Most publications on Roman plants focus on their dietary or economic contributions, with the final product, the edible fruit, cereal, or vegetable component, being of primary concern. This book takes a novel approach to plant usage in the Roman world by stepping back to look at the plants and trees themselves. In eight chapters plus a conclusion, Marzano divides her time between the economics of ancient arboriculture and its role in Roman cultural discourse. Making use of a wide array of ancient literary, archaeological, and archaeobotanical evidence, the cultural complexity and practicalities of arboriculture are brought to life. She demonstrates how, as with many aspects of Roman culture, plants and their resultant products could lie on either side of a divide concerning the morally appropriate use of land. Focusing on the late Republic and early Imperial period, the book argues for an Augustan ‘horticultural revolution’ whereby the pax Romana combined with elite interest and investment in plants, particularly fruit trees, brought about a boom in both the variety and spread of new agricultural commodities. Grafting, a topic rarely explored by scholars of the ancient world, is also given ample attention.
The introduction clearly lays out the aims of the monograph; offers a brief overview of archaeobotanical preservation and its associated challenges; and provides succinct chapter summaries. The first chapter focuses on shifting elite ideology surrounding plants and gardens. No longer used to simply grow vegetables and other productive goods, gardens became political tools and, for the elite, a means of self-representation. In this chapter and the next, the hortus of Lucullus and the garden of Pompey, the latter built as a public space included within his new theatre complex, feature as case studies for elite practices and imperialist attitudes. Both generals, Marzano argues, might have been influenced by Mithridates and the eastern practice of creating royal parks. However, rather than create parks, the Romans instead paraded plants during military triumphs. This new practice of transplanting plants from conquered locations then translates into the cultivation and spread of these items by those who tended to move around the empire: the military, veteran settlers, merchants, and the multi-propertied elite.
The third chapter focuses on the Augustan ‘horticultural revolution.’ Since there is scant physical evidence, Marzano mines, to an impressive depth, the ancient sources, to hypothesize on the nature of horticultural production around Rome. She concludes that since fruit trees take years to mature, large scale horticulture around Rome and other large urban centres must have been an elite activity while vegetable production will have taken place on smaller plots of land, managed by the non-elite. The chapter also questions the reasons behind the sudden increase in agricultural and horticultural texts that appear in the Augustan period. The elite, for both ideological and commercial reasons, became more interested and active in horticulture and worked, through experimentation, to improve outputs. In other words, it was suddenly of great interest and therefore worthy of discussion.
The next chapter centres upon the practicalities of, and Roman moral attitudes towards, grafting. Following discussion of the general historical importance of grafting, there is a short overview of the differing techniques. The most interesting aspect of this chapter is the cultural analysis. Marzano demonstrates that the elite saw grafting as a way to subdue nature and that, because they had the time, finances, and hired or slave expertise, were especially interested in making strange or novel tree combinations. Creating and subsequently being named for a new variety of edible was also a way for the elite to achieve immortality. Livia, as the only woman to have a fruit variety named after her, is discussed in the context of horticulture, agriculture, and gender roles. The chapter concludes with a discussion of chestnut trees to demonstrate that not all grafting practices were aimed at food production. In the Roman period, chestnut was primarily used for timber and fuel.
Peaches and their chronological introduction and diffusion throughout Italy form the core of chapter five. Concentrating on the new peach farm of S. Giovanni in Laternao, and the surviving fragments of Gargilius Martialis, Marzano convincingly argues that peaches were introduced into Italy in the 1st c. BC rather than the commonly published early or mid-1st c. AD.
Chapters six and seven then take a regional approach. Chapter six looks at Campania and Cisalpine Gaul, while chapter seven assesses the evidence from the Iberian Peninsula and Gaul. The two Italian regions are presented as areas of innovation and high levels of horticultural production. For the Iberian peninsula, the argument centres upon the influence of colonial settlers and the military and regional differentiation in diet. Gaul is subdivided into three regions. The section on the south explores the cultivation of new plants, the middle section, on The Tres Galliae, discusses changes in land management and agriculture, while for the north, two phases of plant diffusion are outlined. In both chapters, sites with especially good evidence for one or more types of fruit production feature as case studies.
The penultimate chapter then shifts from the macro to the micro scale to determine how farmers, based on financial and geographical constraints, chose what to grow. Following a detailed comparison of two farms near Béziers, France, the reader is taken on a journey from Iberia to Britain and finally back to Rome. The focus of this chapter is not as clear as the others, yet does serve to reinforce the argument that large and experimental horticultural production was the preserve of the rich, regardless of geographical location. The concluding chapter succinctly summarizes the main arguments presented in the text.
The book presents an interesting combination of the innovative and the traditional. The introduction and diffusion of new plant species into Italy and the Western Empire, as a result of Roman imperial expansion, is well documented archaeologically and archaeobotanically. However, this is the first monograph to unite the literary, archaeological, and in particular, the archaeobotanical evidence to explore this phenomenon. It is also the first publication to focus on the cultural and ideological ramifications of these horticultural changes. At the same time, the material is presented in what now feels like a somewhat traditional manner; an enormous volume of data is provided, but in places the text lacks theoretical engagement, critical analysis of the material, and a sufficient number of caveats. Both textual and archaeological sources tend to be taken at face value, which can mislead readers with little background knowledge on the topic. Campania and Cisalpine Gaul, for example, no doubt did play an important role in horticultural production and development, but they are also the two regions of Italy that have been subject to the most intensive archaeobotanical work by far. Tuscany and even the more distant hinterland of Rome may also have been important locations, but we lack sufficient data. Such lacunae should have been more explicitly noted. Similarly, Rome and the Romans naturally take centre stage, but the spotlight is so bright that in the chapters on the provinces, the native population appear as ghosts in the shadows with little knowledge or agency of their own. Data from the Iron Age is entirely absent and perhaps too much innovation is attributed to the Roman military and settlers. Finally, there is a frustrating lack of images, plans and maps, particularly for a monograph that discusses so many sites and regions in detail. Additional figures, especially of grafting methods, would have been helpful.
Despite these drawbacks, Plants, Politics, and Empire remains an incredibly important piece of work that bridges ancient history and archaeology. The sections on Roman ideology are the strongest, and the conclusions drawn by Marzano will change the way ancient historians, classicists, and archaeologists conceptualize the relationship between plants and imperial expansion. As Marzano has shown, nothing, not even the humble fruit tree, was safe from Roman moralizing discourse. Plants were not just good to eat or paint, but they were good to think with, too. Lastly, all who work on the ancient world, regardless of subdiscipline, have been provided with an excellent example of the integration of environmental and literary data, and how such cross-disciplinary research can lead to new and fruitful avenues of research. Hopefully this practice will continue to increase in the future.