Renaissance Studies Val. 4 No. I

Leisure and idleness in the Renaissance: the ambivalence of otium

BRIAN VICKERS

Scholars are ashamed of otium. But there is something noble about leisure and idleness. - If idleness really is the beginning of all vice, then it is at any rate in the closest proximity to all virtue; the idle man is always a better man than the active. - But when I speak of leisure and idleness, you do not think I am alluding to you, do you, you sluggards? -

Nietzsche I

From some modern accounts of seventeenth-century poetry one could im- agine that otium was an unqualified good. Taken to mean peace, quiet or leisure, it is seen as an entirely suitable goal for human life, a legit- imate retirement from the strains and stresses of politics and business. A striking example of this version of the word and its implications is provided by critical discussions of Marvells poem The Garden, a short lyric of nine stanzas in which the speaker rejects all forms of activity in the world in favour of the solitary pleasures of the retired life, in a garden. Twentieth- century critics, many of whom also identify Marvell with the persona of the poem, frequently see The Garden as a typical retirement poem (Tillyard), expressing the Roman love of retirement (Hunt), forming the most memorable English expression of Horatian retired leisure (OLoughlin), the most imaginative celebration of the values of retire- ment (Lord 1967). The poem celebrates the delights of rural retire- ment (Lord 1979), endorsing the superiority of the contemplative life, as recommended by the ancient philosophers, especially Aristotle (Leishman), or Plotinus (Norford). To some critics it emulates Horaces love of otium and umbra (Coolidge), or a Horatian-Epicurean preference for otium (Potter).

Other writers prefer to see in the poem a Christianized otium, following the example of the Polish neo-Latin poet Sarbiewski (R&tvig), with Marvell portraying the progress of a soul from the quest for the pagan paradise of pastoral otium and contemplation, to the quest for the lost Eden (Cullen). Endorsing the values expressed in the poem necessarily

An earlier, and much shorter version of this essay, was the Annual Lecture of the Society for

Nietzsche, Memchliches, Allzumemchlzches. 1.284, Zu Gunsten der Mussigen, in Friedrich ) II (1967). 132.

Renaissance Studies, on 29 January 1988. I t is dedicated to Paul Oskar Kristeller.

Nietzsche, Samtlzche Werke, ed. G . Colli and M. Montinari (15 vols, Berlin, 1967-

@ 1990 The Society for Renaissance Studies, Oxford University Press

2 Brian Vickers

implies approving of the persona who represents them, enjoying the easy life of the green world (Berger); engaged in a contemplative activity which balances the passivity of the body (Hyman); and excluding women from his state of innocence (Kermode). When Marvell wrote poetry on public affairs, and indeed prose satire, before and after The Garden, critics find these works rather philistine and ill-informed, expressing the later seventeenth-centurys excessive preoccupation with man in his political and social capacity, the poetry suffering from the constricting and dehumanising influence of party politics (Leishman). They agree that the life of political action and political satire brought a coarsening of sensibility (Lord 1968), a dissociated or excessively limited sensibility (Lord 1967), a phase in which Marvell even came to see literature in more negative terms [sic!], as a weapon, as an aid to action (Rivers).*

To anyone concerned with history and the recovery of the past such judgements seem a total inversion of the true meaning of otium, umbra and the related concepts, labor and virtus. To take the last point first, many defences of literature - whether poetry, oratory or historiography - in classical and Renaissance times were premissed on the writers role in supporting moral values in society, attacking vice, celebrating virtue. This is the justification for epideictic rhetoric, from Plato to the Renais- sance; for poetry, from Ciceros Pro Archia to Sidneys Apology for Poetry; and for historiography, from Sallust to Milton, at least. In the lapidary and self-assured words of Ben Jonson,

Although to write be lesser than to doo, It is the next deed, and a great one too.

Throughout this tradition human worth was evaluated in terms of the degree, and success of ones involvement in society, for the public good.

The works cited here, in sequence, are: E. M. W. Tillyard, Some Mythical Elements in English Lzterature (London, 1961), 82; John Dixon Hunt, Andrew Maruell. His LzJe and Writings (London, 1978), 48; Michael OLoughlin, The Garlands of Repose. The Literary Celebration oJ Cmic and Retired Leisure (Chicago. 1978), 121-2; George de F. Lord, From contemplation to action: Marvells poetical career, in Lord (ed.) Andrew Maruell. A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1968), 55-73, at p. 57 (first published in Philological Quarterly, 1967); George d r F. Lord, Innocrnce and experience in the poetry of Andrew Marvell, Br L ibrJ , 5 (1979), 129-50, at p. 131; J. B. Leishman, The Art qf.MarueZls Poetry (London, 1968), 303-4, 308; Don P. Norford. Marvell and the arts of contemplation and action, ELH, 41 (1974), 50-73, at p. 54; John S. Coolidge, Marvell and Horace, Mod Philol, 63 (1965), 111-20, at p. 117; John M. Potter, Another porker in the Garden of Epicurus. Marvells Hortus and The Garden, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 11 (1971), 137-51, at pp. 140-1; Maren-Sofie Rglstvig, The Happy Man. Studies in the Metamorphosis of a Classical Ideal, Vol. I : 1600-1 700, 2nd, rev. ed. (Oslo, 1962). 75-80, and passim; Patrick Cullen, Spenser, Maruell and Renazssance Pastoral (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 155: Harry Berger, Marvells Garden: still another interpretation, Mod Lung 4, 28 (1967), 285-304, at p . 286; Lawrence V. Hyman, Andrew Marvel1 (New York, 1964), 72; Frank Kermode, The argument of Marvells Garden, Essays Crit, 2 (1952), 225-41, at pp. 296, 303; Leishman, op. cz t . , 20-2; Lord, op. cit. (1968), Introduction, 8; Lord, op. cit. (1967), 55; Isabel Rivers, The Poetry of Conservatism, 1600-1745 (Cambridge, 1973), 102.

Jonson, Epzrammes, XW. To Sir Henrie Savile, 11. 25-6; The Complete Poetry of Ben Jonson, ed. W. B. Hunter, Jr (Garden City. NY, 1963).

Leisure and idleness: the ambivalence of otium 3

While Christian contemplation provided a legitimate way of life, it was always in danger of being scorned by the vita activa, and its defendants took care not to present the Christian as a being isolated from family or society - indeed, the whole concepts of charity and the reciprocal exercise of social and religious duties prevented any such i~olat ion.~ The persona in The Garden, judged by these criteria, is guilty of hedonism, selfish- ness and the arrogant rejection of Gods will. His otium is anything but admirable, and stands in sharp contrast to Marvells thirty years of public service, as Latin Secretary, MP for Hull, representative of the Trinity House and confidential agent for two administrations.

I

Marvells critics express a generally shared misconception of otzum, which may derive from the tendency in modern times to translate it with such innocent, indeed to us admirable words as leisure, or retirement. At some point in history the negative associations almost vanished from view, although otiose in the sense of idle or superfluous is still with us. Modern dictionaries are not always a reliable guide, the new Oxford Latin Dictionary, for instance, giving a generally favourable impression of otzum as meaning free time, vacant time.6 Yet in the majority of classical uses, and in very many medieval and Renaissance contexts,

On the active and contemplative lives in the Renaissance see, e.g., H. Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance. Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in the Age of Classicism and Tryanny, rev. vol. I (Princeton, NJ, 1966); E. F. Rice, The Renaissance Idea of Wisdom (Cam- bridge, Mass., 1958); C. Trinkaus, Adversitys Noblemen. The Italian Humanists on Happiness (New York, 1940); F. Caspari, Humanism and the Social Order in Tudor England (Chicago, 1954); B. Vickers (ed.), Arbeit, Musse, Meditation. Betrachtungen zur Vita activa und Vita contemplatim (Zurich, 1985), especially the contributions by P. 0. Kristeller, Victoria Kahn and Letizia Panizza. Some useful doctoral dissertations include C. A. L. Jarrott, The English humanists use of Ciceros De officiis in their evaluation of active and contemplative life (Stanford University, 1954: University Microfilms no. 54-9,500); J. J . Cogan, For contemplation hee and valor formd: the dichotomy of the active and the contemplative lives in John Miltons Paradise Lost, Parudise Regained, and Sam- son Agonzstes (Marquette University, 1976; U. M. no. 76-21,472); F. E. Nicola, The active and the speculative modes of life in classical antiquity and in the quattrocento humanists (University of California, Berkeley, 1976; U.M. no. 77-15,689).

For corrective criticism to the notion of Marvell as apolitical see, e.g., Caroline Robbins, A critical study of the political activities of Andrew Marvell, Ph.D. diss. (London University, 1926); Dona1 Smith, The political beliefs of Andrew Marvell, U Toronto Q, 36 (1966-7), 528-40; John M. Wallace, Destiny His Choice: The Loyalism of Andrew Marvell (Cambridge, 1968); Annabel Patter- son, Marvell and the Civic Crown (Princeton, NJ, 1978); Hilton Kelliher, Andrew Maruell, Poet B Politician 1621-78, British Library Tercentenary Exhibition Catalogue (London, 1978); and Warren L. Chernaik, The Poets Time: Politics and Religion in the Work of Andrew Marvell (Cambridge, 1983).

Oxford Latin Dictionary, ed. P. G. W. Glare (Oxford, 1982), 1 1 , 1277-8. The otium entry distinguishes ti main senses, (1) unoccupied or spare time; (2) freedom from business or work, leisure; (3) relaxation from pain, toil, etc; (4) public peace and tranquillity; (5) the state of doing nothing: inactivity; idleness; also, leisureliness; ( 6 ) a temporary cessation, respite. This is to give an anachronistic, modern interpretation, based on our notion of leisure. The entry for otiosus similarly downplays the pejorative associations.

