This book examines the varied ways in which some cultured Roman aristocrats, of very different periods, used their country estates as retreats in which to compose literature and to escape from politics, while others adapted that same tradition of otium (‘cultured leisure’) to present radical and competing visions of society and literature alike. The first three chapters concentrate on material in both prose and verse from the time of Cicero to the last centuries of the Roman Empire in the west. A fourth chapter shows the adaptation of this tradition to the greatly changed world of the barbarian-ruled kingdoms that replaced direct Roman rule in Gaul in the 5th and 6th centuries, and a brief epilogue examines the use made of the classical tradition of villa-poetry by panegyrical poets in Rome in the early 16th century.

Michael Dewar is Professor of Classics at the University of Toronto.