Michael Dewar - Leisured Resistance: Villas, Literature and Politics in the Roman World

Leisured
Resistance

CLASSICAL ESSAYS

Series editor :

Thomas Harrison, University of Liverpool, UK

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CONTENTS

For my brothers

Robert , Stephen and Neil

Leisured
Resistance

Villas, Literature and
Politics in the Roman
World

Michael Dewar

Bloomsbury Academic

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

www.bloomsbury.com

Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published 2014

Michael Dewar, 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

Michael Dewar has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organisation acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-47250-412-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

Aus., Mos . Ausonius, Mosella

Cic., Att . Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum (Letters to Atticus)

Cic., Leg . Cicero, De Legibus (On the Laws)

Cic., Off . Cicero, De Officiis (On Duties)

Cic., Tusc . Cicero, The Tusculan Disputations

Hor., Carm . Horace, Carmina (Poems or Odes)

Hor., Ep . Horace, Epistulae (Letters)

Hor., Sat . Horace, Satires (their traditional name in English, though Horace calls them Sermones, Conversations)

Juv., Sat . Juvenal, Satires

Plin., Nat. Hist. Pliny the Elder, The Natural History

Plin., Ep . Pliny the Younger, Epistulae (Letters)

Plut., Cic . Plutarch, The Life of Cicero

Sal., Cat . Sallust, The Conspiracy of Catiline

Sen., Ep . Seneca the Younger, Epistulae Morales

Sid., Carm . Sidonius Apollinaris, Carmina (Poems)

Sid., Ep . Sidonius Apollinaris, Epistulae (Letters)

Stat., Silv . Statius, Silvae (Woods, with the secondary meaning timber, raw material)

Suet., Aug . Suetonius, The Life of Augustus

Suet., Cal . Suetonius The Life of Gaius Caligula

Suet., Claud . Suetonius, The Life of Claudius

Suet., Dom . Suetonius, The Life of Domitian

Suet., Nero Suetonius, The Life of Nero

Symm., Ep . Symmachus, Epistulae (Letters)

Tac., Ann . Tacitus, Annales (Annals, Year-by-Year Historical Record)

Tac., Hist . Tacitus, Histories

Ven. Fort., Carm . Venantius Fortunatus, Carmina (Poems)

BC

Cicero abandoned by Pompey the Great and exiled from Rome by Clodius

Battle of Pharsalus

Death of Julius Caesar

Death of Cicero

BCAD Reign of Augustus

The first three books of Horaces Carmina complete

c. 20 The first book of Horaces Epistulae complete

AD

1437 Reign of Tiberius

3741 Reign of Gaius Caligula

4154 Reign of Claudius

5468 Reign of Nero

Death of Agrippina the Younger, mother of Nero

Great Fire of Rome

Discovery of the Conspiracy of Piso, and the deaths of Seneca the Younger and Lucan

Death of Nero and end of the JulioClaudian dynasty

Civil war. Reigns of Galba, Otho and Vitellius

6979 Reign of Vespasian

Eruption of Vesuvius, destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and death of Pliny the Elder

7981 Reign of Titus

8196 Reign of Domitian

80c. 102 Martial writes the Liber Spectaculorum and 14 books of other Epigrams

Statius victory at the Alban Games held at Domitians villa (March)

Statius visit to the villa of Pollius Felix (August)

c. 926 Statius writes the Silvae

Reign of Nerva

98117 Reign of Trajan, Best of Princes

Pliny the Younger, appointed consul, delivers the Panegyricus in honour of Trajan

c. 110c. 112 Pliny the Younger governor of Bithynia-Pontus

11738 Reign of Hadrian

Suetonius writes the Lives of the Caesars

c. 110c. 130 Juvenal writes the Satires

c. 114c. 120 Tacitus writes the Annals

36475 Reign of Valentinian I

c. 371 Ausonius writes Mosella

Symmachus writes to his father about Bauli ( Ep . 1. 1)

Ausonius appointed consul by Gratian

Rome sacked by Alaric the Goth

Sidonius Apollinaris appointed Prefect of the City of Rome

c. 469c. 482 Sidonius writes the Epistulae

c. 470 Sidonius consecrated Bishop of Auvergne (with his seat in the city of Clermont)

Clermont captured, after repeated sieges, by Euric, king of the Goths, and Sidonius imprisoned

c. 486 Death of Sidonius

565c. 600 Career of Venantius Fortunatus in Gaul

I am grateful first and foremost to Tom Harrison, who invited me to contribute to the series in which this book appears, and whose kindness, along with his patience, ought to have been rewarded with more timely results. I am similarly grateful for the remarkable patience of Deborah Blake, as also to the anonymous reader who assessed the original proposal for Duckworth and responded to it with great generosity. I continued to enjoy support and professionalism beyond anything I could claim to deserve when the project came under the aegis of Bloomsbury, and I am glad to record my gratitude to Charlotte Loveridge, Dhara Patel, and Matthew Porter. A second anonymous reader made a number of suggestions that have improved the first version, and also merits my thanks for giving me license to put back in some material and items of bibliography that had at first been omitted for the sake of economy. At Fakenham Prepress Solutions Kim Storry and Martyn Oliver have been models of efficiency, taking in their stride not only my wayward orthography but also the risk that the proofs might have been held up by jury duty.

The University of Toronto granted me the sabbatical leave in which the bulk of the necessary preparation and the reading was done. Alison Keith spoke some much-needed words of good sense and encouragement when I had begun to think I would have to give up. Further welcome reassurance came from Damien Nelis, who kindly read the first and last chapters. To Valry Berlincourt and Manuela Wullschleger I owe some precious bibliographical and archaeological information. My thanks to them all.

Cicero and Pliny could find refuge from their daily cares in the luxurious villas they owned in the hills and along the coasts of Italy and Gaul. I have often found some refuge from my own daily cares much closer to home, at the Bishop and the Belcher on Bloor Street East, Toronto; only the friendly and ever-welcoming owners and staff can guess how much of this book was conceived, and how much of its wording was crafted, at Table Nine. My other places of refuge in recent years have been a house on the campus of Keele University and an apartment complex near the Parque Eduardo VII in Lisbon; to Sarah Graham, Jonathan Healey, and Freddie, and to Edgardo Medeiros da Silva, I am indebted for all the gifts that friendship brings and, indeed, for more than half my happiness.