4 Brian Vickers

o t i u m has largely negative associations, only removed by some specially qualifying epithet or noun-phrase. Now that the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae has reached the letter 0, with an excellent entry on o t i u m (by Eva Baer) running to some twelve columns, we have an authoritative record of its range of meanings, both positive and negative. T h e main heading defines the conception as I. usu originario de quolibet statu quieto, vacuo, which is then divided into A. animantium (the major entry) and B. rerum. A. is then subdivided into (1) hominum; (2) numinum d imnorum et diaboli; (3) animalium. For human beings there are two main sense-groupings, the first being: a potius negatur actio, fere i. q . vacatio, cessatio a b actionibus, occupationibus, negotiis sim.; . quolibet respectu: (1) exempla varia selecta . . .; . certo quodam res- pectu. Then follows this division:

I spectat ad desidiam, luxuriam, &am commodam sim. (fere cum vituperatione dicitur . . .). (A) quorumlibet (exempla selecta . . .). (B) amantium: (1) respicitur desidia, ex qua homines amore capiuntur (sec. opinionem com- munem, quod homo desidiosus amore capiatur . . .). (2) respicitur inertia eorum, qui amore abstinent: comparatur amans cum milite . . . spectat ad statum nondum nuptae. . . . (C) militum (. . . hic illic subauditur doctrina quae pacem hominibus nocentem vitandam monet . . .).

(A) de qualibet vacatione (fere studiorum, artium sim. causa). ( 1 ) quorumlibet . . . (2) philosophorum, philosophiae deditorum (3) poetarum . . . (B) de missione sive temporali sive perpetua, a militia vel ab aliis ministeriis.

111 spectat ad ferias, dies festos sim. (A) paganorum (B) ludaeorum, Christianorum

IV spectat ad vitam contemplativam, abstinentem sim. (A) apud paganos (B) apud Christianos.

I1 spectat ad statum a publicis officiis, negotiis liberum:

T h e second sense-grouping sees o t i u m in more favourable terms, in opposition to war and other public disturbance:

b potius negatur perturbatio, fere i.q. quies, securitas, tranquillitas sim. . de statu securo rei publicae, pace externa vel domestica. . de quolibet statu securo, placido, tranquillo, qui praebetur: I variis condicionibus I1 locis tranquillis, abditis

Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, IX, 2, fasc. viii (Leipzig, 1981), cols 1175-87. Older studies that have been superseded by the Thesaurus entry include Ernst Bernert, Otium, Wurzburger Jahrbucher fur die Altertumwissenschaft, 4 (1949-50), 89-99; W. A. Laidlaw, Otium, Greece d Rome, 15 (1968), 42-52. Fritz Schalks study, however, Otzurn im Romanischen, repr. in Vickers (ed.), Arbeit, Musse, Meditation, 225-56, valuably documents the diffusion of both meanings, favourable and (especially) pejorative, into French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

Leisure and idleness: the ambivalence of otium

The second main heading is of things connected with otium:

5

rerum (sc. quibus ipsis motus quidam vel actio tribuitur; certiora quaedam attulimus; hic illic etiam cum contemptu dictum): 1 . in usum hominum adhibitarum: a. instrumenti vice fungentium; b. aliarum. 2. ad ipsos homines pertinentium: a. corporis, membrorum sim. 3. rerum naturalium: a. venti, maris sim. de malacia (in comparatione maris et animi); b. stellarum, lucis. . . .

Further uses are distinguished, in connection with the tropes metonymy (of places; poetry; men), and prosopopoeia, while the final heading analyses grammatical and syntactical usages.

This account of the spread of meanings of otium, based on more than a thousand instances, is strikingly different from other dictionary entries in giving priority to the pejorative associations. Otium is to be understood most frequently in opposition to the active life expected of a Roman citizen, when it connotes idleness, luxury, the easy life in a context where the mark of the good man is to be active, and is therefore treated with vituperation. Two classes of mankind are seen as particularly prone to these harmful states, lovers and soldiers. Only secondarily is otium seen as the state of being free from public business, and examination of the passages will show how carefully the term needs to be qualified in order to avoid negative associations. In Latin otium is not usually opposed to negotium, as many modern writers evidently believe, but to officium or ~ c c u p a t i o n e s . ~ The findings of the Thesaurus will be confirmed if we leave the synchronic treatment of a dictionary for the diachronic ap- proach of a historian, Jean-Marie Andre, who has explored the semantics of otium across three centuries of Latin literature. l o Where some writers take otium as a translation of the Greek schole, the two concepts are in fact very different. In classical Greece schole, leisure, had mainly positive connotations. In Plato and Aristotle it is an acceptable state of life for the educated elite on whom their philosophy is based, and could be seen as a

The text cited here, Seneca, Epist., 67.14: in otio inconcusso iacere non est tranquillitas: malacia est, is disputed (unnecessarily, in my view, given the metaphor of a calm or dead sea with which Seneca begins), some scholars reading malitia.

Bernert, Otium, 89 note: auch der Gegensatz zu otiosus [ist] niemals negotzosus, sondern occupatw . . ..

lo Andres first publication in this field was Recherches sur lotzum Romazn (Paris, 1962 = Annales Littdraires de lllniversitd de Besanpn, vol. 52), of which the first section (pp. 5-25) discusses Les origines de Iotium: conjectures itymologiques et rialitis simantiques, and the second (pp. 27-81), Otium, retraite et conversion 2 la sagesse chez Sineque. His major study is Lotium duns la vie morale et intellectuelle romaine des origines a ldpoque augustdenne (Paris, 1966). Other relevant publications are Lotzum chez Valere-Maxime et Velleius Paterculus . . ., Rev Etud L, 44 (1966), 294-315; Le De Otzo de Fronton et les loisirs de Marc-Aurele, Rev Etud L , 49 (1971), 228-61; Les lozszr~ en GrBce et Rome (Paris, 1984); and La sociologie antique du loisir et son ap- port 2 la riflexion moderne, in Vickers (ed.), Arbezt, Musse, Meditation, 35-63.

6 Brian Vickers

legitimate goal in the alternating rhythm of work and relaxation. I Although later Greeks, especially bilingual writers like Plutarch and Polybius, might use schole' in the pejorative sense of 'idleness' or 'time- wasting', this is a kind of back-formation from the negative side of otium. I * The etymological and semantic researches of Andre' and others have established that otium was never a translation of schole', but derived from specifically Roman contexts. '' The formation of negotium (or nec- ot ium) shows that the first concept formulated in Latin was otium: 'in the beginning was leisure', so to speak.14 Yet 'leisure' was always a relative concept, 'correlative', as Andrk puts i t , with 'work' or 'employment'.'5 It always needed either justification or more specific definition.

The first recorded use of the term is in a fragment from a soldiers' chorus in Ennius' Iphigenia (c. 190 BC), whose preservation we owe to that philologian's ragbag, the Att ic Nights of Aulus Gellius (c. 150 AD) - he cites it as an example of the usage of the word praeterpropter (19.10.12).16 The soldiers are unoccupied, resting and bored, wanting to return home. They distinguish between otium negotiosum, leisure with a satisfying occupation, which takes place in the city, around the hearth, and otium otiosum, unoccupied and pointless leisure, such as their pro- longed stay in the countryside, which they find disorientating. '' Andre' argues that otium originally had military, not pastoral associations, refer- ring to the enforced inactivity that coincided each year with the dead months of winter (especially January and February), unsuitable for war, farming or fishing." This early sense of otium, then, linked it with the time which the individual, free from demands of the state, could devote to his private affairs, looking after his estate or patrimony, a concept which became legitimized subsequently in the form otium privatum = n egot ium .

The great early exemplar of the fruitful use of otium was Marcus Por- cius Cat0 (234-149 BC), farmer, lawyer, orator, general and moralist. As the embodiment of the old Roman virtues of industry, thrift, frugality, Cat0 pursued a long campaign against the vices of luxury, self- indulgence, pleasure and, inevitably so, idleness. '' Cato's attack on

" See, e.g., F. Solmsen, 'Leisure and play in Aristotle's ideal state', Rheznzsches Muscum f u r Philologie, N.F. 107 (1964), 193-220; Andre 1962, 12-16; Andre 1966, 55 n. 6, 61 n . 25, 149-50.

l 2 Andre' 1966, 35n., 60.

' ' Andre 1966, 9. ' ' ' ' Andre 1962, 12, 17-18; Andre 1966, 17-19.

Andre 1962, 12-17; Andre 1966, 10-12, 35, 212.

Andre 1966, 81, 124, 306, 356.

See the Loeb edition, Attzc Nzghts, trans. J. C . Rolfe, 111 (London, 1961), 385-91, and 0. Skutsch, 'Der Ennianische Soldatenchor', Rheinisches Museumfur Philologie, N.F. 96 (1953), 193 - 201, whose elucidation of the text is a good deal more helpful than Rolfe's verse translation. Skutsch comments that otiosum in this context 'nicht ein ornamental verstarkendes Beiwort von otium ist. sondern schadliche Musse van guter, sinnvoll verwendrter Musse unterscheidet' (p. 198).

' ' Andre 1966, 20-4. I' Ibid. 21, 29, 282, 397. ' O Ibid. 28-58; Alan E. Astin, Cato the Censor (Oxford, 1978).

