The Different Ways in Which Roman Villa-Owners Spent Their Leisure - Case Study Example

The different ways in which Roman villa-owners spent their leisure reflect different ideas about its value and purpose The ancient Romans had many different philosophical ideas about life. One which is particularly interesting, and which can be seen reflected in how Romans lived, is the idea of leisure. There were conflicting ideas about leisure in the ancient world, with some Greek philosophers thinking that it was good for one reason and others arguing that it was actually quite a different reason that made leisure important. More importantly, we can understand these ideas by looking not only at what the Greeks and Romans wrote but at how they spent their free time in their own homes. Evidence about this is available to us both through Roman literature and what we know about how Roman villas were constructed. Although some of this evidence might be questionable, it can still give us important clues into how Roman villa-owners spent their leisure time, which can in turn show us the different ideas about the value and purpose of leisure in ancient Rome and how they continued to affect society long into modern times. Two philosophers who had important ideas about what leisure meant, how to use it, and who should have it were Aristotle and Epicurus. Aristotle was probably Plato’s most famous student of philosophy, who went on to become a philosopher in his own right. Two of Aristotle’s works which deal with questions of leisure are “the Politics and the Nichomachean Ethics” (Price 2008, p11). In these two works, Aristotle tries to answer questions about leisure that ultimately lead him to ask “a rather different question: what is it to be an excellent human being?” (Price 2008, p13). The reason Aristotle was interested in this question is because he had somewhat unusual views about leisure. He believed that “leisure and well-being are intimately connected: living well involves having plenty of leisure, and using it in the best possible way” (Price 2008, p12). Today, most people would probably say that leisure was just what you do after you’re finished working, but Aristotle did not agree with that either. When he talked about leisure, he did not mean just lying around and relaxing, doing nothing. Instead, he used it to mean “the pursuit of activities that we value for their own sake” (Price 2008, p12). More importantly, Aristotle did not just mean any activity at all. Instead, he wanted the activities to be those which made excellent human beings. So for Aristotle, leisure was pursuing excellence for its own sake, instead of for some other purpose. Of course, being a privileged philosopher, he also had an interesting idea of what was excellence. He believed that rational behaviour was the most important thing, and argued that “when people engage in … intellectual reflection … they are wholly at leisure, exercising reason for its own sake and realising human nature at its highest and best” (Price 2008, p16). However, there are some serious problems with Aristotle’s ideas about leisure. For one thing, he did not think everybody should be able to practice it, because “only a small number of people will be able to live the best kind of life and to make the fullest use of their leisure” (Price 2008, p16). He had no problem with slavery, and basically thought that people who were slaves deserved it because they were not excellent people and could not think rationally. He was also against women, because they were incapable of being properly rational according to Aristotle. Even men, who are supposedly “capable of using their reason to the fullest extent” do not always “receive the kind of education that will allow them to do so” (Price 2008, p16). However, even if we set aside Aristotle’s obviously faulty ideas about people, we can still “accept what he has to say about the importance of leisure and about the value of intellectual activity in human life,” especially as a way of understanding Greek and Roman thought (Price 2008, p17). Not all Greeks felt the same way about leisure, though. Epicurus, another philosopher, around the same time, was arguing against Aristotle’s ideas about who could lead this supposed best life. He thought “the objective could be achieved by anyone, regardless of gender or social class” (Price 2008, p19). Furthermore, Epicurus had a different idea about the purpose of life. He believed that “the objective of human life is not reason but pleasure, which he conceives as a state of mental and physical tranquillity” (Price 2008, p22). Although reason was still important to him, it was not “valuable for its own sake” like it was for Aristotle (Price 2008, p22). This makes sense with Epicurus’ beliefs that anybody can achieve excellence in their life. By making tranquillity and simplicity more important, he assured that everybody, even slaves, could be happy. Although Epicurus still believed leisure was very important, but “his reasons for taking that view are very different from Aristotle’s” (Price 2008, p23). For Aristotle, leisure through reasoning and intellectual thought was the whole point of life. Epicurus, on the other hand, only saw leisure as important because it could lead to a more satisfyingly complete existence. Epicurus suggested a few more ways to be at leisure than Aristotle, too, ranging from “simple pleasures” like “a conversation with friends” to “philosophical activity” which can “counteract mistaken beliefs that create anxiety and frustration in people’s lives” (Price 2008, p23). Even though both philosophers had different thoughts about how people should approach leisure, both clearly thought it was a good thing to approach. These differing views, which came from Greek philosophers, were carried over into Roman societies as well. Although ancient Rome flourished almost two thousand years ago, we can still know how things were done there by a study of literature and archaeology from the time, and from histories published during and after the empire collapsed. Literature, for instance, provides us with “pictures of different styles of villa life―from