Analysing the Boundaries of the Ancient Roman Garden: (Re)Framing the Hortus (Ancient Environments)

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.. Cover 1 Halftitle page 2 Series page 3 Title page 4 Copyright page 5 Contents 6 Figures 7 Acknowledgements 9 Preface 12 Introduction: Defining Garden Space 14 The garden as a bounded space 14 The garden as a microcosm of the ideal landscape 16 Ambiguous edges? 18 1 Setting the Framework 24 The terminology of Roman gardens 25 Issues with categorization 31 Garden boundaries – or frames? 37 2 Who Has the Time? Virgil, Columella and Hortus Poetry 42 Entering the garden space in Virgil, Georgics 4.116–48 43 Virgil’s preoccupation with time 47 The significance of the old man 51 Cyclical patterns of time in Virgil’s garden 54 Time and land ownership 57 Columella’s agricolatio 60 A paratextual approach 61 Introducing the cultus hortorum 63 Virgil’s heir 65 The hortus as supplement 70 3 Augustus’ Garden Room? Re-Framing the Ara Pacis Augustae 74 A botanic mythology 77 The Ara Pacis Augustae 81 Figure vs. ornament 87 Livia’s Garden Room 90 Garden imagery as Augustan ‘propaganda 94 Hyperfertile abundance and contained profusion 100 Ambiguous structures 106 Gardens and sacred groves – the Ara Pacis as lucus 111 4 Distinguit et Miscet : Framing Roman Villa Gardens 116 Seeing and reading the villa 120 Pliny, the framed view and ‘artificial nature’ 127 Visual openness vs. spatial segregation 130 Blurred lines 137 Challenging perspectives 144 Conclusion: Seneca’s Thyestes and the Anti-Garden 154 Notes 164 Bibliography 198 Index Locorum 220 Index 222 List of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction: Defining Garden Space Chapter 1: Setting the Framework Chapter 2: Who has the time? Virgil, Columella, and Hortus Poetry Chapter 3: Augustus' Garden Room? Re-Framing the Ara Pacis Augustae Chapter 4: Distinguit et Miscet: Framing Roman Villa Gardens Conclusion: Seneca's Thyestes and the Anti-Garden Notes Bibliography Index.