Leisure and idleness: the ambivalence of otium 7

Thermus (tu otiosus ambulas) shows both the largely negative connota- tions of otiosus as an adjective* and Catos special association of otium with umbulure, strolling and gossiping, both forms of time-wasting. To him pure otium (nihil ugere) was unworthy of a Roman, who should be busy and avoid the temptations of the easy life. For Cato, as for many Romans, this easy life was the otium Graecum, Roman prejudice against the Greeks ascribing to them the antithesis of their own virtus. The Greeks were over-talkative, guilty of levitas (frivolity), softness, laziness, being dedicated to purely intellectual activities without practical out- come.22 Cat0 expressed the views of many later Romans in his speech Pro Rhodiensibus (parts of which were preserved by Aulus Gellius), that too much prosperity would lead to superbiu and luxuriu, an association of vices which would cause a peoples decline.23 Gellius also preserves a passage by Cat0 which first uses the metaphor, destined to enjoy a long life, of rust for inactivity: human life is very like iron. If you use it, it wears out; if you do not, it is nevertheless consumed by rust. In the same way we see men worn out by toil; if you toil not, sluggishness and torpor [inertia utque torpor] are more injurious than toil.24 For Cat0 the only justifiable forms of literature were those which echoed or prolonged political action, such as history or oratory. He collected his own speeches, of which some 150 were known to Cicero, and it was Cicero who praised him in the appropriate terms as a good man outstanding non minus otii quam negotii. 2 5

Cicero balanced those terms again in his famous praise of another culture-hero, Scipio Africanus, who was reported by Cat0 as saying that he felt numquam se minus otiosum esse, quam cum otiosus, that is, never less idle than when he had nothing to do - and never less lonely than when he was alone. Cicero calls this an admirable sentiment, which shows that even in his leisure hours his thoughts were occupied with public business and that he used to commune with himself when alone; so that the two conditions that prompt others to idleness - leisure and solitude - only spurred him on. 2 6 The early Roman ethos, and indeed the mos maiorum or general repository of Roman moral values right through the Republic and into the early Empire, praised such positives as virtus, industria, exercitio, officium, honestas and libertas, inter-equating the

* AndrC 1966, 29-30, 62 (although I feel that here and elsewhere AndrCs statement that Seneca rehabilitated otiosw or some aspect of otzum begs the question of how many people who read Seneca changed their minds as a result). Ibzd. 40-9 (although I must record some disquiet at the way in which AndrC slides over the

awkward fact that Cato, as reported by Gellius, does not actually use the word otium, but finds it latent in his text, or in process, its absence significant: 51, 53). Ibid. 49-56. See Noctes Attzcae, 6.3.14, 13.25.14: ed. cit., 1 1 , 14-15, 494-5. Noctes Attzcae, 11.2.6; ed. cit., 1 1 , 302-5. Gellius (16.1) records another speech by Cat0 oppos-

And78 1966, 30, 45; Cicero, Pro Plancio, 66. De off., 3.1.1 .; repeated in slightly different terms, De rep. , 1.17.27.

ing labor and voluptas. See also Catos speeches as chronicled by Livy, 34.2, 39.40.11-12.

8 Brian Vickers

vices of otium, inertia, luxuria, torpedo, avaritia. Otium was always a threat or a danger to this mentality. As the entry from the Thesaurus has already shown, Roman generals seem to have been obsessed with the fear that their armies might degenerate if given too much leisure, and spent every spare minute building roads or improving fortifications. 2 7

The widely expressed fear was that otium, if indulged in, would bring with it a chain of other vices. These attitudes recur, as Andre and others have shown, in Roman comedy, often in an inverted form. Plautus (c . 251-184 BC) had served in Catos army from 195 BC onwards, and ex- presses many of the values of the mos maiorum by the attitudes and vocabulary associated with his parasites (and never with his heroes or heroines). 2 8 These resourceful embodiments of pleasure and ease, dedi- cated to the vita otiosa, either speciously claim to be involved in officium and negotium, such as Curculio the parasite, or the old man Lysimachus (in Mercator - who uses the term to justify an amorous interlude), or else flaunt their dedication to otium and voluptas, such as Ergasilus (in Cap- tivi), Periplectomenus (the Miles Gloriosus) and the old man Demiphon (in Mercator - who thereby violates the Roman code for the moral behaviour of the elderly as summed up by Cicero in De senectute and De officiis). Plautus also uses his slaves to expose the pejorative sense of otzum, linking it with such terms as zgnavia, inertia, desidia (the young man in Bacchides is said to live a life of desidiabula - the realm of Cock- ayne, perhaps), and those concomitants of laziness, shadow and softness. In addition to showing his disreputable characters degrading otium and amoenitas (which parasites and courtesans use as a euphemism for sexual pleasure), Plautus includes diatribes by spokesmen of Roman morality. Alcumena (in Amphitryon) expresses the constant Roman hostility of vir- tus to voluptas. The father in Bacchides denounces modern vice, associated with shade and concealment, while several characters attack the voluptuary Lesbonicus in Trinummus. In the Palliata, otium appears an unqualified good to the parasites and neer-do-wells, but dangerous and decadent to all decent people: like Petrarchs garden of Venus (in his Trionfo dAmore), which par dolce a i cattivi, e a i buoni agra (seems to the wicked, sweet, and bitter to the good29).

Lest the moralists attack on otium as the cause of all evil, found in many Roman proverbs (otia dant vitia; mens otiosa in mille furias inczdit; homines, d u m nihzl agunt, male agere d z s c ~ n t ) ~ ~ seem to be one-sided, let us recall that the word could also have the perfectly legitimate connota- tions of pax and p i e s , which to a state recovering from the Punic Wars

* Andre 1966, 34-6, 434-41. * Ibid. 69-134; the passages to which I refer are quoted at 74-5, 80-5, 93-6, 107-8, 114-15,

121-2. TrzonfidAmore, I V , 11. 109-11; cit. A. B. Giamatti, T h e Earthly Paradise and the Renaissance

Epic (Princeton, NJ, 1966). 125-8. Cit. Andre 1966, 39-40, 109.

Leisure and idleness: the ambivalence of otium 9

were much valued q~al i t ies .~ Yet peace itself can be an ambivalent term, depending on the conditions with which it is achieved. Chamberlains Munich peace, or peace at any price, may not be worth much. This is one of the many connotations attached to otium by Cicero, the writer who, of all Romans, uses the word most frequently and in what can seem at times a bewildering range of meanings.32 To begin with the political contexts, otium can be the perfectly legitimate goal of a country tired of strife, internal or external. There is nothing so desired by the people, Cicero writes in 63 BC, as that which I, a consul who is a true friend of the people, offer you for this year - peace, tranquillity and quiet.33 Yet Cicero also uses otium in a party-political context (not, of course, that Roman politics was organized along the tidy divisions of the modern party system: political groupings in Rome depended on wealth, status and cur- rent allegiances, in a much more fluid pattern). One characteristic of the enemies of Cicero and his political affiliates was that they were enemies of the peace, disturbers of the peace - Clodius is ot i et pacis hostis, Matius is inimicissimus ti.^^ Cicero, who can be said to be linked with the Optimates rather than the Populares (although he twists the applica- tion of both terms opportunistically and confusingly), claimed that the ef- forts of his associates entitled them to otium c u m dignitate, peace with honour. As the studies of Balsdon and Wirszubski have shown,35 this phrase carries with it the claim that the aristocratic republicans have earned dignitas or public renown by their efforts for the republic as a whole, and should now be able to enjoy the otium which goes with a state running smoothly. It is the tranquillity of all and the dignity of the best, as Wirszubski puts it (1954, p. 9). This otium involves activity, of

Ibid. 80. * Andre 1966 discusses Cicero at great length, indeed several passages several times over,

somewhat muddling his chronology: see pp. 29-30, 33-4, 37-40, 42, 45-6, 53, 58-60, 114, 121-2, 136-81, 210-22, 229, 243-6, 251-8, 267, 276, 279-334, 335, 337, 373, 386, 397, 421, 438. See also Ch. Wirszubski, Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome during the Late Republic and Early Principate (Cambridge, 1950), and Ciceros Cum Dignitate Otium: a reconsideration,JRom Stud, 44 (1954), 1-13; J. P. v. D. Balsdon, Auctoritas, dignitas, otzum, Classical QUUTteTly, n.s. 10 (1960), 43-50; Georg Pfligersdorfer, Politik und Musse. Zum Proomium und Einleitungsgesprach von Ciceros De Re Publica (Munich, 1969); W. K. Lacey, Boniatque imprObi,,Greece @Rome, 17 (1970), 3-16. Less valuable is Marianne Kretschmars dissertation, Otium, studia litterarum, Philosophie und bios theoretikos im Leben und Denken Ciceros (Wurzburg, 1938). De lege agraria, 2.37.102 (pacem, tranquillitatem, otium). See also ibid. 2.4.9 (What is so

welcome to the people as repose, which is so pleasant that both you and your ancestors and the bravest of men think that the greatest labours ought to be undertaken in order to enjoy repose some day, especially when accompanied by authority and dignity); Pro Sestio, 49.104; Wirszubski 1954, 4 and notes 29-31.

I See De domo sua, 12-13, 53.137; Ad At t . , 14.2.3; De leg. agr., 2.37.102-3; Balsdon, Auc- tontas, dtgnitas, otium, 49; Wirszubski 1954, 4-5: Andre 1966, 296-8.

Cited in n. 32 above, both of whom site the phrase firmly in its political context. Older studies, now largely superseded, include E. Remy, Dignitas cum otio, La Mwe Belge, 32 (1928), 113-27; P. BoyancC, Cum dignitate otium, Rev Etud Anciennes, 43 (1948), 5-22, repr. in P. BoyancC, Etudes SUT lhumanisme cickonien (Brussels, 1970), 114-34; A. Grilli, Otium cum dignitate, Acme, 4 (1951), 227-40. The phrase recurs in Ad Fam., 1.9.21, to Lentulus (December, 54 BC).

10 Brian Vickers

course, but it represents a harmony where the political organism is func- tioning as a unit, and it is anything but selfish. Where otium was often linked with the sib2 uuere of Epicureanism, that devotion to the in- dividuals tranquillity which necessitated a total and self-centred withdrawal from politics, otium cum dignitate was based on the moral imperative, so frequently expressed in Ciceros philosophy, of the need to act for the good of ones fellow men. The locus classicus for this concept is a passage in the speech Pro Sestio, 138-9,36 where he describes the self- imposed burden of the principes optimatium:

men of this kind have many adversaries, enemies, enviers; they face many dangers, suffer many iniquities, must bear and submit to great toil. But my entire discourse is concerned with virtue, not with sloth; with dignity, not with pleasure; with those men who consider them- selves born for their country, for their fellow citizens, for praise, for glory, not for sleep, and banquets, and delight. For if there are men whose motive is pleasure, and who have entirely given themselves up to the seductions of vice and the gratification of their desires, let them re- nounce public offices, let them stay away from the commonwealth, let them be content to enjoy their leisure that they owe to the exertions of brave men. But those who desire to be reputed good by good men, which alone can be truly called glory, ought to seek tranquillity and pleasures for others, not for themselves. They must toil for the advan- tage of the community, must incur enmities, must often face storms for the sake of the commonwealth, must fight with many audacious, wicked, and sometimes even with mighty opponents.

