"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.

"Beginning with Cicero and Varro and ending with Statius and Pliny the Younger, this chapter offers a chronological investigation of the ways in which real and literary gardens developed from the first century BCE to the first century CE as a means of elite masculine self-representation and the reactions of elite Roman men to the increased social and cultural power of villa and horti estates and their grounds. Gardens served as powerful symbols of wealth and as creative displays of the cultural aspirations of their owners in ways that challenged traditional definitions of gardens and of Roman manliness. Since these large-scale 'gardens' are primarily associated with leisure (otium), authors are concerned with describing and justifying their activities in these sites as befitting Roman masculine ideals. We can trace a change in attitude towards leisure and the private display of wealth, and consequently gardens, largely attributed to changes in the socio-political circumstances of the Roman elite, in the works of Statius and his contemporary Pliny the Younger, who use laudatory descriptions of extensive villas and grounds as a means of expressing social and literary power"--

John Henderson brings together Latin texts which teach and celebrate herb and vegetable gardening in verse and prose - the only current book on the practice of Roman gardening.

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.

Comprising ten papers which critically examine the field of garden history, presented at the twenty-first Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture. Topics include changes in approaches to garden history and architectural studies over time and new historical investigations and discoveries in Italian and Mughal gardens. Good