the nostalgically simple, to the hedonistically luxurious, to the well-run country estate” (James 2008, p67). Ironically, Aristotle and Epicurus would probably both fall into the first category, or maybe the last. The second category James names is more like what people thought Epicurus meant by talking about pleasure, as he complained about being “sometimes misrepresented as recommending a life of excess and debauchery” (Price 2008, p23). Literature is not the only way to learn about the past. Archaeology and the art that has been found in Roman Villas offer “some answers to these questions” and since “there are many archaeological remains,” we have different answers too (Huskinson 2008, p74). It is important to note, though, that even though literature and archaeology can paint us good pictures of how life was in Roman times, we can never know for sure. Literary works are often just an “idealised lifestyle” which may not be factual (Huskinson 2008, p74). Even archaeology is not foolproof. Since so many Roman buildings have “failed to survive … we can only get a partial picture” from looking at their ruins (Huskinson 2008, p75). The surviving evidence we do have may also be skewed―Huskinson notes that villa ruins tend to “privilege the wealth, whose lifestyle left more enduring traces” (2008, p75). Slaves and poorer classes of Roman citizens did not leave as much evidence, and so we will know less about how they used their leisure time. While these shortfalls with archaeology and literature’s methods of gathering information need to be kept in mind, they do not mean it is impossible for us to get any information about how people lived in Roman times, and how they viewed the concept of leisure. By looking at some of the surviving archaeological evidence, and some of the literature about leisure, we can learn how wealthy villa owners―if not necessarily all classes of Romans―spent their leisure time, and what it meant to them. Two examples of villas which can tell us some of the differences in the Roman period are the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, and the villa of Pliny, a Roman historian. Interestingly, the leisurely lifestyle of villa owners extended even into eighteenth-century England. Thus, even a look at how Lord Burlington’s house in the 17th century can tell us about ancient Rome. Art plays a big role in telling us how people viewed leisure in ancient times. This is partly because art, and especially sculpture, is more likely to survive the ravages of time and still be around for us to look at today. Sculpture was usually chosen to “decorate rooms dedicated to the intellectual aspects of leisure, such as reading or study” (Huskinson 2008, p79). For instance, the Villa of the Papyri had many different types of statues, all intellectual in subject matter. They even had a bust of Epicurus, “particularly appropriate because the villa housed a specialist library of texts relating to Epicurian philosophy” (Huskinson 2008, p79). We can imagine from this circumstance that the villa-owners of this particular villa believed in the teachings of Epicurus as regards leisure: that life’s pleasures are simple ones and best viewed as a way to relax and throw off anger. Pliny was the nephew of Pliny the Elder, a wealthy author, and Pliny himself was “a very privileged man” who “left a very fascinating record of his life and times” (Huskinson 2008 p72). Pliny had at least two villas, and obviously took a lot of care to go to them when he could. He was probably of a different mind about leisure than the owner of the Villa of the Papyri, as he liked to get away “to concentrate on intellectual pursuits” but took “great pride” in his villas (Huskinson 2008 p72). Pliny very much saw himself as an important intellectual, even revising his letters for publication (Huskinson 2008 p72) so it seems more likely that he followed Aristotles ideas of intellectual thought for its own sake. Interestingly, though, Pliny tied it to politics like many aristocrats of his time who liked intellectual thought because it “distinguished them from the common herd,” (Huskinson 2008 p72) something that sounds like it goes against Aristotles idea of intellectual reflection for its own sake. What is interesting about Pliny is the fact that nobody has ever found the actual villa he is talking about, and some people are not even sure it is real, but think it is “a complete fiction” (Huskinson 2008 p83). Despite this, the Romans lengthy description of his Laurentum villa has “inspired” architects and the rich to use his description “as an ideal template for houses of their own” (Huskinson 2008 p82). One example is Lord Burlington, a “great patron of the arts and a classic scholar” who lived in the 17th century (Huskinson 2008 p83). He built an addition to his house that was based on the villa model, and he even intended it to be “a place for cultural leisure-time pursuits” (Huskinson 2008 p84). Since he was largely inspired by Pliny, we can imagine that he perhaps followed the Aristotelian ideas about leisure. The fact that villas were idealised long into modern times shows us the great long-lasting power of the ideas of leisure brought about in ancient Greece and Rome. However, it is important to accept the reality that these ideas are not a complete view of society in ancient times. Much of the literature and architecture that exists about villas was intended “to create images which would reflect a somewhat exclusive world back to its participants to enjoy” (Huskinson 2008 p84). Even though this is true, both types of evidence can show us about ideal forms of leisure in the ancient world. It can be seen from examining the evidence that the ways villas were built, and how they were used, reflects the ideas of philosophers like Aristotle and Epicurus, who wrote about leisure among other topics. Bibliography Huskinson, J., & James, P., 2008. Leisure in the Roman Villa in AA100 Book 4, Place and Leisure. Milton Keynes: The Open University, pp 64-98. Price, C., 2008. Leisure and the Purpose of Life in AA100 Book 4, Place and Leisure. Milton Keynes: The Open University, pp 2-34. Read More