From that extended antithesis we can see all the negative connotations of otium from which Cicero is studiously guarding himself: desidia, volup- tas, somnus, convimum, delectatio, mtium, lenocinium.

In attempting to legitimize his own political activity, then, Cicero in- voked otium as a desirable goal of politics while disowning its pejorative associations. When the upheavals of Roman politics threw him out of office and favour into an enforced retirement, otium was once again called on, this time to legitimize his inactivity, sometimes in the formula honestum otium. Consciously modelling himself on those great Roman figures, Cat0 and Scipio Africanus, Cicero justified his inactivity in public life by the fruits of his otium, the series of works in philosophy and rhetoric which kept his name famous long after the infighting of Roman politics disappeared into dust and footnotes. In the prooemium to De oratore he recorded his envy for those men of old who could enjoy otium cum dignitate, whereas his strenuous career had allowed no enjoyment of

I cite the translation by Wirszubski (1954 article, 10- l l ) , which is rather more pointed than thr version by R. Gardner in the Loeb edition. The central section of the argument is Pro Sestio, 45.97- 49.105, recapitulated at 65.136-66.139. Compare similar statements on the duty of devoting ones energies for the good of others in De republica, 1.1.1-1.8.13, and De officzis, 1.7.20-1.7.22.

Leisure and idleness: the ambivalence of otium 11

leisure (fructus otii): now, however, every moment of leisure shall be dedicated to his writing (1.1.1-3). In the prooemia to two other major treatises, De republica, and De officiis (Book three), he evaluated his own situation by contrast with that of Scipio. In the latter he describes how, kept by force of armed treason away from practical politics and from practice at the bar, he is now leading a life of leisure (o t ium perse- quimur) , and since he has left the city, wandering in the countryside, he too is alone (3 .1 .1) . But if he resembles Scipio in this, their two types of otium differ. Scipios was voluntary, for he, to find leisure from his splen- did services to his country, used to take a vacation now and then and to retreat from the assemblies and the throngs of men into solitude, as into a haven of rest. Ciceros otium, however, is forced upon me by want of public business, not prompted by any desire for repose (nostrum autem ot ium negotii inopia, non requiescendistudio constitutum est: 3.1 .2). Yet - and here Cicero begins to turn the comparison to his own advantage - he has learned from philosophy to extract good from evil, and so I am turning my leisure to account - though it is not such repose as the man should be entitled to do who once brought the state repose from civil strife - and I am not letting this solitude . . . find me idle (3.2.3). The opposition there, otio fruor against solitudinem languere patior, shows the dangers of languishing or being listless in a solitary state.

However, Cicero concludes (somewhat insincerely we may feel), Scipio earns the higher praise, for no literary monuments of his genius have been published, we have no work produced in his leisure hours (opus otiz), no product of his solitude, which proves that his pure mental activity was sufficient to keep him never unoccupied, never lonely (nec otiosum, nec solum: 3.1.4) . Cicero, however, lacking sufficient strength of mind . . . by means of silent meditation to forget his solitude, has turned all his attention and endeavour to this kind of literary work. He, then, unlike Scipio, has something to show for his leisure, and something that will benefit his fellow men. As we know from some famous passages in De ofJicZis, Cicero believed that the gift of reason and speech, ratio et oratio, laid a duty on man to communicate his knowledge to his fellow men in speech or writing, and in these apologies for his retirement he fulfils his own injunction. Once again he will be a public benefactor, en- joying otium if not c u m dignitate then c u m honestate: this is an otium honestum, he claims, a virtuous leisure. 3 8 Having earlier in life voluntarily

I 1.16.50-1; 1.26.92; 1.44.56. See also &fin., 2.14.45-6; Pro Marcello, 25. Is For other uses of the term otium honestum see Brutw, 2.8: It was to me a particular sorrow,

that after a career of conspicuous achievements, at an age when it was my right to take refuge in a harbour, not of indolence and sloth, but of honourable and well-ordered ease ( tamquam in portum confugere deberet non inertiae neque desidzae sed oti moderati atque honestz) - that then civil violence should have broken out. See also A d Fam., 4.4.4 (45 BC), 4 .9 .3 (46 BC), 5.21.2 (46 BC), 7.33.2 (46 BC: honestissirno otio perfrut]; A d At t . , 1.17.5; Pro Sulla, 9.26. A rare comment on the pleasurable aspect of study is in Twculan Disputations, 5.36.105, Quid est enim dulcius otio lit- terato?, but the context shows that he means utile as much as d u k e : For what is more delightful

12 Brian Vickers

abandoned the fruits of leisure in study that he could have enjoyed more than other men (ex otio fructus: De rep., 1.4.8), in order to serve the state, Cicero now turns this enforced idleness to the benefit of others. He was languishing in idle retirement ( c u m otio langueremus), he explains in De natura deorum (1.4.7), when he decided that the task of expound- ing philosophy to my fellow countrymen was actually my duty in the in- terests of the commonwealth. In the first dialogue of the Academica he explains that, being released from taking part in the government of the country, philosophy has become the most honourable mode of amusing my leisure (oti i o blectationem hanc honestissimam iudico), an occupa- tion which suits his age, or else is the nearest to being praiseworthy, or else is the most useful means of educating our fellow citizens, and is in any case, he says rather candidly, the only occupation he can now pursue (1.3.11; similarly 2.2.6). That somewhat gloomier note shows the extent to which, in these public treatises, he is putting on a brave face, turning himself into another example of Roman mktus, like Scipio or Cato. In his private correspondence Cicero is a good deal more scathing about his idleness.

The negative connotations of the term are always present in these apologiae pro otio SUO. Other men, however, far from having otium thrust upon them, seek it out and indulge in it at the expense of others. Both in his philosophical and political controversies Cicero delivered bitter diatribes against those who chose a life of ease, equating such otium with voluptas, desidia, inertia and every other vice. In his early textbook of legal rhetoric, De inventione, Cicero advises how to advance ones own cause by discrediting the other side: they will be brought into contempt if we reveal their laziness, carelessness, sloth, indolent pursuits or luxurious idleness (1.16.22: si eorum inertia, neglegentia, ignama, desidiosum studium et luxuriosum otium proferetur). Epicurus and his followers receive sustained denunciations, sometimes gently, as in De oratore, where one of the speakers attacks them for their dedication to voluptas, but refrains from disturbing their repose in their own charming gardens (3.17.62-3: sed in hortulis quiescet suis ubivul t . . . recubans molliter ac delicate). Elsewhere Cicero shows more anger, especially in De f inibus, with its concentrated attack on the consequences of the Epicurean advice to seek pleasure and avoid pain. This principle is a form of selfishness

than leisure devoted to literature? That literature I mean which gives us the knowledge of the infinite greatness of nature, and, in this actual world of ours, of the sky, the lands, the seas.

39 Compare Ad A t t . , 11.14.1, where he describes himself as eneruatus [in] hoc otzo, quo nunc tabesczmus: For my part I have so lost my manly spirit that I prefer to be tyrannized over in peace and quiet such as is now rotting our fibre than to fight with the rosiest prospect of success (c. April 59 BC); trans. D. R . Shackleton Bailey, Czceros Letters t o Atticus (Harmondsworth, 1978). 99. Andre 1966 comments that tabescere expresses the idea of mort vivante (34) , cet &at de vide mor- bide (222). Earlier that month Cicero had described himself as so in love with idleness [complexus otium] that I cant tear myself from it . . . I find any excuse for idleness good enough (Ad Att . , 11.6.1-2).

Leisure and idleness: the ambivalence of otium 13

destructive of society. The man who lives for himself, Cicero affirms, denies the family, the state, virtue, honesty, gratitude, and puts in their place egoism, a hedonism worthy of beasts and a perversion of all the vir- tues. 40 The Tusculan Disputations continue the assault, opposing virtue and philosophy against Epicurean hedonism, which, Cicero sadly notes, is spreading through Roman society: we have corrupted our souls with bowered seclusion, luxury, ease, indolence and sloth, we have enervated and weakened them by false beliefs and evil habits (5.27.78: nos umbris, deliciis, otio, languore, desidia an imum infecimus . . .). In contemporary politics two of Ciceros enemies embodied Epicurean vice, Piso, the tool of Clodius, and Catiline. Piso is insulted as Epicure noster, ex hara pro- ducte, non ex schola (my worthy Epicurus, though product of the sty rather than the school: I n Pis., 16.3), and is condemned as the last word in luxuria, libido, voluptas (27.66-7). To Cicero Catiline represented a summation of all human vice, so he presents Romes contest with him in terms of a battle between good and evil: on this side fights modesty, on that shamelessness; on this chastity, on that wantonness, and so on, op- posing honestas to turpido, continentia to libido, aequitas, temperantia, fortitudo, prudentia, virtutes omnes certant cum iniquitate, luxuria, ig- navia, temeritate, cum vitiis omnibus (2 Cat., 11.25). Catilines followers are cowards . . . drunken . . . sluggards. . . . These men, I tell you, reclining at their banquets, embracing harlots, stupid with wine [who languidi], stuffed with food, crowned with wreaths, smothered with unguents, weakened by vice, belch forth in their conversation the murder of good men and the burning of the city (ibzd. 5.10). Idleness encourages all the other vices.

The conspiracy of Catiline was interpreted in similar terms by another writer thrown into otium litteratum by the revolutions of politics, Sallust, a supporter of Caesar who found himself, after the tyrants assassination, reduced to writing histories. Although of an opposite political persuasion to Cicero, Sallust felt obliged to make the same apologiae for his enforced idlenes~.~ In the prooemium to The War with Catiline he writes (in terms that were to be echoed by Renaissance apologists for poetry) that It is glorious to serve ones country by deeds; even to serve her by words is a thing not to be despised . . . (3.1). Where Cicero had presented his public career as a wholly admirable sacrifice of the self for the good of the commonwealth, Sallust condemns himself for having as a young man taken part in public life, being led astray and held captive by ambition, his desire for preferment leading only to ill repute and jealousy (3 .3 -5). Once his ambitio mala had been defeated by political vicissitudes, however, and he found peace in deciding to abstain from public affairs, his resolution echoed Ciceros exactly: it was not my intention to waste my

40 Cf. &fin., especially2.7.21ff, 2.14.43ff, 2.22.70ff, 2.33.107ff. Cf. Andre 1966, 335-81.

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precious leisure in indolence and sloth [socordia atque desidia bonum otium conterere], nor yet by turning to farming or the chase, to lead a life devoted to slavish employments (that is, occupying the body but not the mind). To avoid both evils he decided to write a history of the Roman people (4.1-2).

