roman gardens to combine literary and archaeological evidence with contemporary space theory. It applies a variety of interdisciplinary methods including access analysis, literary and gender theory to offer a critical framework for interpreting Roman gardens as physical sites and representations. The Roman Garden: Space, Sense, and Society examines how the garden functioned as a conceptual, sensual and physical space in Roman society, and its use as a vehicle of cultural communication. Readers will learn not only about the content and development of the Roman garden, but also how they promoted memories and experiences. It includes a detailed original analysis of garden terminology and concludes with three case studies on the House of Octavius Quartio and the House of the Menander in Pompeii, Pliny’s Tuscan garden, and Caligula’s Horti Lamiani in Rome. Providing both an introduction and an advanced analysis, this is a valuable and original addition to the growing scholarship in ancient gardens and will complement courses on Roman history, landscape archaeology and environmental history.

This innovative book is the first comprehensive study of ancient Roman gardens to combine literary and archaeological evidence with contemporary space theory. It applies a variety of interdisciplinary methods including access analysis, literary and gender theory to offer a critical framework for interpreting Roman gardens as physical sites and representations. The Roman Garden: Space, Sense, and Society examines how the garden functioned as a conceptual, sensual and physical space in Roman society, and its use as a vehicle of cultural communication. Readers will learn not only about the content and development of the Roman garden, but also how they promoted memories and experiences. It includes a detailed original analysis of garden terminology and concludes with three case studies on the House of Octavius Quartio and the House of the Menander in Pompeii, Pliny’s Tuscan garden, and Caligula’s Horti Lamiani in Rome. Providing both an introduction and an advanced analysis, this is a valuable and original addition to the growing scholarship in ancient gardens and will complement courses on Roman history, landscape archaeology and environmental history.

Focusing on the transitional period of the late Republic to the early Principate, Trees in Ancient Rome offers a sustained examination of the deployment of trees in the ancient city, exploring not only the practicalities of their cultivation, but also their symbolic value. The Ruminal fig tree sheltered the she-wolf as she nursed Romulus and Remus and year's later Rome was founded between two groves. As the city grew, neighbourhoods bore the names of groves and hills were known by the trees which grew atop them. From the 1st century BCE, triumphs included trees among their spoils and Rome's green cityscape grew, as did the challenges of finding room for trees within the congested city. This volume begins with an examination of the role of trees as repositories of human memory, lasting for several generations. It goes on to untangle the import of trees, and their role in the triumphal procession, before closing with a discussion of how trees could be grown in Rome's urban spaces. Drawing on a combination of literary, visual and archaeological sources, it reveals the rich variety of trees in evidence, and explores how they impacted, and were used to impact, life in the ancient city.

Ancient Roman Gardens is the first comprehensive account of gardens and gardening in the Roman period, creating a fascinating new dimension to our understanding and appreciation of life and society in ancient Rome, and adding an important chapter to the history of gardening and horticulture. Linda Farrar traces the development of Roman gardens from their humble origins as vegetable patches to the sophisticated forms seen at the height of the Empire. She considers all types of gardens - domestic and public, in town and country, large and small in scale - and her study features evidence from gardens in Italy and from sites throughout the provinces of the Empire. Literature, frescoes, mosaics and extensive archaeological research provide information which is brought together to give a vivid account of the rich variety of Roman gardens. Recent research has revealed much about the garden plants favoured by the Romans, and the text describes how these plants were used - for garlands, to make wines, cordials and foodstuffs, to provide nectar for honeybees. The many architectural features and sculptures so beloved of the Roman gardener are also covered, as are the habits of Roman gardeners, their tools and horticultural techniques. Ancient Roman Gardens will appeal strongly to anyone who has a keen interest in ancient history and archaeology, as well as to classicists and art historians. It will also be fascinating reading for gardeners in general, for landscape gardeners in particular, and for all garden historians. -- Book cover.

This survey explores how and why Romans of the late Republic and early Principate were fascinated with landscaped nature. Thematic discussions and case studies work through what 'landscape' represented and how studying Roman identity in terms of place, environment and the natural world helps us better to understand Rome itself.

"Rome and the Literature of Gardens" explores the garden as a powerful locus of transformation and transgression in the "De Re Rustica" of Columella, the "Satires" of Horace, the "Annals" of Tacitus, and the "Confessions" of Saint Augustine. In keeping with the approach of this series, a concluding chapter examines the reincarnation of these expressions in the contemporary plays "Arcadia" and "The Invention of Love" by Tom Stoppard. Many books on gardens in ancient Rome concentrate on either technical agricultural manuals, or pastoral poetry, or the physical remains of Roman gardens. Instead, this book considers images of gardens from a kaleidoscope of genres, especially those that the Romans made their own: satire, annalistic history, and autobiography. This atypical approach makes a unique contribution to the field of Latin literature and garden history, bridging the gap between material culture and cultural history.