The title of this book, Leisured Resistance, represents D.'s interpretative view of the life of political disengagement that Cicero describes himself as leading in the prefatory passages of De officiis 3. That the place of his withdrawal is a villa, we may infer from pointed contrast with the retirement of Scipio Africanus and the description of his solitary perambulations of the countryside. Allusions to otium (leisure) permeate Cicero's paragraphs, but without specific mention of resistance which is rather D.'s construction of his activity in writing philosophical treatises to maintain his sense of civic engagement and in reaction against the alienating climate of dictatorship Rome.
Versions of intellectual activity emerge as the dominant theme of this study which in its coverage of over six centuries characterises the villa as an invigorating alternative to public life for the Roman elite. In this D. argues against what he considers P. Zanker's misleading and defamatory treatment of villa life as a ‘self-indulgent escape from the repressive puritanical ethic of ancestral mos maiorum … frivolous and marked by vulgar display’ (P. Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus [1988]) a view that in D.'s opinion has ‘more the look of caricature than of sober historical assessment’. Although allowing that the architecture and furnishings of villas were generally luxurious, the life lived within them was not decadent but rather a refreshment of energies and literary inspiration for the weary urban dweller. Additionally some villas, as here presented, did witness active moments of historical significance such as the murder of Agrippina at Bauli, the genesis of the Pisonian conspiracy against Nero, the imperially mandated suicide of Seneca – all events pertinent to the theme of resistance. Although Domitian's Alban festival of poetry might have claims to belong within the intellectual category, Juvenal's scathing fourth satire shows this overblown emperor as receiving the delivery of a turbot so large as to require an imperial council and the construction of a special baking dish.
The book is organised in five chapters extending from Cicero's time to the Gaul of the fourth to the sixth centuries. As announced by chapter titles their succession is chronological (Cicero, Martial, Pliny, Juvenal, late-antique Gaul), but each chapter takes more than half its content to settle into its declared subject. So ‘Cicero and the Generals’ begins with brief notice of interaction between Pompey and Cicero and the latter's unsuccessful visit to Pompey's Alban villa retreat in search of support at the moment of his persecution by Publius Clodius. But then the thread of the discussion weaves its way through Horace, Maecenas, Tibur, Nero, Bauli, Agrippina, Antonia, Symmachus, Piso Caesonius with Philodemus and the Villa of the Papiri before finally doubling back to Cicero himself. Other chapters are similarly composed. Martial and Statius devotes half its space to Nero before coming to Martial by way of his friend Julius Martialis' suburban villa, located actually not on Monte Mario but rather, as the poem itself says, much closer to the heart of the city on the ridge of the Janiculum where we now walk on the Passeggiata del Gianicolo, on the very site of the Villa Lante, the present day Finnish Academy. Between them the prefatory segments of chapters on Martial and on Juvenal share extensive discussion of the most notorious urban villa, Nero's Domus Aurea. Pliny's chapter begins with an excursus on Seneca, the philosophical life and his castigation of the rich man Servilius Vatia taking refuge in a secluded villa near the Cumean shoreline when Sejanus was inciting terror in Rome. No chapter explicitly is given to the Augustan period although Horace's Sabine property figures in several of the chapter preliminaries.
Pliny is really the poster boy of the study. ‘Worn out by a thousand labors’ he is the perfect example of the overworked civic official who needs and deserves respite from the round of his urban activities and responsibilities on behalf of his literary pursuits, although he does not regard his properties merely as retreats but also as active investments in agricultural enterprise. Also in company with Statius' descriptive poems in the Silvae, Pliny brings us closest to the physical actuality of the villa in letters detailing the spatial configuration of two residences, their relationship to their natural landscapes and employment of spaces for study and recreation although D. overshadows the actual material aspects of these villas with discussion of Pliny's relationship to his civic life. Supplementary glimpses of extra-urban residences are afforded by Pliny's letters to villa owning correspondents, most notably his long-standing friend in Como Caninius Rufus, less burdened by responsibilities and better able to enjoy the pleasures of the locale, although Pliny is constantly urging him to be more like himself in the area of literary endeavour. Unlike Seneca Pliny has the advantage of life under a benign emperor. Pliny idealises Trajan, and on his own home territory imitates him, in the manner of a little emperor. D. in turn idealises Pliny, whose ‘polished and careful, yet intimate and humane Latin … is in keeping with the image of the Roman gentleman who can expertly balance hierarchy with familiarity and freedom with service’. Pliny's letters also provide occasion for discussion of the almost invisible ministry of slaves in the villa, although his farms do not, as D. insinuates, employ chained gangs of workers housed in dungeons. In letter 3.19 he explicitly denies such a practice.
With their decorative busts of Roman emperors, villas in Southern Gaul suggest the loyal identification of the Gallo-Roman elite with the new order. The final chapter views their culture through the eyes of poets and letter writers ranging from the descriptive Moselle of Ausonius to Fortunatus' praises of Leontinus, Bishop of Clermont. These writers knew their classical predecessors well and especially in Apollinaris Sidonius we can see imitation of Pliny and intertextuality with Statius which do afford some glimpses of their subjects' physical installations and landscape. When politics enters it is that of the church. Finally in sixth-century Gaul, when the imperial capital has long deserted a broken frontier and prosperity is in decline, still a few persons are maintaining fine libraries and bathing complexes even when some villa establishments have undergone conversion into church property.
Because the study is literary not archaeological, we would not expect ground plans, yet with the exception of Statius' descriptive poems, we find little sense of what a villa might look like in its interior spaces. The Villa of the Papiri enjoys a colonnade and sea view, but what of its two peristyles and abundant statuary? One aspect missing from the study is the extensive notice given to the agricultural productivity of villas by such scholars as J. D'Arms and N. Purcell, who have argued that even so-called ‘luxury’ villas had investments in one or another form of production. Pliny's letters are full of references to his vineyards and grape harvests, and vineyards also cover the Sorrentine cliffs where Pollius' villa stands. Scarcely any mention is made of Varro in his combination of agricultural productivity with landscape aesthetics.
Notes are minimal. In place of a bibliography there is an appendix of ‘further readings’ chapter by chapter. Among these, the suggestions for Cicero lack any evidence of the florescence of studies on his villa-based dialogues during the past decade The omission may seem unsurprising in view of D.'s earlier and misleading statement that Cicero's reputation has been in decline. Other sections, especially that on Pliny, are more up to date. As an introduction to its subject, the study avoids the pitfalls of misrepresentation in its insistence on the moral integrity of villa ownership, but contains much material that will be familiar to the general student of Roman culture; however, any person unfamiliar with historical outlines may be puzzled by the chronological time warp of the chapter prefaces.