The prooemium to his other surviving complete work, The War with Jugurthu, celebrates the human mind for being able to lead man to virtue and glory (1.3).

But if through the lure of base desires the mind has sunk into sloth and the pleasures of the body, when it has enjoyed ruinous indulgence for a season, when strength, time, and talents have been wasted through indolence

- then men accuse human nature of their own weakness, and virtue yields to fate (1.4-5). The moralists targets are, once again, inertia, voluptas, socordia, luxus and ignama. Given the supremacy of the human intellect, Sallust marvels at the perversity of those who pass their life in riotous liv- ing and idleness, given over to the pleasures of the body, allowing the mind to grow dull from neglect and inaction (2.3-4: incultu atque socordia torpescere sinunt). In these disturbed times, when all public of- fices should be avoided as being neither safe nor honourable (3.1-3), the recording of past events is especially serviceable, since the memory of great deeds will arouse the flame of emulation (4.1, 6). Although some people will apply to this arduous and useful employment of mine the name of idleness (inertia), yet if they recall the eminent offices Sallust once held they will realize that it is rather from justifiable motives than from indolence [ignaviu] that I have changed my opinion, and that greater profit will accrue to our country from my inactivity [otio me01 than from others activity (4.3-4).

The inherent ambivalence of otzum is thus exploited by Sallust, as it was by Cicero, to legitimize the writers own activity. His otium is virtuous since it is negotiosum, applied to some good end; other mens otium otiosum leads to vice. Sallust, in fact, makes otium a major factor in ex- plaining historical decline. In the early days Roman virtue guaranteed social order, good morals ensuring the greatest harmony and little or no avarice: justice and probity prevailed (Cat. , 9.1). But when Rome had grown great through toil and the practice of justice and had defeated Carthage, then Fortune took advantage of this prosperity, latching on to a lessening of mrtus. For those who had found it easy to bear hardship and dangers, anxiety and adversity, found leisure and wealth [otium, divitiae], desirable under other circumstances, a burden and a curse. Hence the lust for money first, then for power, grew upon them, . . . the root of all evils (101-3). Ambition is the enemy of virtue and glory, since it works through craft and deception, self-interest turning men into hypocrites (10.5; 11.1). Avarice destroys honour, integrity, and all other

Leisure and idleness: the ambivalence of otium 15

noble qualities in its desire for money, which, like some noxious poison, renders the most manly body and soul effeminate (10.4; 11.3). Lucius Sulla (dictator from 82 to 79 BC), is an example of the danger of success, for both his military and political power were soon corrupted (11.4). In order to gain the loyalty of the army which he led to Asia, Sulla allowed it a luxury and licence foreign to the manners of our forefathers [contra morem maiorum]; and in the intervals of leisure those charming and voluptuous lands . . . easily demoralized the warlike spirits of his soldiers (1 1.5). The consequence of idleness, as so many Roman moralists warned, are lechery, drunkenness, theft, pillaging, effeminacy in men, lewdness in women (1 1.6- 13.5). After Sullas corruption of values Catiline found it easy to surround himself with troops of criminals, wantons, gluttons, gamesters, corrupting all who joined him (14.1-16.3). Among his rabble were young men who, having maintained a wretched existence by manual labour in the country . . . were tempted by public and private doles . . . to prefer idleness in the city [urbanum otium] to their hateful toil; these, like all the others, battened on the public ills (37.7).

To Sallust, as J.-M. Andre says, otium was both corrupt and corrupt- ing.42 Enervating idleness, leading to every form of vice, can be transmit- ted not only by people but by places. Sullas army was corrupted by Asia: Loca amoena, voluptaria facile in otio ferocis mili tum animos molliverant (11.5). The dangers of the locus amoenus (too often inter- preted, in the wake of E. R. Curtius, as a neutral or admirable goal) to activities of pith and moment were vividly depicted by a historian writing shortly after Sallust, L i ~ y . ~ ~ Like so many Romans, Livy saw otium as the greatest danger to the populace, which could easily be corrupted by idleness. Otium, ut solet, excitamt plebis rumores (26.26.10): inaction, as usual, stirred up talk among the common people, talk which was often subversive. One cynical administration kept the plebs at a distance from the city, lest they might have thoughts, if they remained peaceably at home [domi per o t ium] , of liberty and colonies, and might agitate for public lands or the free use of their votes (4.58.12). The same measures were repeated later, the object being to wear the plebeians out with ser- vice and give them no time to take breath in the City, or leisure to bethink them of liberty . . . (6.27.7). Idleness is dangerous to the ruling classes, too, as we see from one positive example, the praetor Quintus Fabius Labeo, and one negative, Phileas of Tarentum. The former, lest he have a year of idleness in office (otiosam promnczam), set out to quell an upris- ing in Crete (37.60.2), while the latter, a man of restless spirit and quite unable to endure the long inactivity in which he seemed to be losing his

4 2 Ibid. 381. 4 3 Ibid. 434-54. I have benefited from D. Packard, Concordance to LZq (4 vols, Cambridge,

Mass., 1968). Livys indictment of otium as the setting for vice which led to the rape of Lucretia is repeated by Ovid in Fustes, 2.724ff cf. Andre 1966, 451.

16 Brian Vickers

powers (25.7.1 1: vir inquieti animi et minime otium, quo turn diutino senescere videbatur, patientis), started a conspiracy. It is among a group of young princes, who frequently spent their leisure in feasting and mutual entertainments (1.57.6) that the wager arises which leads to Tar- quinius rape of Lucretia, with all its fateful consequences.

To the early Roman militaristic ethos city life could only seem idle. Thus senators urged that if moneys captured from the enemy were given to the army, then the plebs would not have to pay so much war-tax, nor would the hands of idle city-folk [manus otiosorum urbanorum], greedy of pillage, pluck away the rewards of valiant fighting-men (5.20.6). A Roman consul invites city-dwellers who ignorantly criticize his military policy to join his army: if anyone is reluctant to do this and prefers the leisure of the city [otium urbanum] to the hardships of campaigning [milztiae Zaboribus], let him not steer the ship from on shore (44.22.14). In early Rome the whole citizenship had been soldiers of necessity, but the peace following their victories was often seen in negative terms, a source of danger. Numa Pompilius was concerned lest the peoples dispositions, which the fear of enemies and military discipline had hitherto restrained, should grow licentious by tranquility (1.19.4: ne animz . . . luxuriarent otio, luxuriate implying the undisciplined growth of plants, producing excessive foliage but no The next king of Rome, Tullus Hostilius, thinking that the state was growing languid through inactivity [senescere otio], sought on all sides for an occasion of stirring up war (1.22.2). In prosperous times, Livy writes, political measures are carried out without spirit and in leisurely fashion (23.14.1 : segniter otioseque gesta), and he frequently contrasts otium with military energy.45 War is healthy, as one speaker puts it, a remedy against peace: a nation wasted away in a state of peace could be aroused from its stupor only by the din of arms (33.45.7: marcescere otisi tu queri cimtatem et inertia sopiri nec sine armorurn sonitu excitari posse). Other passages express the same anxiety lest peace and idleness should corrupt the populace (otio lascivire plebem, 2.28.6; ex copia deinde otioque lascimre rursus animi, 2.52.2; segniter, otiose, neglegenter, contumaciter omnia agere, 2.58.7).

If otium is dangerous to the city, how much more threatening it is for an army. Dissension is equally liable to arise, as it does in the campaign fought by Scipio in 206 BC, owing to the usual licence resulting from long inaction (28.24.6: licentia ex diutino, ut fit, otio conlecta). An earlier set of rulers knew that military discipline had grown slack from easy living and idleness and resolved to enlist new armies (40.1.4: luxuria et otio

Andre 1966, 437, 33. The contrast was still operative for two of Shakespeares servants, who knowingly pronounce that This peace is nothing but to rust iron, increase tailors, and breed ballad- makers. 1 Sew. Let me have war, say I , it exceeds peace as far as day does night: its sprightly, waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy, mulld, deaf, sleepy, insen- sible . . . (Coriolanus, 4.5.219).

Andr6 1966, 439.

Leisure and idleness: the ambivalence of otium 17

solutam disciplinam militarem). The careful general, in order to prevent his troops from growing slack through idleness (40.21.1: ne otio miles deterior fieret), sets his army to scale a mountain, or build a road (39.2.6). Hannibal is the type of prudent leader, who crosses the Pyrenees in order that his troops might not become demoralized by delay and in- action (21.24.1: ne mora atque otium animos sollicitaret). Winter is the most dangerous time, when the soldiers are being supported in idleness (44.20.4: in otio militem al i ) , The need of finding something to occupy the army is so widely understood that one of the leaders of a conspiracy against the tyrant Nabis can advise him to take such steps as not to per- mit what troops he had to grow soft in idleness under roofs (35.35.9: non sineret sub tectis marcescere otio), the tyrants subsequent appearance at military exercises giving the conspirators the chance to kill him (35.35.19). The power of otium to corrupt body and mind is registered so strongly by Livy that he introduces a new word to qualify it, marcescere (or marcere), to wither, droop, become feeble, a strikingly poetic term not found in Caesar and Cicero, and only in Livys third and fourth decades.46 The effect of inaction can be seen on Hannibals soldiers, who normally delighted more in booty and rapine than in quiet and repose (22.9.5: otio uut requie), but who, in 218 BC, were unable to fight since the soldiers while convalescing felt more keenly than ever the distress aris- ing from the hardships they had undergone; for rest coming after toil [ o h m enim ex lubore], plenty after want, comfort after filth and wet, produced all manner of disorders . . . (21.39.2). Any notion of reculer pour mieux sauter, or of easing the bow from being constantly stretched, seems foreign to Roman military thinking.

