Plants, Politics and Empire in Ancient Rome by Annalisa Marzano (review)

Reviewed by: Plants, Politics and Empire in Ancient Rome by Annalisa Marzano James Uden Plants, Politics and Empire in Ancient Rome. By Annalisa Marzano. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2022. Pp. xv, 360. L. Licinius Lucullus, writes Annalisa Marzano in her new book Plants, Politics and Empire in Ancient Rome, was associated with three novelties by later Roman writers. Allegedly he was the first general to encounter camels; he was the first to bring black marble to Italy; and he introduced Romans to the cherry tree. If we can follow Athenaeus (2.51a–b), Lucullus may even have given the fruit its name (cerasus), from a town in Pontus (Kerasous) that he passed during his campaigns against Mithridates vi. Given Mithridates' self-presentation as a ruler who united Greek and Persian identities, the tradition of the grand garden (paradeisos) of Persian kings may also have given Lucullus inspiration for his other great legacy, the Horti Lucullani. These gardens were not necessarily, Marzano argues, a place for quiet contemplation and retirement from public [End Page 185] life. Lucullus may have entertained his officers in the horti during the years when he waited outside the pomerium for his triumph to be decreed (37). Decades after his death, Messalina had such a strong desire to own the Lucullan horti that she forced their current owner to commit suicide. Later, she was murdered there (30). Plants, politics, and empire could not be more closely intertwined. Marzano's ambitious, detailed, and well-researched monograph begins with Lucullus and then traces two major cultural developments stretching from the late first century b.c.e. to the second century c.e. The first is the rise of gardens and horticulture in Rome as arenas for self-fashioning and self-promotion among the political elite. There had already been a deep history of "botanical imperialism" as Marzano puts it (13), in the Mediterranean and the ancient Near East. But Pompey seems to have been the first Roman general to parade live trees in his triumph (56), and later, as part of a "garden competition" with Lucullus, he established an ornate public park of his own in Rome (the Porticus Pompeiana, 40). From the late republic onwards, it was fashionable for Romans to use plants to cultivate their public image (plane trees, for example, signified a tie to Greek intellectualism), and Romans could also gain glory by attaching their name to notable horticultural innovations. Commercial value and cultural cachet were shaped by botanical realities. The ebony and the balsam, for example, "could not be acclimatized to grow in Italy" (64) and therefore remained the precious, exotic symbols of conquered regions in the empire. The second trend Marzano traces in Plants, Politics and Empire is what she calls the Augustan "horticultural revolution": an expansion in the range of plants grown in private gardens and commercial orchards and nurseries, and a new sophistication in grafting, irrigation, and manuring. As a result of veteran settlement, population growth, and political stability under the Julio-Claudians, landowners had the motivation and resources to investigate new cultivars and agricultural techniques. Through a series of chapters focusing on particular fruit trees (the apricot and peach), regions (Campania, Cisalpine Gaul, the Iberian Peninsula, Gaul), and practical decisions made by property owners (viticulture or arboriculture), Marzano shows that the status of horticulture among Roman intellectuals expanded as the profitability of new crops increased. Marzano makes her case through an abundance of textual and archaeological evidence, while remaining sensitive to the inevitable gaps. When Pliny the Younger has his hedge trimmed to form the letters of his and his gardener's names (Ep. 5.6.35), it is a reminder that farmers, gardeners, and topiarii (an epigraphically attested slave profession, 160) were almost certainly the masterminds behind the innovations for which elite Romans took credit. Yet their lives are difficult to reconstruct (25, 107, 160–163), as are the contributions of indigenous communities to Roman arboriculture in the provinces (8, 233). On the other hand, archaeobotanical evidence can fill in a remarkable number of gaps. Marzano provides a very helpful overview of the methods, advantages, and limitations of contemporary archaeobotanical research...

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