"Micsoda gazdaság (villa) az, ha nincsenek városi díszítményei, sem falusi kelléktára"

Abstract

This paper examines three main terms: otium (leisure), suburbium (suburb) and villa suburbana (suburban villa). I mostly used ancient literary sources from this period for the examination. I wanted to point out what the ancient Romans had thought about city and countryside through these terms. It is important to note that the sources I selected are referring to the contemporary elitist concept of this theme. It is difficult to separate the many meanings of these terms. I handled the terms in this paper in the following way. The suburbium was the suburban realm of the ancient city, Rome. Its development reached approximately 40-50 kilometres from the city centre. The otium was the cultivated form of leisure, which the Roman elite pursued for example in their elegant country villas. The villa suburbana could be a lavish leisuring spot or have another social, economical and land-using interests, too. But these terms were very subjective, flexible and always changed. They have exact definition neither in the ancient Roman thought and nor among the modern scholars. The selected literary sources do not make a clear distinction between these terms, either. Because of this fact I can state that these terms always depended on the contemporary individuals who wrote down their estimates or ideas in the survived pieces of Roman literature.