Livys most sustained analysis of the corruptions of idleness is his ac- count, in Book 23, of the fate of Hannibals army exposed to the delights of Capua, a town in Campania notorious for its softness and indolence. Cicero once rejected a proposal to settle a colony there as unsuitable, Capua being a place which, owing to the fertility of its lands and the abundance of all produce, is said to have given birth to pride and cruelty (Leg. ugr., 1.6.18 - the Capuans were said to watch gladiatorial combats while feasting). What is to be guarded against, Cicero asked, in establish- ing colonies? If it is luxury, Capua corrupted Hannibal himself (1.7.20), for the arrogance and intolerable fierceness found elsewhere in Cam- pania yielded, in Capua, to the most indolent and slothful ease (2.33.91: inertissimum uc desidiosissimum otium perduxerunt). Writing his history of the Second Punic War a generation later, Livy gave further credence to what has been called the myth that Hannibals soldiers were demoralized

46 J. Briscoe, A Commentary on Livy, Books X X Z - X X X I I I (Oxford, 1973), 337. Latin verbs ending in -escere are known as inchoatives, i.e. pointing to the beginning of an action, or process. Besides marcescere we find similar formations elsewhere in Cicero (hebescere, lunguescere), Livy (senexere) and Sallust (torpescere). The form obviously expresses the feeling that such behaviour, once indulged, will lead inexorably downwards.

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by wintering in Capua after the battle of Cannae.47 After that battle (216 BC), where he inflicted on the Romans the worst defeat they had known, Hannibal was held back by the courage of the small Roman force holding the town of Casilinum, outside Capua (23.17-18). Frustrated, he retired into winter-quarters at Capua, where, according to Livy,

he kept under roofs for the greater part of the winter troops that had been hardened long and repeatedly against all human hardships, but had no experience or familiarity with comforts. And so those whom no severe hardship had conquered were ruined by excess of comfort and immoderate pleasures and the more completely ruined the more eagerly they in their inexperience had plunged into them. For sleep and wine, and feasts and harlots, and baths and idleness, which habit made daily more seductive, so weakened their bodies and spirits that it was their past victories rather than their present strength which there- after protected them. . . . (23.18.10-13)

Here the old Roman virtues, with their fear of self-indulgence, softness and physical pleasures, express full disapproval of otium and its con- comitants which grow more attractive, yet more enervating every day (. . . et otium consuetudine in dies blandius ita enervaverunt corpora animosque).

The result of this winter of ease and indulgence is that Hannibal sets out again from Capua as if with a different army, not a trace of the old- time morale survived. For they came back most of them ensnared by harlots and so debilitated that they collapsed on the march, or simply deserted (23.18.14-16). When he renews his attack on Nola the following spring the Romans hold out bravely, and their leader Marcellus exhorts them to greater efforts against an enemy who was disintegrating, weakened by Campanian luxury [marcere Campania luxuria] , exhausted by wine and harlots and every kind of dissipation the whole winter through. . . . Gone was that force and energy, lost the strength of body and spirit with which they had crossed the ranges of the Pyrenees and the Alps. . . . Capua had been Hannibals Cannae, that place caused the ruin of warlike courage, military discipline, past fame, and future hope (23.45.1-4). Hannibal in turn rebukes his army for their collapse: their arms and standards were the same, but as for the soldier, he had cer- tainly led one man into winter quarters at Capua, and out of them a dif- ferent man. . . . Is the sword now blunted? Or are your right hands

l 7 Laidlaw, Otzurn, 44. F. G . Moore notes in the Loeb edition, vol. VI of the Livy series, p. 62, that Strabo (5.4.13) confirmed this explanation for their decline, but that Polybius (11.19.3) denied it. Seneca, describing Baiae, a fashionable and dissolute watering-place near Naples, as the Loeb editor terms it, concludes that we should toughen our minds, and remove them far from the allurements of pleasure. A single winter relaxed Hannibals fibre; his pampering in Campania took the vigour out of that hero who had triumphed over Alpine snows. He conquered with his weapons, but was conquered by his vices: Ep. , 5 1 . 5 .

Leisure and idlefiess: the ambivalence of otium 19

benumbed? (an dextrae torpent?: 23.45.6-10). But more than their hands are paralysed, and the army suffers a crushing defeat. Treating the same topic in his Punic War , Silius Italicus ascribed Hannibals failure, more precisely, to the intervention of Venus, goddess of tiu urn.^^

I 1

From this brief survey we might well conclude that the majority of Romans would have taken great pains to defend themselves from any suspicion of indulging in ease and sloth. One group, however, flaunted their otium, took it, indeed, as a defining characteristic of the state in which they found themselves, being in love. For the writers of Latin elegiacs - Tibullus, Propertius, Catullus, Ovid - otium is at times the condition of paralysis in which love has plunged them, at other times the vacancy which love will fill.49 The lover accepts all the pejorative terms linked with otium by the moralizing historians, orators and philosophers - desidia, ignavia, inertia, segnitia - and glories in them as the proof of his state, happy or miserable. So Tibullus begins his collection by pointedly rejecting the acquisition of wealth, preferring poverty and a quiet path of life ( m e mea paupertas vita traducat znerti), and opposing to the activity of others his own state of complete passivity:

Its right that you should go to war on land and sea, Messalla, So that your house can display the enemy spoils:

But the claims of a beautiful girl hold me fettered; In fact I sit as a porter at her stubborn door.

A good reputation, Delia, is none of my concern - provided Im with you, Im happy to be known as feckless and

What seems outrageous to lookers-on, from the vita activa, is for the lover a state to be prayed for ( t e c u m / t u m mod0 sim, quaso segnis inersque vocer). Propertius, too, lays himself down before his mistress doors, adventuring naught (ante fores dominae condar oportet iners: 3.7.72) . The juxtaposition of love-in-idleness, as a Shakespeare character calls it, with the uncomprehending world of public life, is also found in Proper- tius, 1.12:

Bella Punzca, 11.377ff, 12.15ff. See Andre 1966, 205-42 (Otium Epicurien et essor du lyrisme, a somewhat unfocused discus-

sion of possible Epicurean hedonism in Roman poetry); 403-29 (Les ElCgiaques Romains: Otium ct libertinage amoureux; Otzum et ma1 daimer), and 425-529 (on Horace and Virgil). Valuable though it is, this study suffers from the weakness of the doctorat dEtat in feeling obliged to discuss every possible aspect of each topic exhaustively. A much sharper account of Catullus is that by A. J. Woodman, Some implications of otium in Catullus 51.13-16, Latomus, 25 (1966). 217-66. Also relevant, if less penetrating, are Luigi Alfonsi, Otium e vita damore negli elegiaci Augustei, Studz in onore d i Aristzde Calderzni e Roberto Paribeni (2 vols, (Milan, 1956)), I , 187-209; C. Segal, Catullan otiosi: the lover and the poet, Greece 8* Rome , 17 (1970), 25-31.

Trans. Philip Dunlop, The Poems of Tibullus (Harmondsworth, 1972).

20 Brian Vickers

quid mihi desidiae non cessas fingere crimen quod faciat nobis conscia Roma moram?

(Why, Rome, thou witness of my sloth, ceasest thou never to tax me falsely with sloth, saying tis sloth delays my suit?) - in fact, Cynthia has left him. Ovid, too, uses the idea in Amores, 1.15, but with a difference:

Quid mihi, Livor edax, ignavos obicis annos

(Why, gnawing Envy, impute an idlers existence to me? Why dismiss the poet as a drone?) He has rejected the dusty rewards/Of a soldiers career, and not sold my eloquence like a whore/In the courts and Forum, since his goal is poetry, and fame.5

Obviously the Roman elegists intend these repudiations of public morality to be provocative, perhaps to pre-empt criticism. They are aware of the negative associations of otium, and by glorying in them they share, as commentators have pointed out, the attitudes and vocabulary of the parasites and rebellious lovers in Roman comedy.52 It is as if a character out of Plautus is speaking when, in propria persona, the poets proclaim their independence from public morality. Few opening lines of a poem could be so shocking to the Roman mos maiorum, which opposed militia and otium as irreconcilable oppositess3, as Ovids Amores, 1.9:

Militat omnis amans et habet sua castra Cupido -

(Every lovers on active service, my friend, active service, believe me, / And Cupid has his headquarters in the field: trans. Peter Green.) In his witty development of the analogy (reconnaissance sorties, night attacks) Ovid rejects the identification of love and idleness: ergo desidzam quicumque vocabat amorem / desinat (31ff: So if youve got love written off as an easy option / Youd better think twice), and presents his own metamorphosis as typical:

ingeniique vocas carmen inertis opus?

Attice, crede mihi, militat omnis amans.

ipse ego segnis eram discinctaque in otia natus

(41ff: Then take/My own case. I was born idle, born to leisure en dkshabillee, / Mind softened by lazy scribbling in the shade). But his love for a pretty girl drove the sluggard to action (impulit ignavum),

inde vides agilem nocturnaque bella gerentem.

mollierant animos lectus et umbra meos

qui nolet fieri desidiosus amet.

Trans. Peter Green, Omd. the Erotzc Poems (Harmondsworth, 1982). * Andri 1966, 108ff: Woodman 1966, 220-1, 226; Segal 1970, 26. See, e.g., Plautus, Mercator,

24ff sed amori accedunt etiam haer quae dixi minus . . . /inertia, aviditas, desidia, iniuria (But love has still more ills which I omitted - inertia, inordinate desire, sloth, injustice).

Andr6 1966, 410, 421-3. The idea of love as a species of warfare is developed in Ars amatorza, 2.233ff.

Leisure and idleness: the ambivalence of otium 21

(45ff: And just look at me now - fighting fit, dead keen on night exer- cises: / If you want a cure for slackness, fall in love.)

