Roman Landscape: Culture and Identity

This survey explores how and why Romans of the late Republic and early Principate were fascinated with landscaped nature.

Diana Spencer (Author)

9781107400245, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 24 February 2011

256 pages
23.5 x 15.5 x 1.1 cm, 0.38 kg

"The book is well made, with useful illustrations, and attractively priced." --BMCR

This book tackles how and why 'landscape' (farms, gardens, countryside) set the scene in the first centuries BCE and CE for Romans keen to talk up and about (but also to scrutinize and understand) what it meant to be a citizen. It investigates what 'landscape' means now and reflects upon how contemporary approaches to 'landscape' can enrich our understanding of ancient experience of the interface between natural and artificial space. It encourages examination of 'landscape' from a range of angles, suggesting alternative ways of thinking about what landscape represents. These methodological approaches (presented initially via a set of key terms and definitions and then deployed thematically across four chapters), combined with a detailed interdisciplinary bibliography and a series of case studies of literary texts and material sites, enable readers to use this survey as a starting point for developing their own in-depth study.

1. Introduction: surveying the scene
2. Landscape and aesthetics
3. Those happy fields: aborious landscapes and DIY self-help
4. Landscape: time and motion
5. Italy and the villa estate, or, of cabbages and kings
5.1. Philosophical landscapes: Cicero, loca, and imagines
5.2. Varro's exopolis: landscape and Italy
5.3. Columella: landscape and the body of history
5.4. Statius, landscape, and autarky: between authenticity and delight
5.5. Ekphrasis: Pliny's artful landscapes
6. Spaces and Places
6.1. Landscape as background and foreground
6.2. Landscape and scale: gardens
6.3. Imagined landscapes: the Villa 'Farnesina'
6.4. Total immersion: Livia's garden room (Villa ad Gallinas Albas, Prima Porta)
6.5. Landscapes encircling the city: the Horti Sallustiani and Porticus of Pompey
Envoi. Getting (away from) it all at Hadrian's villa
Bibliography
Webography.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA], History of art: ancient & classical art,BCE to c 500 CE [ACG]