Ovid is emphasizing, in this brilliant and witty poem, another aspect of love, its need for activity. Inertia may be the characteristic of the lover viewed from the perspective of public morality, but within the love affair he must be anything but pas~ive.~ The most concise formulation of this rule is, again, Ovids: amor odit inertes (Ars amatoria, 2.229: Love detests laggards). Yet these are exceptions to the main rule, which iden- tifies otium with love and with love-poetry. The most consistent exponent of this link, appropriately enough, is Ovid, in his Tristia or Poems of Lamentation written after his abrupt and unexplained exile from Rome. In his poetic autobiography (4.10) he describes himself once as that playful poet of tender love (tenerorum lusor amorum) who abstained from the pursuit of office since he had neither a body to endure the toil nor the mind suited to the ambitious life, while the Muses always urged him to seek the security of a retirement I had ever chosen and loved (40: otia, iudicio semper amata meo) . Ot ium is now said to be the necessary condition for writing poetry: carmina secessum scribentis et otia quaerunt (Tristia, 1.1.39ff: poetry requires the writer to be in privacy and ease), and Ovid contrasts his present discomforts with the easy life he had chosen for himself in Rome:

quique fugax rerum securaque in otia natus,

ultima nunc patior. . . . (3.2.9-11) mollis et impatiens ante laboris eram,

(I, who once shunned affairs, who was born for a care-free life of ease, who was soft and incapable of toil, am now suffering extremes.) But my spirit has proved equal to misfortune, he adds proudly, his body also (lines 12-14), a claim repeated elsewhere: my soul, disdaining to give way to misfortune, proved itself unconquerable, relying on its own powers, despite a previous life passed in ease (4.10.103ff: oblitus me i ductaeque per otia vitae).

Yet, if Ovids endurance of exile and misfortune proves his mrtus, his earlier life would have been viewed critically by many Roman readers. The word he used to describe his condition in his life of ease, mollis, was almost universally connected with effeminate behaviour, with Epicurean hedonism and with self-indulgence. The inherent ambivalence of otium can now excuse a life dedicated to love and ease, now indict it. In one poem Catullus can recall the pleasant die otiosi he has just spent with his friend and fellow poet Licinius, writing verses in various metres answer- ing each other, as we laughed and drank our wine (50.1-6); in another he can recall the youth of Greece hastening towards Troy, so that Paris

Woodman 1966, 220n. See AndrC 1966, 108, 229, 240, 245.

22 Brzun Vickers

might not enjoy undisturbed leisure [lzberu . . . otiu] in a peaceful chamber, rejoicing in the rape of his paramour (68A.61-4). Otium can be now innocent, now vicious. In the fifty-first of his Carminasb (based on a famous poem by Sappho) Catullus depicts himself struck dumb by his love for Lesbia, robbed of all my senses, not even capable of a whisper: my tongue is paralysed [lingua sed torpet], a subtle flame courses through my limbs, with sound self-caused my ears ring, and my eyes are covered in double darkness. Having recorded these symptoms of extreme love-sickness, Catullus stands off from himself self-critically and diag- noses the cause:

Otium, Catulle, tibi molestum est: otio exsultas nimiumque gestis. otium et reges prius et beatas

perdidit urbes. (51.13-16)

(Idleness, Catullus, is your trouble; idleness is what delights you and moves you to passion; idleness has proved ere now the ruin of kings and prosperous cities.) A. J. Woodman has shown the differing implications of otium in this passage: in line 13 it means inertia, in the next line wan- tonness or excessive licence (nequitza, a favourite word of Propertius), and in the concluding lines that luxury and softness which Roman moralists saw as the great danger to armies and states. Catullus here joins with Polybius, Sallust, Livy, Cicero and such Roman heroes as Scipio and Cat0 in stigmatizing inactivity as the source of many vices. As T . P. Wiseman puts it, citing significant parallels in Ciceros Tusculun Disputa- tions, 5 8 the physical symptoms are the sign of a self-destructive emotional excess, Catullus the poet commenting bitterly on Catullus the lover (p. 154). This palinode against love gains more significance when set in the context of the collection as a whole, for the three following poems restore us to the thick of Roman political life, so that no Roman reader could have failed to see in the final stanza of 51 a rejection of idleness, with its dangerous self-indulgence, and a return to the traditional Roman preoccupations of civic life and the virtues needed to preserve it (p. 155). Wiseman quotes another apposite passage from Cicero, the speech defending Marcus Caelius, which excuses a young man indulging some

16 See T. P. Wiseman, CatullusandHis World. A Reapp.raisal(Cambridge, 1985), 151-5; 1 quote his translation.

Woodman 1966. See also (less penetrating, but with useful additional references to the Hellenistic historians use of truphd, luxury, to account for decadence in states) Eduard Fraenkel, Horace (Oxford, 1957), 211-14. On truphi in Polybius see also Andre 1966, 195-6, 371.

Tusc. Disp., 5.6.16: when a man in frivolously excited, and in a transport of empty dclight and reckless extravagance [laetztza exsultans et temere gestzens], is he not all the more wretched . . .? Those men are happy whom . . . no lusts inflame, no vain transports of delight dissolve in the melting lassitude of pleasure. Compare also Ciceros attack on exuberant pleasure (volupta.c grs- tzens) or joy excited beyond measure by the idea of some great present good, as a disturbance of the soul (3.11.24-5). since extravagant and exuberant delight in the expectation of pleasures is disgraceful (exsultans gestiensque laetitza turpzs est: 4.31.66.).

Leisure and idleness: the ambivalence of otium 23

pleasures, provided that he does nothing immoral, and in good time abandons these vain and empty desires of youth with proper disgust: let him at length turn to the interests of home life, to activity at the bar and in public affairs (Pro Cael. , 18.42). Catullus recoil on himself, and on otium, is exemplary.

Ovid too, in his turn, denounced otium in his Remedia Amoris, or at any rate identified it as the precondition for love. Whether this work is to be taken as a mock-serious palinode or as a straightforward warning against love in the moral-hortatory tradition of the monita, is a moot point.59 The cardinal rule for avoiding the pains of love is: shun otium!

Fac monitis fugias otia prima meis Haec, ut ames, faciunt, haec, quod fecere, tuentur;

Haec sunt iucundi causa cibusque mali Otia si tollas, periere Cupidinis arcus,

Contemptaeque iacent et sine luce faces. Quam platanus vino gaudet, quam populus unda,

Et quam limosa canna palustris humo, Tam Venus otia amat; qui finem quaeris amoris,

Cedit amor rebus: res age, tutus eris. Languor, et immodici subnullo vindice somni,

Aleaque, et multo tempora quassa mero Eripiunt omnes animo sine vulnere nervos:

Adfluit incantis insidiosus Amor. Desidiam puer ille sequi solet, odit agentes:

Da vacuae menti, quod teneatur, opus.

136

139

143

149

In Peter Greens lively translation:

No leisure - thats rule Number one. Leisure stimulates love, leisure watches the

lovelorn, Leisures the cause and sustenance of this sweet

Evil. Eliminate leisure, and Cupids bow is broken, His torches lie lightless, scorned.

As a plane-tree rejoices in wine, as a poplar in water, As a marsh-reed in swampy ground, so Venus loves

Leisure: if you want an end to your loving, keep busy - Love gives way to business - and youll be safe.

Listlessness, too much sleep (no morning appointments), nights at

The gambling-tables, or on the bottle - these Inflict no wounds, yet ruin your moral fibre, open

19 Andre 1966, 227-9 takes it in the latter sense, basing himself on Karl Prinz, Untersuchungen zu Ovids Remedia amoris, Wiener Studien, 36 (1914), 36-83, and 39 (1917), 91-121; 259-90. To me it seems rather a matching work in the rhetorical tradition of in utrumque partem dikerere, full o f wit and ingenuity. On Ovids use of parallel arguments, pro and contra. see A. S. Hollis, The Ars amatoria and Remedia amoris, in Ovid, ed. J . W . Binns (London, 1973), 84-115, at 1Cnff.

24 Brian Vickers

A way for insidious Love to breach your hearts. Cupid homes in on sloth, detests the active - so give that

Bored mind of yours some really absorbing work . . .

Public business, the law courts, the army (traditional enemy to otzum): any of these should do the trick! Here Ovid - who had himself rejected all these occupations in the vita actzva - joins the moralists, who had seri- ously recommended work as the antidote to love.6o Readers who enjoyed Ovids casting of the Ars amatoriu in the form of the classical didactic poem will have appreciated the wit with which these admonitions are developed, and the flippancy with which apparently serious instances are cited:

(136-50)

Quaeritis, Aegisthus quare sit factus adulter?

(161ff: Why do you think Aegisthus / Became an adulterer? Easy: he was idle - and bored . . . / Love was better than doing nothing. /Thats how Cupid slips in; thats how he stays.) Not only idleness must be avoided: solitude too, where the lover by definition is unoccupied, must be shunned:

Quisquis amas, loca sola nocent, loca sola caveto! Quo fugis? in populo tutior esse potes. (579-80)

(Lonely places, you lovers, are dangerous: shun lonely places, /Dont opt out - youll be safer in a crowd.)

Ovid can, seemingly, both celebrate and denounce this Janus-faced concept. A related word sharing the same ambivalence as otium, depen- dent on context, is umbra. Shadow, the shade of a tree or simply being indoors, outside public life and activity, is the traditional resting-place of the smitten lover, who is often found in a reclining position (as in the line from Ovid quoted above: mollierant animos lectus et umbra meos). Where the open air, sun, heat and dust, the sweat of exertion, are the necessary and honourable conditions for the work of the farmer, the soldier, and the orator, in much Latin literature to prefer shadow is the mark of idleness, indulgence, and who knows what other vice.6 Already to the Greeks life lived in shadow was a life unprepared for war and military discipline, the life of an effeminate or anti-social man.62 In just the same way the Romans regarded the vita umbratilis as debilitat- ing, and equated umbra with mollitia, desidza, segnitia, ignavia. All

In promptu causa est: desidiosus erat.

O Andre 1966, 229, cites Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 4.74ff. On Ciceros Greek sources see Max Pohlenz, Das dritte und vierte Buch der Tusculanen, Hermes, 41 (1906), 320-55, esp. at 345ff. A useful survey is Volkmar Holzer, Umbra: Vorstellung und Symbol im Leben der Romer,

Ph.D. diss. (Philipps-Universitat zu Marburg/Lahn, 1955). The article by P. L. Smith, Lentw in Umbra: a symbolic pattern in Vergils Eclogues, Phoenix, 19 (1965), 298-304, has some sensitive comments on pastoral and love-poetry.

* Holter 1955, 80--99.

Leisure and idleness: the ambivalence of otium 25

honourable activities in public life took place in sole et pulvere, as Horace reproached young Sybaris for neglecting his knightly exercises on the Campus Martius:

Why does he whom sun Nor dust could ever deter effeminately shun The heat-baked exercise-ground?

The white-skinned man has never been exposed to hard work: Mollitia urbana atque umbra corpus candidumst, one Plautus character observes of another (Vindularia, 35ff: Your skins all white from the soft, sheltered city life youve led). In every branch of the vita activu the op- position sun: shadow was one between public life, manliness, virtue, hard work on the one hand, and on the other private life, effeminacy, selfishness, idleness and vice. In rhetoric, so important to Roman public life, boys were trained in the shade of the declamation-school but emerged into the sun of the forum64 - a contrast that still held good for Milton, long after the Roman forum and the orator had ceased to be.65 In the pithy formulation of Cicero, arguing that the virtues of the soldier exceed those of the lawyer or orator, cedat . . . f o r u m castris, o t ium militiae, stilus gladio, umbra soli6 (Pro Mur., 30: Let the forum yield to the camp, leisure to military life, the pen to the sword, and shade to sun).

Shadow is not a negative in every context, of course. For farmers and shepherds, as for their cattle, a tree could provide welcome relief from the midday sun, and in pastoral poetry the shepherd/poet may legitimately rest in the shade while his flock is feeding - since he has very little else to do. Virgil uses the word umbra or its derivatives some seventeen times in the Eclogues, almost always without any pejorative overtones. In the

Odes, 1.8.4ff; trans. James Michie (Harmondsworth, 1967; repr. 1970). On Roman disapproval of shade (to express which umbratzcw was used as an insult) see Andre 1966, 93, 410ff; Holzer 1955, 100-110 and passim.

64 On the contrast shade /sun in the rhetoric schools see Holzer 1955, 111-22, and Wesley Trimpi, The meaning of Horaces Ut pictura poesis,/ Warburg C, 36 (1973), 1-34, at pp. 10-16.

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat: Areopagitica (1644), in Milton, Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. M. Y. Hughes (New York, 1957), 728.

66 Holzer 1955, 112, equatesforum, otium, stzlus, umbra as Metaphern des burgerlichen Lebens, but they are clearly the attributes of one group of professions in the retired life, which is being declared inferior to public life.

6 7 Smith 1965, 298-301. I cannot agree, however, that Virgil seems to endorse the Epicurean ideal of ataraxia or disengagement from the world of restless activity (p. 301). The shepherds are not philosophers; and they are working. Daphnis invites Meliboeus to join him: Your goat and kids are safe, and ifyou can idle awhile, pray rest beneath the shade (7.9ff, my italics: si quid cessare potes, requisce sub umbra). Cf. also Martial, 5.20: Si tecum mihi, care Martialis, /securis licet frui diebus, / si disponere tempus otiosum / et verae pariter vacare vitae . . . (If I and you, dear Martial, were permitted to enjoy careless days, if permitted to dispose an idle time, and both alike to have leisure for genuine life . . . - we should avoid power, public life, and prefer the colonnade, the gardens shade . . .). The point of such wish poems is that the desired-for state is the more attractive since unavailable.

61

26 Brian Vickers

first Eclogue Meliboeus, who has no land of his own, and is soon to be exiled to hot and dusty Africa, says rather enviously to Tityrus (who has both leisure and stability of tenure): nos patriam fugimus; tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra / formosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvas (1.4ff: We are outcasts from our country: you, Tityrus, at ease beneath the shade, teach the woods to re-echo fair Amaryllis). Tityrus may praise the god who gave him his otium (deus nobis haec octia feci t ) , but some modern scholars see in this remark less divine favour than a critical comment on Octavians land policy.68 Shadow and repose are indulged in by Virgil for a time, but the concluding Eclogue represents a farewell to Pastoral:

surgamus: solet esse gravis cantatibus umbra, iuniperi gravis umbra, nocent et frugibus umbrae, ite domum saturae, venit Hesperus, ite capellae. (10.75-7)

(Let us rise; the shade oft brings peril to singers. The junipers shade brings peril: hurtful to the corn, too, is the shade. Get ye home, my full- fed goats - the Evening-star comes - get ye home!) These allusions - made more pointed by the rhetorical figure epistrophe placing the word at the end of the first three clauses - are to the negative connotations of umbra within Roman agriculture beliefs. These included sunless crops; the poison shades of juniper, walnut, pine and other trees; the gloomy chill of night, associated with death and the underworld.

Evidently Virgil consciously used the motif of leaving the shade, emerg- ing into a more noble state. The ambivalent concept of umbra allows him to accept, and then reject, concealment. If Virgils Eclogues evoke the shepherds life, the Georgics move on to the harder life of farmers, with their all-conquering insatiable toil (labor omnia vicit improbus, Georg., 1.145ff). Yet this mode of poetry, too, can be set aside as un- worthy of the poets vocation in the vita activa. At the end of the fourth Georgic Virgil writes an epilogue, or rather a palinode to this and the earlier collection:

Thus sang I of the care of fields, of cattle, and of trees, while great Caesar thundered in war by deep Euphrates, and gave a victors law unto willing nations, and essayed the path to Heaven. In those days I , Virgil, was nursed of sweet Parthenope, and rejoiced in the art of in- glorious ease - I who dallied with shepherds songs. . . . (4.559-66)

The poet preparing to write The Aeneid is no longer the Virgil who reproached himself for having indulged in studiis . . . ignobilis oti.

Those who chose to remain in shadow ran great risks in Roman life, signalling in this way their abandonment of all the supportive values of public virtus. Tacitus paints a desperate picture of the Emperor Vitellius, who, on the eve of a military campaign, refused to invigorate his soldiers

Smith 1965, 300-1 and n. 12. See Smith 1965, 303-4, and Holzer 1955, 59ff. 63-74

Leisure and idleness: the ambivalence of otium 27

by encouraging speeches or warlike exercises, and quit the public eye altogether. Buried in the shade of his gardens, like those sluggish animals which, if you supply them with food, lie motionless and torpid, he had dismissed with the same forgetfulness the past, the present, and the future, and lay wasting his powers in sloth (. . . umbraculis hortorum abditus, ut ignavia animalia . . . ) . O The philosophical sect which espoused retirement and pleasure, the Epicureans, were often accused of all the vices resulting from voluptas, including a perverse liking for shadow. In his treatise De beata vita (7.3) Seneca juxtaposes virtus and voluptas as irreconcilable opposites:

Virtue you will find in the temple, in the forum, in the senate-house - you will find her standing in front of the city walls, dusty and stained, and with calloused hands; pleasure you will find more often lurking out of sight, and in search of darkness, around the public baths and the sweating-rooms and the places that fear the police - soft, en- ervated, . . . and pallid.

In De beneficiis Seneca returns to the fray, denouncing the Epicureans inertia: You count it pleasure to surrender your miserable body to slug- gish ease, to court a repose that differs not much from sleep, to lurk in a covert of thick shade and beguile the lethargy of a languid mind with the most delicate thoughts, which you call tranquillity, and in the secret retreats of your gardens to stuff with food and drink your bodies that are pallid from inaction. . . . I The whole repertoire of Roman pejoratives seems to be released by any one of the key danger words, otium, or umbra, or voluptas.

Seneca, like Horace, is sometimes invoked as accounting for a supposed vogue for retirement in the seventeenth century, yet neither writer can be reduced to that simple formula. The most frequently cited text in Horace is the second epode:

Beatus ille qui procul negotiis ut prisca gens mortalium paterna rura bobus exercet suis solutus omni faenore, neque excitatur classico miles truci neque horret iratum mare, forumque vitat et superba civium potentiorum limina. (1 -8)

(Happy the man who, far away from business cares, like the pristine race of mortals, works his ancestral acres with his steers, from all

O History, 3.36.1, trans. A. J. Church and W. J . Brodribb, in The Complete Works of Tacitus, ed. M . Hadas (New York, 1942), 559; cf. Holzer 1955, 104.

Vobis voluptas est inertis otii facere corpwculum et securitatem sopitis simillimam appetere et sub densa umbra latitare tenerrimisque cogitationibw, quas tranquillitatem uocatis, animi marcen- tis oblectare torporem et cibis potionibusque intra hortorum latebram corpora ignavia pallentia saginare . . .

28 Brian Vickers

money-lending free; who is not, as a soldier, roused by the wild clarion, nor dreads the angry sea; he avoids the Forum and proud thresholds of more powerful citizens.) The last four lines there, with their evocation of the nuisances of public life, are a familiar gesture after the similar passages in Ovid justifying his choice of otium and amor. More original is the wish to be free from money-lending (solutus omnifaenore), the point of which only emerges at the end of the poem, after its idyllic - over- idyllic? - praise of the country-life:

haec ubi locutus faenerator Alfius

omnem redegit Idibus pecuniam, iam iam futurus rusticus,

quaerit Kalendis ponere. (67-70)

(When the usurer Alfius had uttered this, on the very point of beginning the farmers life, he called in all his funds upon the Ides - and on the Kalends seeks to put them out again!) The usurer thinks longingly of escaping his profession, but carries on just the same, his pastoral vision, as one critic puts i t , shattering upon the continuing realities of his profes- sion.12 Modern commentators disagree about whether Horace is express- ing a genuine love of the country or satirizing the fashion for villegiature, getting away, and some argue that the conclusion is not such a shock, since the deliberate inflation of the language praising rural retreat is meant to show the personas insincerity.

Any of these readings seems preferable to J.-M. Andres account of the poem as a serious, concrete essay in Epicureanism, une vita otiosa de con- tenu philosophique. Andre links it with Satire 1.6, also inspired by Epicurus garden, but on examination that poem turns out to be an attack on ambition, and a praise of the simple life, content with little, as evinced by Horace himself. Andre claims that Horaces Epicurean allegiances in the Odes unite 1hCdonisme bacchique et la quCte de la shenite, yet he can only do so by ignoring the ironic framework of the Second Epode, a